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Dissertation Information for F. Mitch Land

NAME:
- F. Mitch Land
- (Alias) Floyd Mitchell Land

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- [No Discipline Recorded]

SCHOOL:
- University of Texas, Austin (USA) (1990)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: Television, culture and the state in Cote d'Ivoire: A field study of the Ivoirien system

Abstract: The glut of television programming, flowing one way mainly from the United States to the rest of the world, has been the concern of a number of researchers, particularly since the uproar occasioned by the New World Information and Communication Order movement in the 1970s and early 1980s. Concern over the cultural implications of massive doses of American films, television series, music videos and so on sparked a rich debate among scholars from those who cried, "cultural imperialism," to their respondents who tried to play down the threat with logical arguments. The role of the state in receiving countries seemed to be neglected in many of the arguments from both sides of the discussion. The present field study reports the results of a two-year investigation of Cote d'Ivoire's national television system at the site of its production and dissemination.$\sp1$ A qualitative in-depth survey was carried out at four levels of Ivoirien society, of people who are actively involved in the production of television content and culture: television personnel, performers, intellectuals and viewers. In addition, archival research was undertaken to record from Ivoirien sources a brief historical overview of television's origin as well as to discover the state's perception of television's role in Ivoirien culture and society. Finally, a program analysis, drawn from a sample of three different years of Ivoirien broadcasts since 1963, describes what Ivoirien viewers have been exposed to over the years.

The study revealed the key role played by the state, symbolized in the nation's supreme elite personality, President Houphouet-Boigny, in shaping the nature of Ivoirien television. Television's primary responsibility is political: to speak for the one political party, the Parti democratique de la Cote d'Ivoire (PDCI), personified in the Ivoirien head of state, thus precluding contradictory or challenging ideas and images. The primary cultural role of television is to provide a "window onto the world," showing the new Ivoirien man and woman the way to modernization. Through core-periphery modeling, then, Ivoiriens are expected to achieve cultural and economic modernization. But despite more than 25 years of state monopoly of television, Ivoiriens are not convinced. They call for an end to politicized television. And not all of them agree with official core-periphery modernization. They want television to be restructured into an autonomous network, free to generate the funds necessary to produce more local programs and programs that respond accurately and objectively to the real social, cultural and economic needs of the people. ftn$\sp1$Although Cote d'Ivoire is still better known in English as the Ivory Coast, I use this designation throughout because of a formal request by the Ivoirien government that the country's name not be translated into other languages. This means that the adjectival form changes from Ivorian to Ivoirien, without attempt for gender agreement with English nouns.

MPACT Scores for F. Mitch Land

A = 1
C = 1
A+C = 2
T = 1
G = 1
W = 1
TD = 1
TA = 0
calculated 2012-08-19 15:05:46

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