BEYOND THE VAST WASTELAND - THE POLICY DISCOURSE OF GLOBAL TELEVISIONAND THE POLITICS OF AMERICAN EMPIRE

During the early 1960s, U.S. policymakers first envisioned a global te levision system linked by satellite technology. Their utopian discours e suggested that, in the face of Third World ''unrest'' and growing So viet competition, television would play an important role in promoting an ''imagined community'' of citizens throughout the Free World. This notion of cultural and geographic integration is examined in comparis on to nineteenth-century political strategies which led to the foundat ion of the modern nation-state.