Chapter 10: The Politics of Global Communication

Since the mid 19th century, global communication has developed into an important concern on the agenda of the international community. Technological development has added new dimensions to the communication issues. In the area of telecommunication, the main issues continue to involve accessibility, allocation, and confidentiality. Global communication in the 1990s confronted the world political arena with complex and controversial policy that demanded resolution through multilateral bargaining.
The Beginning
Telecommunication : Heinrich von Stephan, an official in the postal administration of north German Confederation prepared a proposal for an international postal union. It guaranteed freedom of transit within the territory of the union and the standardization of charges to be collected by each country for letter post items addressed to any part of the union s territory. The international telegraphy union was created to secure telegraphy traffic the advantage of simple and reduced tariffs, to improve the conditions of international telegraphy, and to establish a permanent cooperation among the states.
Intellectual Property: the treaty entitled Convention Establishing a General Union for the Protection of the Rights of Authors in their Literary and Artistic Works emphases that each author shall enjoy in other countries for their work whether published or not.
Mass Media: serious concerns about the social impact of the mass communication emerged. Constructive contribution of the media to peaceful international relations generated considerable excitement. However, moral and educational concern was expressed regarding the spread of obscene publications across borders. Concern about the negative impact of the mass media also arose from the increasing use of the mass media in the course of the 19th century as instruments of foreign diplomacy. Adding to this, the recognition of the need to prevent, through rules established by common agreements, the use of broadcasting in a manner prejudicial to good international understanding.
The New Multilateral Institutions: with the creation of the united nations, a crucial group of institutions for multilateral policy evolution entered the international system. Many specialized agencies and non-governmental organizations influence the policymaking process.
Over the past decade, the arena of global communication politics has seen major changes. Among the most important ones are the following:
Today global governance system largely determines supranational the space that national governments have for independent policy making.
Global communication politics is increasingly defined by trade and market standards and eve less by political consideration with a noticeable shift from a predominantly political discourse to a largely economic trade discourse.
The World Trade Organization: the WTO was established as one of the outcomes of the GATT Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations completed in December 1993.
The WTO is generally more favorable to the trading interests of the major industrial countries than are other intergovernmental bodies.
Today s global communication market generates more than 1.6 trillion annually. This implies that the rules of free trade are applied to the three main components of the world communication market: the manufacturing of hardware, the production and distribution of software {computer programs and contents}, and the operation of networks and their services.
Current Practices: the Domain of Telecommunication
The prevailing pattern of thought that guides global politics in relation to telecommunication infrastructures is based on the following assumptions:
Telecommunication infrastructures are essential to development
The installation and upgrading of infrastructures is expensive
Private funding is needed
To attract private funding, countries will have to liberalize their telecommunication markets and adopt pro competition regulatory measures.
· For national and global telecommunication markets, the new policy implied privatization and liberation. The key policy principles for global telecommunication are liberalization of the markets to private commercial and competitive forces does not necessarily lead to accessibility and affordability of telecommunication infrastructures.
· The ITU s World Telecommunication Development Report 1997 observes: some as an opportunity, for example, will view market access, while others that are attempting to develop their own domestic telecommunication service industry might see it as a challenge and a threat to nascent local operators. ITU stated that their will be winners and losers.
· Liberalization can be defined as the opening up of markets to competition, privatization refers to the transfer of state owned institutions or assets to various degrees of private ownership. These two may be in conflict. Liberalization may clash with the desire of governments to get the highest price for their monopoly and privatization may conflict with market liberalization when the incoming operators want monopoly control for an initial period.
· One of the results of privatization is the expansion of telecommunication network.
Global Communication Politics Today: current global communication politics is dominated by a set of eight essential issues that will largely shape the future of global communication.
· Access: neoliberal agenda perceive people primarily as consumers and aspires to provide them with access to communication infrastructure. Humanitarian perceive people as citizens
· Knowledge: neoliberal agenda perceive knowledge as a commodity versus humanitarian perceive it as a public good
· Global adv:
· Privacy
· Intellectual property rights
· Trade in culture
· Concentration
· The commons