Barriers Down: How American Power and Free-Flow Policies Shaped Global Media

Freedom of information is a principle commonly associated with the United States' First Amendment traditions or digital-era technology boosters. Barriers Down reveals its unexpected origins in political, economic, and cultural battles over analog media in the mid-twentieth century. Diana Lemberg traces how the United States shaped media around the world after 1945 under the banner of the "free flow of information," showing how the push for global media access acted as a vehicle for American power. Barriers Down considers debates over civil liberties and censorship in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere alongside Americans' efforts to circumvent foreign regulatory systems in the quest to expand markets and bring their ideas to new publics. Lemberg shows how in the decades following the Second World War American free-flow policies reshaped the world's information landscape, though not always as intended. Through burgeoning information diplomacy and development aid, Washington diffused new media ranging from television and satellite broadcasting to global English. But these actions also spurred overseas actors to articulate alternative understandings of information freedom and of how information flows might be regulated. Bridging the historiographies of the United States in the world, human rights, decolonization and development, and media and technology, Barriers Down excavates the analog roots of digital-age debates over the politics and ethics of transnational information flows.

About the Author :
Diana Lemberg is associate professor of history at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Review :
Barriers down is a well-timed work of great relevance to historians, political scientists and policy-makers aiming to understand the connection between information infrastructure and geopolitics. Lemberg's study represents a rigorous, interdisciplinary approach to a critical, ongoing policy discussion and will endure as perhaps the go-to tale of how truly global media came to be.-- "International Affairs" A rigorous and readable study at the intersection of media and politics, from which both media and international affairs scholars can profit.-- "Choice" Historians of technology will find this book useful in evaluating international political disagreements over the appropriate uses of radio, television, satellite, and digital communications technologies.-- "Technology and Culture" Barriers Down refutes the cliché that "information wants to be free." Instead, Lemberg details how the notion of barrier-free flow of information was contested in the late twentieth century and how a group of predominantly American diplomats, business leaders, and scholars secured its freedom. It is both timely and historically wise.--David Engerman, author of The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India In the 1940s and 1950s, the "free flow of information" became an American watchword. But this "flow" was neither free nor flowing nor even necessarily informational. Historian Diana Lemberg presents a critical biography of the famous phrase, whose leading advocates assumed information would move from the United States to the rest of the world and not the other way around. Barriers Down recovers long-forgotten debates that are more relevant than ever.--Michael Schudson, author of The Rise of the Right to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency, 1945-1975 Historians of U.S. global power have been curiously disinterested in the history of the media. In this wide-ranging and thought-provoking book, Diana Lemberg steps into the breach, reminding us just how many intellectuals, politicians, and diplomats spent the Cold War arguing about the future of global communications.--Sam Lebovic, author of Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America Lemberg offers us an innovative discussion of how the United States actively sought to remove obstacles to global media after 1945. Barriers Down ties the deeply political question of media openness to key issues during the postwar period: international development, the Cold War, national sovereignty, decolonization, and the collapse of empire. It provides a valuable and fresh perspective on central topics in international affairs.--David Ekbladh, author of The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order