Class review ending friday the 13th 2008

Introduction

Moving from a geography of space to a geography of experience thanks to the free flow of information covering all except individuals (Example of immigration).

The history of communucation was impacted by the importance of telegraphs and maping as it helped initially the expansion of imperial communication system (example of french colonialism in Algeria).

Printed press is at the foundation of nationalism, reformization, and modern capitalism.

The emergence of the modernity concept / modernization process appeared at 3 levels:
Cultural modernity referred to as consumer society,
Economic modernozation referred to as globalization,
Political modernity known as democracy.

Today, communication is regulated by the ITU. The regulatory bodies cited during the class were:
APF created in 1835
Wolff created in 1849
Reuter created in 1851 and which is considered as the most crucial to the expansion and consolidation of the European empires.

Today, we can recognize 3 types of media:
Printed media composed of books, magazines, and news papers,
Broadcasted media which refers to television and radio,
And new electronic media which refers to internet, satellite, cell phones,and wireless techologies

From another hand, we recognize 4 types of media regimes grouped under 2 categories:

State regulated and based on censorship
Authoritarian: Dictorial regimes such as fascism in Germany at the time of Hitler and Italy at the time of Mussolini.
Soviet: communisy dictatorship aiming to have a just, fair, and equal society such as in North Corea.

Regulated by capitalist and money makers
Liberal: free market based working on a capitalist dynamic such as in the USA
Social responsability: still in a capitalist dynamic but helping citizens to make up their mind on matters of public concern such as in the UK.

To those 4 types were added 2 other models of media regimes:

Development model that adresses issues such as poverty, health care, literacy and education in the developing countries.

Participatory model that is involved in the ongoing life of the communities they serve. This king of media is democratically organized. Public participation and democratic process are central to the operations of that model.

Theories of international communication

We should distinguish between international communication and global communication. international communication refers to the one between nations or cross borders whereas global communication is the one that involves every single person excluding localities.

Our concern is about international communication. The crucial theories to understand international communication are as follow:
Free flow of information.
Modernization
Dependency theory
Structural imperialism
Hegemony
Critical theory
Public sphere
Critical studies
Theories of information society
Discourses of globalization
Critical Pol. Eco. for the 21st century

Free flow of information theory emerged during the cold war between the US bloc and the Soviet bloc. It aimed at promoting the democratic ideology and hence stoping the communist ideology expansion. It contributed to provide channels of communication to the american government for international audiences.

Modernization theory states that mass media communication should trigger the transformation from traditional (community based) to modern (based on individualism and bureaucracy) society. This theory got the support of both national governments and international organizations.