Table Of ContentMedia Policy and Globalization
Media Policy and
Globalization
Paula Chakravartty and Katharine Sarikakis
palgrave
macmillan
MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION
Copyright © Paula Chakravartty and Katharine Sarikakis, 2006.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-7738-0
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles or reviews.
First published 2006 by Edinburgh University Press Ltd.
First Published in the United States in 2006 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-73808-3 ISBN 978-1-137-09876-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-09876-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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First edition: July 2006
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Contents
Tables and figures VI
Preface Vll
Abbreviations
X
Part One: Policy contexts 1
1 Capitalism, technology, institutions and the study of
communications and media policy 3
2 Revisiting the history of global communication and
media policy 24
Part Two: The policy domains 49
3 Governing the central nervous system of the global
economy: telecommunications policy 51
4 Governing the backbone of cultures: broadcasting policy 85
Part Three: Policy paradigms 111
5 Policies for a new world or the emperor's new
clothes? The Information Society 113
6 Civil society and social justice: the limits and
possibilities of global governance 145
Conclusion 169
Bibliography 179
Index 205
v
Tables and figures
Tables
3.1A Infrastructure: top 5 by fixed telephone subscribers per
100 inhabitants 52
3.1B Infrastructure: top 5 by mobile cellular telephone
subscribers per 100 inhabitants. 52
3.1C Infrastructure: top 5 by broadband Internet subscribers
per 100 inhabitants 53
3.1D Infrastructure: top 5 Internet users per 100 inhabitants 53
3.2 Top 20 telecommunications operators - ranked by
revenue (1999) 58
3.3 Telecommunications indicators in selected emerging
economies (2001-3) 71
3.4 Corruption index: privatization and
telecommunications corruption 80
5.1 G7 Summit 'Information Society' (1995) 124
5.2 United Nations Millennium Development Goals 131
5.3 Major international organizations involved in
policy-making for the Information Society in the
African continent 136
5.4 Information Society policy statements of the Okinawa
Charter and WSIS Declaration of Principles compared 141
6.1 Top 25 NGO cities by network connectivities 157
Figures
5.1 Internet users: latest data available (2003) 127
5.2 Number ofPCs: latest data available (2003) 128
5.3 Proportion of sum ofInternet users, world data 129
5.4 Comparative data on African countries in Internet and
PC use; latest data (2003) 134
vi
Preface
As you set out for Ithaca
hope your road is a long one,
full ofa dventure, full of discovery.
(K. Kavafis 1911)
From the conception to its publication, this book has been a rich, en
joyable and, at times, frustrating transnational journey where we both
learned a great deal, not only about our subject matter but also about
ourselves. The road was longer than we anticipated, but only because life
is unstoppable and all present: the book apart from the standard daily rou
tines of leading full academic lives, the winter flues included, witnessed a
research leave and multiple stays abroad, four house moves, the birth of
a baby girl (Aisha), two job moves and a wedding, and throughout these
life experiences our families and friends made the process more enjoy
able. Our journey to this 'Ithaca' has made us richer in knowledge and
friendship, collegiality and confidence.
This book explores the conditions and ideas behind global communi
cations policies; our writing travels back and forth, across continents and
socioeconomic realities to identify and analyze common policy concerns,
conflicting interests, and the place and voice of publics. Throughout
the writing process, we relied heavily on electronic communications to
update information, track down electronic archives and conduct basic
literature searches. We conceived and discussed the ideas in this book
first online and then by telephone and continued developing the book
in the same way, with only one brief off-line meeting. We have used six
different computers between us (two ofwhich crashed) and have been de
pendent on Internet access with speedy connections (broadband). These
tools were available to us as researchers based in academic institutions, in
our homes and hotels and Internet cafes located in the connected parts
of the world where we wrote this book - Amherst, Athens, Coventry,
Kolkata, London, Montreal, Pittsburgh and Salvador - enabling us to
communicate with colleagues across the world instantly. Access to tech
nology and skills are important material and cultural capital not fairly
vii
viii PREFACE
shared, between the North and South but also within the locales where
we wrote. We recognize our privileged position as observers and critics
and hope that we have been responsible in our use of these means to
bring attention to some of the most urgent questions surrounding global
communications and media policy.
We are thankful to Sarah Edwards for her prompting Katharine to
write a book on media policy, and for her continued patience and sup
port. Without John Downing's introducing us to each other, we would
probably have not met just yet and this would have been a different book
or would not have been written at all. Our colleagues Andrew Calabrese
(University of Colorado, Boulder), Cynthia Chris (City University
of New York-Staten Island), Myria Georgiou (University of Leeds),
David Hutchison (Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland), Vincent
Mosco (Queens University), Srirupa Roy (University of Massachusetts,
Amherst), Leslie Shade (Concordia University), and Yuezhi Zhao (Simon
Fraser University) have given us insightful comments on earlier drafts.
Katharine has benefited from a British Academy Research Grant in
2004 and from a McGill Centre of Research and Training on Women
visiting fellowship the same year, during which period research into
Canadian communications policies was conducted. She would also like
to thank Ms Mary Damianakis (International Mediation, Canada) for
support throughout the research leave. Paula is grateful for the support
of Dean Janet Rifkin and her Chair Michael Morgan, as well as for
research grants from the Centre for Public Policy and Administration
(CPPA) and the College of Social and Behavioural Sciences (CSBS) at
the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The Healy Faculty Research
Grant also allowed Paula to attend the World Summit on the Information
Society in Tunis. Sumati Nagrath (University of Northampton) provided
enormous help indexing the book. Daniel Kim and Elizabeth Gonzalez
(both from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst) were helpful in
providing research assistance for the completion of the manuscript.
We also thank our friends and family who provided support and sanity
through this long process, especially Nerissa Bake, Dolon Chakravartty,
Stephanie Luce and Mary and George Sarikakis. Last but never least, we
extend our warmest thanks to our life companions Gianpaolo Baiocchi
and Alexander Bismarck for without their faith in us a great deal of our
achievements would have not tasted as good!
Paula Chakravartty and Katharine Sarikakis
October 2005
The ideas and explanation in this book are a very welcome antidote to
the dominant discourse of the virtues of the market, new technologies
and competition. The proponents of technological determinism have
for the past ten years asserted that greater audiovisual delivery capac
ity will automatically deliver diversity and pluralism and have sought
to roll back virtually all audiovisual regulation. The authors describe
well the valid political, social, economic and particularly cultural ques
tions which demand an answer if the public interest is to be served in
communications policy and the regulation which should flow from it.
The authors rightly underline that the screen, large or small, is
central to our democratic, creative, cultural and social life and that
policy-makers should give greater space to the views of civil society and
parliamentarians interested in advancing the public interest. Rare is the
attention paid to the realities of the digital divide as played out across
the globe which provides important information for campaigners for
greater technological redistribution and cultural diversity worldwide.
Carole Tongue
Visiting Professor, University of the Arts, London
Former MEP spokesperson on public service broadcasting
Premised on the fact that there are different globalizations going
on today, this comprehensive study successfully integrates structural
and symbolic analyses of communications and media policy in the
conflicted spaces of the nation-state, trans-nation, and sub-nation.
Chakravartty and Sarikakis's remarkably systematic approach to media
policy, technology, content, and civil society formation fills in crucial
details left behind by grand theory, including progressive postcolonial
theories of global communication. In doing so, the book re-energizes
the hackneyed field of international media studies and transforms it.
John N guyet Erni
City University of Hong Kong
