IMPERIALISM AND THE INTERNET

"Cultural imperialism¹,” a term first coined in the 1960s, refers to cultural hegemony, or the domination of other nations. The worldwide spread of consumerism, for instance, is cited as a prime example of American influence. Critics of the US point to the plethora² of American cultural products available to people in other countries, in particular media such as music, television, movies, news, and technology. They argue that these products replace local ones, thereby threatening the cultures of other nations. As more and more of the world's people go online, a growing number of countries worry about being completely overrun by this American cultural influence. Some governments have even approved laws to control the amount and types of information available to their people to combat this perceived threat. Those who oppose such policies state that the leaders of these countries are going against freedom or progress. However, those in favor of these laws say that they are necessary because their cultures and very identities are under attack.

Herbert Schiller (1919–2000) was a communications scholar. He asserted that although innovations such as the internet have been praised as democratic, both information and technology are in reality controlled by the rich. This is explained in terms of the core-versus-periphery argument. Core nations such as the United States have political power and economic advantages. Peripheral nations are poor, so-called developing nations. According to this idea, information, and therefore influence, flows from the core to the periphery. Developing nations are thus unwilling consumers of core values, ideology³, and assumptions embedded in the information they receive. Those who believe in the theory of cultural imperialism point to the US television shows and McDonald's restaurants found worldwide as evidence that influence only flows one way.

But critics of this position consider it far too simple, as it does not account for internal dynamics within societies. Also, they argue, it views culture as deterministic and static⁴. It assumes people are passive⁵ and that the dominated cultures will form no opposition. In fact, many believe that "other" groups are not being taken over by US culture and media. Rather, people in other cultures tend to transform the intended meanings to ones that better suit their own societies. Thus, rather than becoming "Americanized," for example, Asian countries have "Asianized" US cultural exports such as McDonald's. This transformation can easily be seen on McDonald's menus in places like India and China.

Other critics of the traditional notion of cultural imperialism state that although cultural imperialism may very well be a factor in the export and consumption of certain US media products, the internet is unique. Unlike other media, it has no central authorities through which items are selected, written, and produced. Instead, information can be sent from anywhere and by anyone. The internet allows people to participate in their own languages and to take part in preserving and celebrating their own cultures. Thus, it is argued that growing internet usage, rather than promoting cultural imperialism, may, in fact, promote multiculturalism⁶.

On the other hand, research on internet language use casts some doubt on this last idea. A study published in the scientific journal PLOS One examined the question. The study determined that of the world's roughly⁷ 7,000 living languages, only five percent have any chance of becoming viable on the internet. And an even smaller number-just over 250—are currently established online. Linguists fear this could speed up the loss of endangered languages, and with them, important aspects of culture.

Maybe the question of whether the internet will overrun your culture will be answered by Schiller's theories, at least in part. It may indeed depend very much on whether your language belongs to the core or the periphery. If you speak one of the most common Asian internet languages (Chinese, Japanese, or Korean), or one of the European ones (French, Italian, or Spanish), you are not likely at risk of such a fate⁸. If you speak Yoruba, a language common in West Africa, or Quechua, a language indigenous to the Andes of South America, however, your culture may be in trouble on the internet.

• cultural adaptation
• preserve culture
• central authority
• developed nations
• cultural products
• influence peripheral

• consumption
• domination
• embed
• peripheral
• transformation
• usage

Surfing in Your Mother Tongue

In considering the question of whether the internet is being used to spread US hegemony, it is important to look at the languages currently used on the internet. In the late 1990s, as much as ninety percent of worldwide internet traffic and technological infrastructure was in English. This sparked fears elsewhere of the overwhelming influence of the language and even prompted legislative efforts in some countries to limit the amount of English content online.

However, in recent years there has been a proliferation of languages other than English on the internet. According to World Stats, an independent polling agency, the amount of online content in English has dropped to just over fifty percent. This still far outweighs other individual languages. But the amount of content in Russian, German, French, Spanish, and Chinese is rising quickly. And the statistics on internet users suggest we can expect content in other languages to increase. As of 2020, only twenty-six percent of world internet users speak English as their first language, down from over thirty-five percent in 2000. Nineteen percent now speak Chinese, a proportion that is expected to grow.

Another important measure of cultural presence online is Wikipedia. Regardless of how one assesses the resource's accuracy, having a Wikipedia site in your own language has become a mark of sovereign cultural identity. People are at a disadvantage if the only information they can find on their culture is written—and editable-only in a different language. The Wikipedia versions with more than one million articles are mostly in Western languages. However, between 2001 and 2021, Wikipedia went from being written in one language (English) to being written in 321.

The numbers suggest that while English still dominates the internet, the language is likely to face stiff competition as more and more users from other large language groups move online.