Globalization. Civil Society. Global Communication Policy.

Historically, ideology has spread with the advancement of communication tools. Think printing press— think about how the emergence of a simple tool, which blew open doors, which led to the expansion of knowledge. It was the game-changer of the time that laid the foundation to the change of intellectual, political and religious changes for the succeeding centuries. This is followed by the emergence of other technologies such as radio, film, television and so forth.  Evidently, with the rise of the Internet, there has been an intersection of politics and technology, which has dramatically changed the way we interacts, blurring the lines even further than before.

Source: trfcc media

McLuhan (1967), Innis (1952), Mumford (1983) may have long argued the underlying influence of technology in politics, culture and social life. The evolution of technopolitics in the last century as “strategic practice of designing or using technology to constitute, embody, or enact political goals” (Hecht, 1998), has raised many questions, the greatest of which, being— Would establishing global communication policies mitigate the agenda setters who dominate and mediate global communication? Is there a need for intervention?

Consider the nature of globalization, which has opened cultures to each other. The barrier of distance, no longer is a concern. Kaldor (2004) argues that most of us are jaded with the idea that globalization is led by multinational corporations, who have successfully paved the path for interexchange of worldviews, products, ideas and so forth. This in turn has influenced the way civil society operates.

It’s important to understand that civil society injects the social element, which includes looking at the various social groups: women, children, and indigenous groups, to name a few.

Source: getty images

To add a little more depth, Calabrese (2004) raised an interesting question: what about the role of civil society in global communication policymaking? He introduced the idea of “global civil society” and “multi-stakeholder governance” to address the dilemma of democratizing international institutions. This is illustrated in the efforts of the communication rights of “civil society” in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which pretty much sheds some light on how regulators intend to define democracy at a global level. The Civil Society Declaration in WSIS, Geneva (2003), describes that “civil society” embraces economic interest and moral obligation with regards to racism, sexism, cruelly and exploitation Calabrese (2004). WSIS strived then and today, to build “a people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society,” and Communication Rights in Information Society (CRIS) movement was led by civil society organizations Calabrese (2004).

A moral idealist movement, perhaps?

The question then evolves—Do organizations, technologies construct media and serve as the actual tool that “modifies” culture? (Calabrese, 1999 as cited by Calabrese 2004).  Do these “tools” link social movements and means of exploitive media development?

In the past, the MacBride Commission Report discussed the structure and functioning of global communication, New World Information Communication Order (NWICO). NWICO advocated claim that the unregulated state of affairs caused a de facto imbalance of information flow—North and South (Raube-Wilson, 1986), which in other words, the presence of a cultural biasness of portrayal of the “Third World” who experience a digital divide. Hence, some form of protectionism was and is needed; if not demanded for. However, this movement for protectionism was rejected by the most outspoken critics of the Western blocs, USA and Great Britain— both of which were in favor of a free-flow of information (Carlsson, 2003), home of the media dominators.

Ó Siochrù (2003 as cited by Calabrese, 2004) then argued of the thin lines that distinguish the two: civil society and the powerful players. Hence, the question now becomes control—how much access do non-governmental players have in impacting global communication policymaking?

Clearly, the current global struggle over communication rights lays in the terms of moral economy. Essentially communication is at the heart of civil society, and to create a global communication policy as a social justice movement in response to the global liberalization of investment, production and trade is indeed a huge struggle.

References

Calabrese, A. (2004). The Promise of Civil Society: a Global Movement for Communication Rights. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 18 (3): 317-329. Retrieved August 16, 2013 from IngentaConnect Journals.

Carlsson, U. (2003). The Rise and Fall of NWICO.  NORDICOM Review, 24(2): 31-67. Retrieved August 17, 2013 from EBSCO Host Connection.

Hecht, G. 1998. The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Kaldor, M. (2004).  Globalization and Civil Society. In Glasius, M. Lewis, D. & Seckinelgin, H.  Exploring Civil Society: Political and Cultural Contexts (pp. 168-174).  New York: Routledge.

Raube-Wilson, S. (1986). The New World Information and Communication Order and International Human Rights Law. Boston College International and Comparative Law Review, 9(1).  Retrieved August 18, 2013 from http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1397&context=iclr