Global communication – PP2

PamplonaJanuary 11-15, 2010

Danijel Labaš, dlabas@hrstud.hrCroatian Studies, University of Zagreb

What is wrong with globalization and global mass communication?

Global mass communication is a reality.

Everyone talks about globalization.

Students flood to courses with ‘globalization’ in the title... (In Pamplona, too?)

Global communication

The reasons?

Vast flows of money, goods, services and people around the world...

Globalization

By any measure, this is a world in which international communication and movement, if not an everyday commonplace for the entire population, is an increasingly familiar experience for large numbers of people.

Globalization and mass media

We must seek to ask what purchase the theory of globalization gives us on contemporary developments in the mass media.

Globalization and mass media

The role of mass media in the global world will be recognized and evaluated in both directions: positive and negative one.

Theories of globalization

There is no theory of globalization that commands common assent.

‘No single coherent theory of globalization exists’ (Held et al., 1999: 436).

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Theories of globalization

Giddens told an interviewer that ‘it does not have a single specific meaning’ (Rantanen, 2005: 67).

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Theories of globalization

Globalization means greater interconnected-ness and action at a distance.

Relation between globalization and modernity?

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Theories of globalization

Globalization is constituted through the spread of modernity (Appadurai, 1996; Giddens, 1990).

Modernity is a process distinct from that of globalization (Robertson, 1992).

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Theories of globalization

Volkmer: ‘Modernization refers to nations and states, globalization to communities of an extra-societal kind’ (1999: 55).

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Theories of globalization

Herman and McChesney, 1997: use the term ‘globalization’ to mean something indistinguishable from imperialism.

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Theories of globalization

In place of evidence, we find ‘opinions, views and prophecies about the direction of the world, and critiques of concepts assumed to be parochial, essentialist and racist’ (Friedman, 2001: 15).

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The globalization paradigm

The first distinction is between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ theories of globalization.

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The globalization paradigm

Five main elements to this ‘strikingly new’ paradigm:

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The globalization paradigm

1 Understanding globalization requires a new methodology that is radically non-reductive.

Thompson, 1995: 169: ‘The composition, the global flow, and the uses of media products are far more complex than [theories of media imperialism] would suggest’.

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The globalization paradigm

2 Symbolic exchanges, and the international circulation of media products, are today central to the functioning of the global world in the way that the exchanges of raw materials and manufactured commodities were central to earlier epochs.

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The globalization paradigm

Symbolic exchanges are a wide category of different activities, ranging from international financial flows to the sale of TV series.

We would also expect to find that media products display a higher degree of uniformity than do the latter if they are the harbingers of globalization.

GloCom

The globalization paradigm

3 The global epoch is characterized by the fact there is no dominating or controlling centre to the contemporary world.

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The globalization paradigm

We would expect to find that there are a number of significant production centres (‘nodes’) for media artefacts that exchange their products reciprocally.

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The globalization paradigm

4 In the global epoch, it is no longer viable to talk of isolated ‘national’ units, either of economic life or of culture.

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The globalization paradigm

Held and McGrew, 2002: 36: ‘Hybrid cultures and transnational media corporations have made significant inroads into national cultures and national identities’.

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The globalization paradigm

5 The global epoch is marked by the erosion of the power of the ‘Westphalian’ state system, in economics, in politics and in culture (Beck, 2000: 4).

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The globalization paradigm

These developments have been particularly influenced by the evolution of media technologies.

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The globalization paradigm

If these are the main elements of the globalization paradigm, and if the propositions that have been inferred from them follow logically from the premises, then the task is to ask whether these propositions are true.

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Nicholas Negroponte

Beyond Digital: Looking forward, I see five forces of change that come from the digital age and will affect the planet profoundly: 1) global imperatives, 2) size polarities, 3) redefined time, 4) egalitarian energy, and 5) meaningless territory.

What we think about Media Revolution after that words of N. Negroponte?

Where?Perheps in the global information vs. global knowledge?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge,

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T. S. Eliot

What shall we think after... Pontificia Università Salesiana, Roma

Facoltà di scienze della comunicazione sociale

FSC - PUS

Facoltà di scienze della comunicazione sociale, Pontificia Università Salesiana, Roma.

Campaign: “Communication educate. Education communicate.”

“Communication educate. Education communicate.”

Communication is social.

Communicate responsible.

“Children are watching us. We don’t know what they think, but we see what they do. Often because of their tenderness and loneliness.

“Communication educate. Education communicate.”

We believe in society which is able to communicate with young people, respecting them and taking the care of them. Because, their future is our future.

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

FSC “Reality, soap-opera, fiction, serial, gossip, information-spectacle... is what people like, but the programmes are chosen on limited number of proposals who perhaps hypnotize or lull sense of taste and reflexion.

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

We believe in the television which will invite people to rise a look, the television which is not distante and boring, but simply respects diversity and quality of persons.”

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

Is hiding the identity on Internet responsible: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

The change of status is today “modern” and “in trend” on Twitter... Facebook or any social network...

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

Facebook has today more than 350 million of users, and Twitter more than 70 millions...

Think on global and responsible communication...

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

It's not enough to know how to press buttons on technological equipment: thinking is even more important.

http://www.medialit.org

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

The problem of partecipation and the access to media: Hypotesis about

the “gap in knowledge” supose that the gap will be greater, not smaller (Sean McBride – Report, 1980);

Communication and Society Today and Tomorrow. Many Voices One World. Towards a new more just and more efficient world information and communication order.

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

To much informations – problem of orientation in GloCom;

The problem of commercialization and the problem of the quality of contents of media;

"The U.S. media have sold their souls to mindless moguls." (Claude-Jean Bertrand, "Quitting the Service of the Enemy," Media Ethics, 16:1:3)

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

A large use of the media: The primary expierience

today is under threat of “secondary expierience”: the media are selecting, changing, “packing” and presenting the informations.

The borders between reality and virtual reality are confused and we can not recognize them clearly, warn Jean Baudrillard.

Jean Baudrillard

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

So, that what we need in the world of global communication is media education or media literacy – more media awereness...

“Teaching the Media” http://www.media-

awareness.ca

Len Masterman prefers the term "media education" rather than "media literacy."

18 Principles of Media Education...

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

Barry Duncan: media literacy makes it possible to see both: the forest and the trees.

http://jcp.proscenia.net/index.htm

Media Education is concerned with "helping students develop an informed and critical understanding of the nature of the mass media, the techniques used by them, and the impact of these techniques" (Ontario Media Literacy Resources Guide, 1989).

To be media literate is to watch carefully and to think critically about any media text.

Key concepts about media literacy.

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

John Pungente, key concepts about media literacy:

All media are constructions.

The media construct versions of reality.

Audiences negotiate meaning in media.

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

Media messages have commercial implications.

Media messages contain ideological and value messages.

Media messages contain social and political implications.

Communicate responsible. Communication is social.

Form and content are closely related in media messages.

Each medium has a unique aesthetic form.

What is with globalization of mass media communication in Croatia?

GloCom?