International media and communication have been transformed by technology and the opportunity it offers over the past twenty years or so. Social media is the latest powerful tool emerges that change the path. The invention of computer and internet has opened more access to information. Powered by these changes, news has become 24 hours a day; it is immediate, available on new platforms, and mobile.
Some influences of international media and communication are believed to have contributed high speed changes to the world today. Some impacts have directly influenced the media themselves, and some others impacted mostly to the people. Some of the impacts listed by William Hachten in his book entitled “The World News Prism” among others;
- Since their winning towards the Communist, the Western concept of journalism and mass communication has become the dominant model throughout the world. One possible reason is due to the audience of Western journalism are covering worldwide. Another reason is because the science of journalism and mass communication is coming from the West, so that the non-Western countries have only adopted all aspects of the science.
- Although the political indoctrination by media has been rejected by most people, but entertainment and leisure are conditionally being accepted worldwide. People enjoy pop music, movies, and other kind of entertainment presented on TV. Therefore it is believed that mass culture is being accepted and that the world’s culture is becoming more and more homogenous.
- International media also has impact on Cold War. The media served interesting entertainment and modern lifestyle to society which leads to the image of a better life. Many experts agree that this has contributed to the demise of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe.
- More and more people becoming information elites in the world nowadays. It is nearly impossible for any government to prevent the flow of information to the people. The global audiences are continuously growing annually.
- International media has created vast audiences for global events. An event happening in one country could be easily watched by people in any part of the world. The media has open the chances for more people to be global audience
- People reacts faster to important events as the information also move so fast. Actions that usually happen in a longer time, now accelerated to a faster pace. The media has speeded up the history.
- The term “The whole world watching” really does apply. People are carrying camera and video recorder in their pockets now and they can easily take any record on events that they see. People cannot do reckless things as the whole world might be watching them through other people’s lenses.
- One big impact of international media and communication is that it has change diplomacy. Nonstop coverage by the media has provides the opportunity to monitor news events constantly and disseminate timely diplomatic information. For example people in the US watch starving children in Africa which resulted in them pushing the government to help and intervene to manage the problem.
- Technology has changed the media and the access to information. No authoritarian regimes can maintain a monopoly and censorship to their people. The news and information are unstoppable through the internet, TV, radio, and by other means.
- People can even contribute their own story and information to their own audiences using their independent tools. Anyone can recorded one event and publish the video to youtube or blogs which became viral worldwide.
- “Copycat” effect of one particular event might also happen in other part of the world. What worrying is if some imitative acts occur with negative consequences, like a car bombing in a country which widely televised has inspired other terrorist to conduct the same deed elsewhere.
- As the international media become global, the two mass communication arms of the Western; Advertising and Public relations have become globalized too. Although they received many critics, those two components of communication play an important role in market economies and open societies.
What are the impacts of international media and communication in international relations?
Majid Tehranian in his book entitled “Global Communication and World Politics” mentioned that the effects of global communication on the evolution of international relations theory have been twofold. On the one hand, global communication has empowered the peripheries of power to engage progressively in the international discourse on the aims and methods of the international system. On the other hand, global communication has also served as a channel for theoretical integration.
Global communication nowadays has brought many effects in many aspects of life. One of them is that international media could become an auxiliary instrument in international relations, like in public diplomacy. Public diplomacy defined as government’s overt efforts to influence other governments. As mentioned by Tehranian in one of his articles published on The International Journal of Peace Studies entitled “Global Communication and International Relations: Changing Paradigms and Policies” Global communication seems to have generated new types of diplomacy. The global reach of broadcasting by such networks as CNN, the BBC, Star TV, the Voice of America, Radio Moscow, and Radio Beijing, seems to have led to a shift of emphasis from power politics to image politics. As John F Kennedy once ever said: “a videotape is more potent than ten thousand words.”
The media becoming so powerful with their pattern of story-telling that it can play a multiple role in the formation of foreign policies. It seems to have mutual advantages with the need of the government in using media to restrict, enhance, or manipulate information and coverage. It could be seen through media's role in such post-Cold War crises as the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, and Chechnya.
It also happens during the Vietnam War, the first ever televised war, when the media gradually turn against US government’s policies. It created protests within the people in the country, especially when the media covered all the body bags that were returned home, and the atrocities of the war which were being televised.
Leaders of countries are no longer feeling the need of meeting face to face or in conventional way. Some of the examples mentioned by Tehranian are the use of television as a channel for sending messages to the opposite side by the leaders of the U.S. and Iraq during the Gulf War, the employment of CNN as a source of information and intelligence gathering by foreign and defense policy leaders, and the testing of "trial balloon" proposals via the mass media are examples of such uses of public diplomacy at times of crisis. It can be concluded that even the media is not the only way of doing diplomacy, but the governments are aware with the potential benefits and risk of the media.
As the technology is always updated with the latest sophisticated phenomenon, the most current diplomacy also known as virtual diplomacy is involving global audio, video, and teleconferencing system. The technology has allowed numerous official and unofficial contacts on a routine basis among the governments and other high authorities. The facilities offered by technology has proven that diplomacy has its new tools to be used.
One example that I experienced myself regarding virtual diplomacy happened in my own office. I work for a regional center of education which covers Southeast Asia in the field of Open and Distance Learning (ODL). The center has responsibility to find alternative solutions for educational matters within the region through the advancement use of ODL. Annually the center invites selected ODL experts from the 10 Southeast Asian countries to sit together (at their own countries’ cost) to discuss, monitor, and evaluate the programs and activities conducted by the center to the countries. Last year one of the experts coming from Myanmar could not attend the annual meeting due to budget restriction from the respective government. The centre decided to use teleconferencing system so the Burmese expert could still follow the meeting as well as giving inputs to the work of the regional center.
We also have discussed the developing and underdeveloped countries’ complaints against developing countries’ dominant control of information that led to the rise of New World Information Order (NWIO). Does this imbalanced control of information have impact in the capacity of a country in furthering its international interests in the spheres of politics, economy and culture?
All the media channels are actually set and decide the story to influence the way we think, decide what things we need to buy, and tell how we should behave. Furthermore it can even be a propaganda tool used by certain governments or political elites. All big media’s influence is coming from the West Countries, which creates complaints from the developing and less developed countries.
Issues, economic, arts, entertainment, politics, and many more. Those are aspects or topics that being discussed and published by broadcasting mass media. Is it true that the broadcasting mass media are being controlled by the core countries or high developed countries? Is it true that media nowadays are already balanced?
In the less developed countries development and growth of media have been really slow due to the poverty, poor health, illiteracy, less qualified human resources and facilities, etc. They also are not exposed to such infrastructure and high tech tools to travel on the information and news. Meanwhile the rapid transformation of technology has created more gaps between the rich and poor nations. That is what happening in Africa, some part of Asia and Latin America where some of the population of the countries are still illiterate and the term of ‘free flow of information’ has very little practical meaning.
Global communication at the turn of 21st century has brought various effects to the world. Western countries who lead the major world media are surely getting their advantages by their role in ruling the flow of information. According to Tehranian the impact to economy is the most studied and best known as the phenomenon has reshaped the process of world production, distribution, and trade in the world. It is one of the reasons which enable the existence of Trans-National Corporations. The developing countries with developing economy in the third world countries; such as China, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia are also gaining benefits from the global communication. They enjoy economic growth using the new information and technologies as the engines. More opportunities of career changings are also available as the impact of international communication as the flow of information has changed the system and structural employment. Nowadays, one person could have many careers and job.
In educational and science perspective, international communication has created a new system that allows lifelong learning and education for all using open learning system. Technologies have cut of the process of knowledge transfers. Better educational system will develop the qualification of human resources, which would definitely lead one country to a better economy.
The impact of global communication on international culture life is perhaps the most visible one. The modern and sophisticated western lifestyle which represents a better life was brought to other part of the world and has created followers, especially from the youngsters. For example, MTV musical videos with their postmodern messages of sensuality, pluralism, and skepticism were able to reach audience from Islamic countries. The flow of information is so aggressive and cannot be stopped even by the authorities.
These accesses to better economy, better education, entertainment and opportunities impacted from the global communication could only be enjoyed by certain and limited western countries that dominantly control the information flow. According to Ulla Carlsson in her article entitled “The MacBride Report in the Rear-view Mirror”, in the mid-1970s the non-aligned countries demanded for two-way flow of information and actually submitted a proposal to UNESCO demanding a “New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO)” as an extension of already voiced demands for a new world economic order. They were aware that there’s an electronic colonialism happening or the shifting of their cultures.
The role of NWICO is a way to spread much information from around the world so fast that everyone in the world will be informed about the news. This information is diverse, so NWICO owns a role as a spreader of information and communication from every direction to every part of the world.
The concept of NWICO was then became a leading theme in global media policy debates from 1970s to 1990s. As mentioned by Kaarlee Nordenstreng in his writing entitled “Lesson Learned from the NWICO Process”, the debates started in diplomatic forums of the developing countries, particularly the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and extended to professional and academic circles so that in the 1980s NWICO was part and parcel of the discourse on the media’s role in society and the world at large. By the new millennium, however, it disappeared from the agenda, to be replaced by concepts such as media globalization. In the 2010s, NWICO already belongs to the history of the field – a history that keeps re-emerging under a different aegis.
Nordenstreng also emphasized that in general NWICO was a kind of slogan which has political meaning. Why slogan? Because the concept of NWICO was fairly moderate and liberal, it was not very radical and revolutionary. It was rather social democratic reformist concept of communication. It implies that there is a big order waiting to be changed or reformed, not in a revolutionary way by exploding it into pieces and put in a completely new concept, but sort of corrective efforts.
Majid Tehranian in his book entitled “Global Communication and World Politics” mentioned that the effects of global communication on the evolution of international relations theory have been twofold. On the one hand, global communication has empowered the peripheries of power to engage progressively in the international discourse on the aims and methods of the international system. On the other hand, global communication has also served as a channel for theoretical integration.
Global communication nowadays has brought many effects in many aspects of life. One of them is that international media could become an auxiliary instrument in international relations, like in public diplomacy. Public diplomacy defined as government’s overt efforts to influence other governments. As mentioned by Tehranian in one of his articles published on The International Journal of Peace Studies entitled “Global Communication and International Relations: Changing Paradigms and Policies” Global communication seems to have generated new types of diplomacy. The global reach of broadcasting by such networks as CNN, the BBC, Star TV, the Voice of America, Radio Moscow, and Radio Beijing, seems to have led to a shift of emphasis from power politics to image politics. As John F Kennedy once ever said: “a videotape is more potent than ten thousand words.”
The media becoming so powerful with their pattern of story-telling that it can play a multiple role in the formation of foreign policies. It seems to have mutual advantages with the need of the government in using media to restrict, enhance, or manipulate information and coverage. It could be seen through media's role in such post-Cold War crises as the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, and Chechnya.
It also happens during the Vietnam War, the first ever televised war, when the media gradually turn against US government’s policies. It created protests within the people in the country, especially when the media covered all the body bags that were returned home, and the atrocities of the war which were being televised.
Leaders of countries are no longer feeling the need of meeting face to face or in conventional way. Some of the examples mentioned by Tehranian are the use of television as a channel for sending messages to the opposite side by the leaders of the U.S. and Iraq during the Gulf War, the employment of CNN as a source of information and intelligence gathering by foreign and defense policy leaders, and the testing of "trial balloon" proposals via the mass media are examples of such uses of public diplomacy at times of crisis. It can be concluded that even the media is not the only way of doing diplomacy, but the governments are aware with the potential benefits and risk of the media.
As the technology is always updated with the latest sophisticated phenomenon, the most current diplomacy also known as virtual diplomacy is involving global audio, video, and teleconferencing system. The technology has allowed numerous official and unofficial contacts on a routine basis among the governments and other high authorities. The facilities offered by technology has proven that diplomacy has its new tools to be used.
One example that I experienced myself regarding virtual diplomacy happened in my own office. I work for a regional center of education which covers Southeast Asia in the field of Open and Distance Learning (ODL). The center has responsibility to find alternative solutions for educational matters within the region through the advancement use of ODL. Annually the center invites selected ODL experts from the 10 Southeast Asian countries to sit together (at their own countries’ cost) to discuss, monitor, and evaluate the programs and activities conducted by the center to the countries. Last year one of the experts coming from Myanmar could not attend the annual meeting due to budget restriction from the respective government. The centre decided to use teleconferencing system so the Burmese expert could still follow the meeting as well as giving inputs to the work of the regional center.
We also have discussed the developing and underdeveloped countries’ complaints against developing countries’ dominant control of information that led to the rise of New World Information Order (NWIO). Does this imbalanced control of information have impact in the capacity of a country in furthering its international interests in the spheres of politics, economy and culture?
All the media channels are actually set and decide the story to influence the way we think, decide what things we need to buy, and tell how we should behave. Furthermore it can even be a propaganda tool used by certain governments or political elites. All big media’s influence is coming from the West Countries, which creates complaints from the developing and less developed countries.
Issues, economic, arts, entertainment, politics, and many more. Those are aspects or topics that being discussed and published by broadcasting mass media. Is it true that the broadcasting mass media are being controlled by the core countries or high developed countries? Is it true that media nowadays are already balanced?
In the less developed countries development and growth of media have been really slow due to the poverty, poor health, illiteracy, less qualified human resources and facilities, etc. They also are not exposed to such infrastructure and high tech tools to travel on the information and news. Meanwhile the rapid transformation of technology has created more gaps between the rich and poor nations. That is what happening in Africa, some part of Asia and Latin America where some of the population of the countries are still illiterate and the term of ‘free flow of information’ has very little practical meaning.
Global communication at the turn of 21st century has brought various effects to the world. Western countries who lead the major world media are surely getting their advantages by their role in ruling the flow of information. According to Tehranian the impact to economy is the most studied and best known as the phenomenon has reshaped the process of world production, distribution, and trade in the world. It is one of the reasons which enable the existence of Trans-National Corporations. The developing countries with developing economy in the third world countries; such as China, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia are also gaining benefits from the global communication. They enjoy economic growth using the new information and technologies as the engines. More opportunities of career changings are also available as the impact of international communication as the flow of information has changed the system and structural employment. Nowadays, one person could have many careers and job.
In educational and science perspective, international communication has created a new system that allows lifelong learning and education for all using open learning system. Technologies have cut of the process of knowledge transfers. Better educational system will develop the qualification of human resources, which would definitely lead one country to a better economy.
The impact of global communication on international culture life is perhaps the most visible one. The modern and sophisticated western lifestyle which represents a better life was brought to other part of the world and has created followers, especially from the youngsters. For example, MTV musical videos with their postmodern messages of sensuality, pluralism, and skepticism were able to reach audience from Islamic countries. The flow of information is so aggressive and cannot be stopped even by the authorities.
These accesses to better economy, better education, entertainment and opportunities impacted from the global communication could only be enjoyed by certain and limited western countries that dominantly control the information flow. According to Ulla Carlsson in her article entitled “The MacBride Report in the Rear-view Mirror”, in the mid-1970s the non-aligned countries demanded for two-way flow of information and actually submitted a proposal to UNESCO demanding a “New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO)” as an extension of already voiced demands for a new world economic order. They were aware that there’s an electronic colonialism happening or the shifting of their cultures.
The role of NWICO is a way to spread much information from around the world so fast that everyone in the world will be informed about the news. This information is diverse, so NWICO owns a role as a spreader of information and communication from every direction to every part of the world.
The concept of NWICO was then became a leading theme in global media policy debates from 1970s to 1990s. As mentioned by Kaarlee Nordenstreng in his writing entitled “Lesson Learned from the NWICO Process”, the debates started in diplomatic forums of the developing countries, particularly the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and extended to professional and academic circles so that in the 1980s NWICO was part and parcel of the discourse on the media’s role in society and the world at large. By the new millennium, however, it disappeared from the agenda, to be replaced by concepts such as media globalization. In the 2010s, NWICO already belongs to the history of the field – a history that keeps re-emerging under a different aegis.
Nordenstreng also emphasized that in general NWICO was a kind of slogan which has political meaning. Why slogan? Because the concept of NWICO was fairly moderate and liberal, it was not very radical and revolutionary. It was rather social democratic reformist concept of communication. It implies that there is a big order waiting to be changed or reformed, not in a revolutionary way by exploding it into pieces and put in a completely new concept, but sort of corrective efforts.
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References
Bakhurst,
K. (2011). How has social media changed
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Carlsson,
U. (2003). The MacBride Report in the
Rear-view Mirror. Quaderns del CAC: Issue 21. Retrieved from: http://www.cac.cat/pfw_files/cma/recerca/quaderns_cac/Q21carlsson_EN.pdf
Hachten,
W., Hachten, H., Scotton, J F. (1999). The
World News Prism: Changing Media of International Communication. Iowa, USA:
Iowa State University Press.
Tehranian,
M. (1997). Global Communication and
International Relations: Changing Paradigms and Policies. Retrieved from: http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol2_1/Techrenian.htm
Tehranian,
M. (1999). Global Communication and World
Politics: Domination, Development, and Discourse. Lynne Rienner Pub.
