Culture is the most visible manifestation of globalization, whether it is the appearance of new cultural forms (such as Disneyland Paris) or the transformation of traditional cultural expressions into something a bit different (such as Egyptian McDonald's restaurants serving their patrons “McFalafel”).

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While there are ample data to track the cross-border movement of people, merchandise, and money, it is extraordinarily difficult to measure the global spread of ideas and trends. However, it is possible to get a hint of a country's level of cultural integration by identifying “cultural proxies”—the conduits by which ideas, beliefs, and values are transmitted. One way to measure the globalization of culture is to chart the movement of popular media, which have more impact on our thinking than some of the other, more frequently cited symbols of cultural globalization (such as the proliferation of Starbucks coffee shops around the world).

We have created a ranking of the 20 most culturally globalized countries by measuring each nation's exports and imports of books, periodicals, and newspapers. (The dissemination of movies would be another ideal indicator. Yet data for films are only available for a small number of countries. The most recent data on cultural trade available from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) date back to 1997). We then divide those total exports and imports by the nation's population size. The higher a country is on this index, the more likely an individual in that country is to receive foreign cultural products.

One clear pattern that emerges from this ranking is that the globalization of culture may have a significant linguistic component. Three of the top five nations (Singapore, Switzerland, and Canada) have official bilingual policies. English-language permeation also tie into a country's capacity to absorb international cultural products. Seven of the top 20 nations in this index (United States , United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Singapore, and Israel) are among the top 10 English-speaking countries in the world.

However, when we consider the bottom 10 countries (Peru, Romania, Morocco, Thailand, Turkey, Philippines, Egypt, Indonesia, China, and Pakistan), we see that multilingual nations are not guaranteed a high degree of cultural globalization: The Philippines and Pakistan—two countries where English is widespread—still rank near the bottom. The biggest barrier to cultural globalization seems to be poverty, as all of these countries have a per capita gross domestic product of under $8,000, and 4 of the 10 have a literacy rate of less than 60 percent. Also, some countries, notably China and Indonesia , have government policies that restrict the import of foreign books and journals. Poverty, illiteracy, and lack of social openness all are associated with a lack of cultural globalization.

Source: UNESCO

Because it is impossible to directly measure “cultural globalization,” or the extent to which cultural values and ideas are diffused across national borders, it is necessary to seek out proxy signifiers, which indicate the extent to which beliefs and values are moving across national boundaries. The most likely proxy, then, would be the vehicles by which culture is most typically transmitted. Although there are a number of obvious symbols of globalization, from Lexus to Starbuck's, we propose that the best manner of measuring cultural globalization would be to chart the movement of popular media. The reason is that the media has perhaps more effect than other symbols of globalization, such as the presence of fast food outlets, on our thinking.

As we have suggested that cultural globalization be measured by consumption of mass communication products imported from overseas, some likely indicators would be foreign television programs, films, books, and recorded music. This empirical choice is consistent with the established wisdom that mass media have a powerful effect on the development of culture. Nonetheless, it is empirically infeasible to account for all possible facets of culture: no systematic data exist for them. In addition, non-media cultural elements are correlated with the media counterparts, as they typically have complementary relationships.

It seems that there are several key indicators of cultural globalization available. First, cinematic films. Although it is true that many nations are overwhelmingly influenced by Hollywood , and most nations tend to demonstrate cultural dependence more than globalization, it is still a valuable indicator. China 's reluctance to have more than a handful of American produced films (raised to 20 to accommodate WTO demands) clearly illustrates a conviction that this particular form of media can have significant cultural impact. In addition, in highly globalized nations like Singapore , films from literally around the world play consistently throughout the nation.

Second, television programming is another useful indicator of globalization and is less prone to demonstrate cultural dependence. This is because television production is less costly than feature film production, and thus many nations do have a local industry. In many cases, these programs can become regionally important, for example, among Spanish or Chinese-speaking nations. Many more nations, then, become capable of producing and exporting this form of media, making the pool of sources much larger for other nations. In addition, this data is relatively accessible.

A third element of cultural influence would be the volume of imported print publications, including books, newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals. This data is readily available, and it is through the transmission of international newspapers and newsmagazines that one gains access to political and economic opinions around the world. Likewise, popular interest magazines, including home decorating magazines, celebrity magazines, sports magazines, and the like have a reciprocal effect. As they are introduced to a nation, they often prompt similar local titles, which most typically attempt to emulate the “style” or formula of the foreign versions. This demonstrates well the way in which these media types help to create a way of looking at the world that is not bound by cultural tradition.

Several sources have data available and useful for this empirical exercise, such as the UNESCO databank, which compiles systematic and comprehensive information on production/importation of various media products (films, books, etc) and other aspects of culture. The database covers a large number of countries from all regions chronologically since 1970. However, the data that is available is spotty and inconsistent, and thus, we have not been able to include all of these elements in calculating the Cultural Globalization Index.

Methodology

In calculating this index, we used a method very similar to that of other elements of the 2003 AT Kearney / Foreign Policy Index. That is, we tallied up the imports and exports of books and brochures, and newspaper and periodicals of a given nation, then divided the total by the population size, in order to normalize the data. The resulting figure provides a basis for ranking in cultural globalization. This assumes that higher levels of imports of media products per person indicate a higher level of access of each individual to global media. Likewise, the export figures reflect a vibrant trade in media, and also indicate cultural globalization. Thus, the higher the dollar value of this index is, the more likely an individual in that nation is to receive foreign cultural products.

We examined the data from the data available through UNESCO, which does not include data on a number of nations. Although there are other sources for some types of data, we have only relied upon UNESCO statistics, so as to maintain consistency. However, as there is no data on film imports for most of the countries, that is not included, leaving only two indicators for cultural globalization; books and brochures, and newspapers and periodicals. The UNESCO database includes data only as recent as 1997, and not for all of the countries on the 2003 GI. However, even with these limitations, it is possible to determine a reasonable cultural globalization index.

The lack of systematic data is problematic, as Austria illustrates. According to data from 1995 and 1996, Austria would rank number 5 and 4 respectively. But since data is not available for 1997, the nation falls out of the index completely. Likewise, Belize , which ranked fourth according to 1995 data, falls out of the index, since data is not available for 1996 and 1997. The same thing happens to several smaller nations for which data is unavailable.

Methodological Qualifications:

We have already noted the difficulty in obtaining accurate and systematic data, which is a significant drawback to this method. We also note that there might be other cultural indicators that we have not included, such as films and television programming, primarily because of the difficulty of maintaining consistency in data collection.

There are at least two other methodological issues that need to be addressed. Perhaps most importantly, since it is mainly the most developed nations that have significant media industries, to a great extent all developing nations are dependent upon these few nations for media content. Thus, although both Hollywood and Bollywood have significant media industries, with Bollywood producing seven times more movies than the US , it is Hollywood that has the greatest global impact. UNESCO estimates that 85% of movie screenings world wide are of Hollywood productions. (Survey on National Cinematography) Thus, the methodology we have used does not make a distinction between the extent to which “globalization” differs from the import of American cultural products.

Second, it is necessary to make a distinction between “globalization,” which we take to be openness to a variety of international sources for media content, and what we will call “cultural dependence,” in which a nation, because it has no significant cultural industry within itself, relies primarily, or even solely, on one other source, such as the US . In contrast, globalization characterizes the process by which the activity of a country becomes more interlinked to many parts of the world. In order to discern the difference, it would be possible to measure “cultural dependence” by identification of the number of sources of cultural products. Consider an extreme scenario: Country A has a high level of integration with Country B, but with no other nation. In this case, country A is not globalized, but rather dependent on country B. In quantifying globalization, therefore, a measure that captures the breadth and multiplicity of overseas cultural artifacts will be more appropriate than one that simplistically differentiates between the domestic versus foreign categories. Unfortunately, a comprehensive and systematic source of data for this type of analysis does not yet exist.

Note: further updates on this project can be obtained from the authors at trkluver@ntu.edu.sg.