Tom McPhail

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Tom McPhail is professor of media studies and a fellow in the Center for International Studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. He also serves as a media and internet analyst for many media outlets including AP, UPI, USAToday, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, NPR/PBS, Financial Post, and the New York Times. Previously he taught at the University of Calgary, and Carleton University (Canada), the University of Hawaii, Catholic University, and worked with UNESCO (Paris). He has published over 90 articles and several books, including GLOBAL COMMUNICATION: Theories, Stakeholders, and Trends (Blackwell Publishers, 2006) second edition. It is the widest selling book in the world dealing with international communication and has been tranlated into Arabic and Chinese. The book details McPhail's electronic colonialism theory, which describes the impact of media (Time Warner, Viacom, Disney, Sony etc.) and communication conglomerates (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! etc.)on individuals across the globe. The theory covers the American hegemony with reference to cultural industries. He also did a public policy study for a Montreal based think-tank in the mid-1980s which predicted the negative impact of the internet on the daily newspaper and other print publications/industries.^[1]