MMC304 Sociology of Communication

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MMC304 Sociology of Communication

• Global Television and Global Culture

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The medium is the message

• When Marshall McLuhan pronounced that the medium
  is the message in the 1960s, television was
  still in its infancy and personal computers were
  not to exist for almost twenty years.
• His claim was that each medium had its own
  intrinsic effect, which was its unique message.
• In his book Understanding media The extensions
  of man (1966), where he introduces this argument,
  he writes about how the message of a particular
  medium is the change or invention of scales or
  patterns that it introduces into human affairs
  and ways of existence.

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The medium is the message

• The railway did not introduce movement or
  transportation or wheel or road into human
  society, but it accelerated and enlarged the
  scale of previous human functions, creating
  totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work
  and leisure. This happened whether the railway
  functioned in a tropical or northern environment,
  and is quite independent of the freight or
  content of the railway medium (McLuhan, 1966 8).

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The medium is the message

• What McLuhan had to say about the railroad half a
  century ago applies with equal if not more
  validity to the medium of television and, more
  importantly, to global media today.
• The medium is the message because it is the
  medium that shapes and controls the scale and
  form of human association and action (1966 9).

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Conceptualizing (g)local media

• Historically, until the turn of the 1980s, media
  initially print then broadcasting had always
  been associated with a national broadcasting
  model.
• Despite the emergence of trans-border
  broadcasting entrepreneurs as early as the 1980s,
  television has predominantly been at the centre
  of a national consciousness with the exception,
  of course, of exceptional events broadcast live,
  and internationally, such as the Apollo 11 moon
  landing.
• The BBC, as one of the earliest public service
  broadcasters, can be cited as an example of such
  a national broadcasting organization.
• TRT is another good example for a national
  broadcasting organization

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Conceptualizing (g)local media

• What has become clear since the 1980s, however,
  is that television is not necessarily national.
• Aksoy and Robins, argue for example for a new
  kind of media culture that has become de-linked
  from a singular national reference point (2000,
  p.343).
• They suggest, global, regional, national and even
  local circuits of program now overlap and
  interact in a multifaceted way, no doubt with a
  great variety of cultural effects which are
  impossible to conceptualize within the more
  concentric perspective appropriate to previous
  decades (2003, p.8).

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Conceptualizing (g)local media

• In contemporary times, it seems difficult to talk
  of small communities being homogeneous and, even
  more so, nations.
• Individuals tend to form their subjectivities
  with reference to more local and diverse
  registers such as tradition, religion, ethnicity,
  gender etc.
• In addition to the already complex global media
  order, today we also see highly localized media,
  targeting identities conceived around highly
  localized registers.

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Conceptualizing (g)local media

• It is now possible to view pro-Islamic
  broadcasts, channels such as Med TV broadcasting
  in Kurdish, Zee TV broadcasting across Asia in
  Hindi or MBC targeting Arabic speakers in Europe,
  broadcasts mainly targeting males (LIG TV is one
  example), music channels targeting mainly young
  viewers, etc.
• Thus, today there is access to media which
  conceives itself in much more (g)local terms than
  traditional national broadcasters.

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Conceptualizing (g)local media

• Hence, with a whole array of economic and
  technological developments, the model of national
  broadcasting has increasingly come to be
  undermined.
• Today a new media order is formed that renders
  geographic, national, cultural, ethnic and
  financial boundaries obsolete, all the while
  contributing to the formation of unprecedented
  transnational, traditional, global, hybrid
  cultural formations.
• This model of contemporary global media that
  is, a media that seeks its audiences globally
  is manifested by media flows that transcend
  borders of all kinds, spanning the world but
  being consumed in, for instance, Chinese,
  Spanish, Arabic or Turkish among communities that
  speak these languages wherever they may be
  located.

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Emergence of (g)local media

• Although it may be claimed that the emergence of
  transnational media is not a recent development
  when conceptualized within the broader scope of
  globalization, it is important to note how the
  media of the past few decades is substantially
  different from its predecessors. According to
  Jean Chalaby,
• The transnationalisation of global media at the
  beginning of the 21st century can be comprehended
  as the third phase in a succession of paradigm
  shifts in the evolution of international
  communication from the mid-19th century onwards
  (2005 28).

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Emergence of (g)local media

• It is worthwhile taking Chalabys three phases of
  the evolution of the contemporary global media
  order as our departure point here for a brief
  review of the evolution of communications
  technologies.
• Chalaby claims the first and the second phases
  are respectively internationalization and
  globalization of media flows (2005).
• He suggests the third phase, namely the
  transnationalisation of media, is an extension of
  these two earlier paradigms (2005).

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Emergence of (g)local media

• An early driving force behind the process of
  internationalization of communications was the
  invention of the telegraph with its capacity to
  transfer information over long distances.
• This, coupled with governments realization of
  the importance of various new technologies,
  rapidly magnified the significance of
  international communication in the world order.
• It was during this period that Hollywood, under
  the strong influence of the US State Department,
  dominated the international film trade
  (Trumpbour, 2002).

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Emergence of (g)local media

• A second explosion in the international
  communication took place with the turn of the
  second half of the 20th century, which according
  to Chalaby (2002) led to the globalization of the
  media order.
• The juggernaut behind this process was the newly
  emerging space-related technology.
• Through the invention of communication satellites
  global networks of international communications
  organizations such as Intelsat and the
  International Telecommunications Union developed
  (Evans, 1987 Hecht, 1999).

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Emergence of (g)local media

• In this period, at the end of 1990s, CNN emerged
  as the worlds first global channel.
• It had become available worldwide 24 hours a day
  with transmission on a Soviet satellite to
  Africa, the Middle East and the Indian
  sub-continent (Chalaby 2005 29).
• Even if we consider this just from a
  technological perspective, the world had indeed
  become a global village, a single constricted
  space resonant with tribal drums (McLuhan, 1966
  31).

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Emergence of (g)local media

• Although the first communication satellites are
  barely less than half a century old, it is now
  becoming increasingly apparent that an even newer
  international communication paradigm is emerging.
  
• During the last decade or two, a new shift in
  global media flows has evolved which
  distinguishes this new order from its
  predecessors.
• The information technology revolution has
  deepened the integration between computing,
  telecommunications and electronic media
  (Forester, 1985 Castells, 1996).
• As Chalaby notes, a transnational media order is
  coming into being that is remapping media spaces
  and involving new media practices, flows and
  products (2005 30).

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Distinguishing transnational media

• What is so different, then, about the
  contemporary transnational media order that
  justifies its designation as a new paradigm?
• Firstly, it is important to note a number of
  distinct aspects in the evolution of
  transnational media.
• Secondly, the unprecedented provisions of this
  new phenomenon for the groups on both ends of
  these media flows (producers and consumers) need
  to be recognized.

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The evolution of transnational media

• There are two central nodes around which the
  process of transnationalisation of global media
  flows has evolved.
• One has been the emergence of new trends in
  global migration, including the relative ease of
  worldwide transportation and communication.

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The evolution of transnational media

• The increase in both the volume and the speed of
  transportation has created a world of displaced
  individuals, dispersed nationals and mobile
  populations.
• As Karim suggests, these trends have produced
  transnational groups related by culture,
  ethnicity, language, and religion (1998 1).
• These transnational groups now create a market
  for, and demand the availability of, a
  global-ethnic media that takes account of their
  specific (g)local needs and desires.

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The evolution of transnational media

• A second driving force in the evolution of this
  new transnational media order flowing from the
  previous one - has been the proliferation of
  countless relatively small transnational media
  organizations.
• It is not predominantly the gigantic Western
  media conglomerates that are privileged with
  trans-border reach anymore.
• While the globally dominant Eurocentric cultural
  structures, including media organizations, are
  strengthening (Herman and McChesney, 1997), there
  is also a considerable increase in the number of
  smaller media organizations that are broadcasting
  transnationally from their non-Western
  standpoints.

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The evolution of transnational media

• Multichoice in South Africa, Zee Network in
  India, TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) in
  Turkey, MED TV by Kurds and Al Jazeera are good
  examples of smaller transnational media
  organizations.
• As Chalaby notes then,
• Transnational TV channels have multiplied and
  grown in diversity over the past 10 years to
  include some of the most innovative and
  influential channels of our times. Many of them
  are at the heart of the transformation of
  regional media cultures, most noticeably in the
  Middle East, South Asia and even Africa, but also
  in Europe (2005 30).