Media Imperialism

Both Tomlinson and Harindranath critique certain assumptions made by previous researchers studying the effects of Western media on members of other cultures. Tomlinson asserts that these people are not passive audiences, that they do not simply absorb wholesale the messages within particular media, but instead, individually and communally interpret and evaluate them. Harindranath also highlights the "contingent nature of the coercion and persuasion toward, collaboration with, and resistance to the implementation of neoliberal policies in various parts of the developing world" (165). He especially criticizes the assumed connection between ethnicity and interpretive behavior (160).

My question is this: how then do we try to pinpoint why individuals respond to media in certain shared ways? How can we determine if such shared interpretations are due to cultural sameness/similarity or something else entirely (e.g. two people from widely different backgrounds respond to Dallas in the same way because they both grew up down the street from bumbling rich people)?