Cao Thang
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Join date : 2014-02-23
 |  Subject: International Communication Theory  Thu Apr 24, 2014 12:07 am | |
| The terms 'international,' 'transnational' and 'global' communication not only stand for different definitions of an expanding communication space but also reflect the history of worldwide communication as well as its diversity. Global communication gives us an eyewitness view of events in remotest locations, we participate in political discourses of global, regional or even local relevance. These global processes, in which knowledge, values and ethics, aesthetics, lifestyles are exchanged , is becoming autonomous, a 'third culture', a 'generative frame of unity within which diversity can take place (Featherstone, 1990:2).
Such a 'global world culture' is shaped by - communication.However, international communication has its own history. News have already been 'inter-nationalized' in the fifteenth century: the wheat traders of Venice, the silver traders of Antwerp, the merchants of Nuremberg and their trading partners shared economic newsletters and created common values and beliefs in the rights of capital (Stephens, 1988:77). The commercialization of mass print media (due to steam engine technology) has led to internationally operating news agencies (Reuters, Associated Press, AFP) in the nineteenth century. World wire and cable systems allowed international communication between France, Germany and Great Britain to their colonies in Africa and Asia. Transnational media organisations such as Intelsat, Eurovision, founded in the middle of the 20th century were the starting point for a new idea of international communication. It was the establishment of internationally operating media systems, such as CNN and MTV by indivdual companies which have finally inaugurated a new age of global communication by distributing the same program "around the world in thirty minutes" (as a CNN slogan states) - across nations and cultures. It can be argued, that fantasies and 'ideas' of 'the world' as a somehow common place have existed since Plato desribed in his Timaeus the history of the world by the affiliation of the four elements to each other, since Aristotle defined the 'world state', since Francis Bacon distinguished between different world concepts 'globus terrestris,' and 'globus intellectualis'. It was idea of a 'world society' as a universe of nature and reasoning, a global arena for public debate during the Enlightenment which has inaugurated modernity. Postmodern thinkers replaced 'reasoning' by 'simulation' and Hegel's term of 'World Spirit' (Weltgeist) by an idea of 'instant' truth, created by the media and conveying the image of a shrinking world (Virilio, 1989). The moon landing, broadcast 'live' worldwide, was indeed a large step for mankind: simply because for the first time Planet Earth was seen as a common habitat, without borders, a blue planet of landmasses and oceans. The idea of the 'world' seemed to have switched from a metaphysical concept into a material reality a new relativity within a global whole and triggered, in conjunction with new international political and economical alliances, a debate about the macro-structuralisation of "Globalization." Despite debates about modern and postmodern globalization processes, debates about democratic achivements, economical market expansion and political risks, the - in view of communication theory - interesting paradigm change is the assumed dualism of globalism/localism. It is the issue of a diversified modern, postmodern or late modern globalization process, in which world citizenry exist in parallel with strong 'tribal' collectivities. It is in Barber's (1984) terms the parallelism of "McWorld" and "Jihad." This parallelsim has implications on nation-state communication spheres (i.e. cultural protectionism) and for extra-societal worldwide communities. It can be argued that the public (and its opinion) is no longer a substantial element of the political system of a society but has turned into a more or less autonomous global public sphere which can be considered not as a space between the 'public' and the state but between the state and an extra-societal global community. It is a new global dialectic not in Hegel's terms between private and public spheres, which gave shape to democracy concepts of the emerging middle classes in Europe in the 19th century, but between the societal and extrasocietal communication sphere, giving shape to the concept of 'Being in the World' of a world citizenship or - in its totality of a 'global civil society'. It was the advancement and diversification of satellite technology, from the 'Early Bird' to DBS and unlimited bandwidth capacities provided the architecture for a new programming strategies, targeting not inter-national but trans-national audience - along special interest channels. This development had a tremendous influence in a variety of world regions on the national/statist public sphere by extending political news and information beyond national borders. The influence of CNN which has internationally role of a global authority has been widely underestimated! The Internet, as an icon of a globalized media world, with around 200 million people globally 'being online' (whatever this means) seems to finally speed up this development. In my viewpoint, it is the push- pull (Internet) technology - the paradigm change from (mass- or narrow-) distribution to network technology, which finally shifts the dialectics of global/local dualism (Robertson, 1992) to the one of universalism/particularism, without reference to local authenticity (demonstration against destruction of rain forest) and has formatted a new global public sphere. Whereas the modern public sphere spaces (see Habermas, 1992) required citizens, forming 'rational' political opinions, the global public sphere is a multi-discursive political space, a sphere of mediation (not imperialism), this new type has no center, nor periphery, the agenda setting, con-texts are shaped - mediated - by autonomously operating media systems, not only by big news authorities, such as CNN, but also by drudge.com, yahoo, chatrooms and 'authentic' reports. In such an environment, 'the international information order' conventional patterns of international communication (of North/South, developing and developed, central and peripheral nations) are becoming obsolete. International communication theory, modeled in the age of modernization (mainly around push technologies) reveals the imbalance in global media images and portrayals, analyses media imperialism of global conglomerates, investigates cultural effects of 'main-streaming' through internationally transmitted media productions, analyses the varying role played by news media in times of international crisis. Only a few, very recent approaches in cultural studies and sociology, interpret global media flow by a new globalized perspective which interprets arising new communication segments within the global context of inter-relating communication structures and options, highlighting a new relativistic 'intertextuality' with effects on a diversified global culture. The strategy of international communication theory, should be to develop a methodology for the understanding of 'particular' interpretations, meanings, relevances of the global public sphere, to detect the specifics of this communication space for different world regions - in times of peace and times of crisis. |
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