What is Americanization?

-Americanization is the term used for the influence the United States of America has on the culture of other countries, substituting local culture with something of an American culture.

"70% of all programs viewed in Canada were made in U.S.A. Focusing on specific genres, 85% of drama programming was American made and 97% of the sitcoms were also American."(1)

"In a recent French poll of images that come to mind when thinking of America, 67% of those polled said "violence" and 49% "inequality" as opposed to only 20% who said "freedom" and 4% "generosity."(2)

Summary:

Americanization has been around for many years. Although as the world becomes more fast-paced many people overlook the fact that America is slowly takin over the Canadian economy. Ironically things that we do in our everyday life is usually influenced by the Americans. Television, Film, Radio, Newspapers, Books, Internet and Music are just some of the many things that have been assimilated into our Canadian culture. Although to some people the fear of American cultural colonization is a recurring problem in Quebec and Canadian culture. Gatëan Tremblay is a journalist at the University of Quebec at Montreal who is worried about the assimilation of the Americans into our Canadian culture. With the free trade agreement between Canada and U.S, it makes Americanization a bigger concern. Tremblay states: Americans “export throughout the world, but Canada is first on their list, and often considered as part of their internal market.”

Critique of Article #1

The article I chose to critique is Article #1. I picked this article because it is a very inspiring article and it cleary identifies and describes my topic. There is no set author for this article but I know that this article is valid because it is a CBC television research. Also there are journalists from Quebec and other Universities who helped to publish and write this article.To prove that this is more relevant there are footnotes and bibliography to sites where the information was from. There are no graphs or charts but theres alot of percentages comparing different things which I beleive is important for my topic. Also this article doesnt bias one side, instead it explains the outlook from both the American standpoint and the Canadian standpoint. There are dates on the information provided. Each specific article has a date and a link to the site. In conclusion the purpose of this ad is to explain in detail the Americanization of Canada with the use of percentages and hard facts. The first time I checked this site I realized it was legitemet because here was work cited, dates and links to where this information came from. Overall I think the objective of this article is to show Canadians the affects of Americanization. By using percentages and statistics it implants the effects of Americanization in our brains.

Critique of Article #2

The article is chose to critique is article #2 because it not only talks about Americanization of Canada but it talks about Americanization of the world and how people feel about it.For example in quote 2 which is right above the summary, it talks about what the french think about America. Most of them said violence. This article does have an author his name is Frederick C. Millett, and he does have links to may of his other sites which also talk about Americanization. This author doesnt look to be part of an organization or a group but most of the information looks valid. There are many footnotes and bibliographies to prove that this information is factual and not biased in anyway. There no graphs but there are may pictures to make it visually pleasing.Frederick C. Millett is not the only author there are sperate authors for the pictures and statistics which I beleive makes this more relevant. There are also dates in the bibliography to tell the reader where and when this information was taken and used along with links to go to the site. There are no ads but there are a lot of pictures but they are seperated from the actual information. This article does not bias a side but in fact it presents the information from both an American standpoint and a Canadian standpoint. All of the information is straight forward and easy to read. This article focuses alot on Americanization so this article doesnt really branch out to different topics, but that doesnt mean that this article doesnt provide good information. Overall I think that this article helped me to understand more about Americanization and how it affects us as Canadians.

Related Articles / Links:
Article #1: Americanization of Canada.

Article #2: The World and Americanization

Article #3: What is Americanization?

Article #4: Challenging the Empire on Turf

Article #5:Does watching American tv make you less Canadian?