ABSTRACT
The impact of cross-border communication has long been of special interest to international communication scholars and policy makers. In this chapter the authors use meta-analytic procedures to investigate the size of the effects of cross-border television. The results of this study reveal that, overall, cross-border TV has very weak effects on viewers. This result contradicts cultural imperialism critics, who contend that foreign television has strong and negative impacts on viewers. The effects of foreign TV are usually assumed to be from TV to the audience members. This chapter, however, raises the possibility that the effects found are not only very weak, but could be due to some other factors that may be influencing the audience to seek and view foreign TV programs.
