The politics behind international communication
The politics behind international communication
Theories have their own history and reflected the concerns of the time in which they were developed. This unit examines some theories that offer ways of approaching the subject of international communication and assesses how useful their explanations are in terms of an understanding of the process involved. This is by no means of comprehensive account of theories of communication nor does it set out on an all embracing theorization of the subject, but looks at the key theories and their proponents to contextualize the analysis of contemporarily global communication system.
It is not surprising that theories of communication came into force in parallel with the stupendous social and economic changes of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, reflecting the significance of the role of communications in the growth of capitalism and empire, and drawing also on advances in science and the understanding of the natural world. One of the debutant concepts of communication, developed by the French philosopher Claude Henri de Saint Simon (1760 1825), used the analogy of the living organism, posing that the development of a system of communication route (roads, canals, and railways) and a credit system (banks) was crucial for and industrializing society and that the circulation of money, for example, was equivalent to that of blood for the human heart (Mattelart and Mattelart 1998).
In the 20th century, theories of international communication evolved into a discrete discipline within the new social sciences, and in each era have prefaced contemporary concerns about political, economic and technological changes and their impact on society and culture. In the early 20th century during and after the First World War, a debate took place about the role of communication in propagating the competitive economic and military objectives of the imperial powers, exemplified in the work of Walter Lippman on "public opinion" (1922) and Harold Laswell on "war time propaganda" (1927).
After the Second World War, theories of communication multiplied in response to new developments in technology and media. First, radio and then television, and the increasingly integrated international economic and political system. Two broad, though often interrelated, approaches to the rising communication can be discerned in the political-economy approach concerned with the underlying structures of economic and political power relations and the perspectives of cultural studies, focusing mainly on the role of communication and media in the process of the creation and maintaining of shared values and meanings (Golding and Murdoch, 1997; Doring, 1999).
The political-economy approach has its roots in the critique of capitalism introduced by Karl Marx (1818 1883), but it has evolved over the years to incorporate a wide range of critical thinkers. Central to a Marxian interpretation of international communication is the question of power, which ultimately is seen as an instrument of control by the ruling classes. Much of the pioneer research on international communication has been an examination of the pattern of ownership and production in the media and communication industries, analyzing these transnational class interests. Moreover the influence on international communication of the growing literature of cultural studies, increasingly transnational in intent, if not yet in perspectives grew significantly in the late 20th century. Social science analyses of mass communication have been enriched by concepts from the study of literature and the humanities.
Flow of information:
After the Second World War and the establishment of a bi-polar world of free market capitalism and state socialism, theories of international communication became part of the new Cold War discourse. For the protagonist of capitalism, the primary function of international communication was to promote democracy, freedom of expression and markets, while the Marxists were vocal for greater state regulation on communication and media outlets. The concept of the "free flow of information" reflected Western, and specifically US, antipathy to state regulation and censorship of the media and its use for propaganda by its communist opponents. The "free flow" doctrine was essentially a part of liberal, free market discourse that championed the rights of media proprietors to sell wherever and whatever they wished. As most of the world's leading media resources and media related capital, then as now, were constructed in the West, it was the media proprietors in Western countries, their governments and national business communities that had most to gain.
For Western governments, "free flow" helped to ensure the continuing and reciprocated influence of Western media on global markets, strengthening the West in its ideological battle with the so called Soviet Union. The doctrine also contributed, in generally subtle rather than direct ways, vehicles for communication of US government points of view to international audience. Discourses of Globalization
Despite the controversial nature of the utility of globalization as a concept in understanding international communication, there is little doubt that new information and communication technologies have made global interconnectivity a reality. It has been argued that "Globalization" may be the concept of the 1990s, a key idea by which we understand the transition of human society into the third millenniums' (Waters, 1995).
The term has also been used more generally to describe contemporary developments in communication and culture. In this context both Marxists and world-system theorists stress the importance of rise of the global dominance of a capitalist market economy that is penetrating the entire globe-pan-capitalism is how on commentator described the phenomenon (Tehranian, 1999). With the collapse of communism, the disintegration of Soviet, and the Eastern block, seen by many as alternative to capitalism, the shift within Western democracies, from a public to private sector capitalism, and the international trend towards liberalization and privatization have contributed to the acceptance of the capitalist market as a global system.
As a matter of fact global mass, development and international communication content is unquestionably influenced by capitalism, thus a free flow of information is prevalent, and sometimes it is also made in the owner's interest. International communication is really at the crossroads, and suffers in the hands of politicalinterest.
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