Javnost - The Public, Vol. 22 - 2015, No. 3
Interaction Dispersed, Participation Compromised: The Report, the Field, and the Struggle for “Communicative Rights”
Thirty-five years after its release, UNESCO’s Many Voices, One World (“The Report”) remains a generation’s hope that communication bears a relation to democracy down to the concrete interactions of the people. The hope was and is compromised by a parallel history and prehistory of the field called “communication” and “media studies.” Participation-as-audiences morphed but still promote versions of “interaction” linked to the latest technologies—thus accommodating economic and cultural power as media- and info-power. Emancipation by new-tech adoption define “communicative interaction” in terms reminiscent of modernization research exporting the West to the rest, today to all. The idea that communicative interaction could thrive within such frames compromised “The Report,” leaving the idea of democratic participation subject to recurring myths about the democratizing power of “the new.” Reflecting a legacy of conceits since “development” migrated into the field called “communication,” media- and info-centric orientations instrumentalise “interaction” and “participation” in a marketplaced world. There, many voices remain situated in the capitalist promise of potential while still-salient definitions of “communication,” “information,” and “democracy” frustrate “The Report’s” aim of a right to communicate, an aim where political consequence suits interactive and authentic publics defining otherwise mediated times.
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The MacBride Report in Twenty-first-century Capitalism, the Age of Social Media and the BRICS Countries
The MacBride Report was published in 1980. The report communicated the need for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). With the breakdown of what used to be called “actually existing socialism“ in the East and with the rise of the neoliberal commodification of everything, a NWICO indeed emerged, but one that looked quite different from that the MacBride commission imagined. Thirty-five years later, it is time to ask how the situation of the media and communications in society has changed. This contribution asks the question of what we can make of the MacBride Report today in a media world and society that has seen the rise of an economically driven form of globalisation that also has impacts on the media, the expansion of the information economy with a new young precariat at its core, and the emergence of the World Wide Web and its change into a highly commercialised system, including the emergence of so-called “social media“ whose capital accumulation model is based on targeted advertising.
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Demystifying the Empowerment Virtues of the New Digital World Information Order
Despite being highly ambiguous, the vocabulary of empowerment has been used recurrently since the early 2000s for celebrating the emancipatory potential of digital technologies. Indeed, these have been repeatedly described as having the power of bypassing the controls that authoritarian governments exert on the circulation of news, but also of circumventing the domination that corporate actors exercise in this field.
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Reinventing “Many Voices”: MacBride and a Digital New World Information and Communication Order
The MacBride Commission Report was arguably one of the most significant multilateral interventions in the history of international communication. This article charts its emergence at the time of deeply contested Cold War politics, coinciding with the rise of the southern voices in the global arena, led by the non-aligned nations. Thirty-five years after the report's publication, has the global media evolved into a more democratic system, demonstrating greater diversity of views and viewpoints? Despite the still formidable power of US-led western media, the article suggests that the globalisation and digitisation of communication has contributed to a multi-layered and more complex global media scene, demonstrating the “rise of the rest”.
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Has there been a European Public Discourse on the Euro Crisis? A Content Analysis of German and Spanish Newspaper Editorials
The MacBride Commission Report was arguably one of the most significant multilateral interventions in the history of international communication. This article charts its emergence at the time of deeply contested Cold War politics, coinciding with the rise of the southern voices in the global arena, led by the non-aligned nations. Thirty-five years after the report's publication, has the global media evolved into a more democratic system, demonstrating greater diversity of views and viewpoints? Despite the still formidable power of US-led western media, the article suggests that the globalisation and digitisation of communication has contributed to a multi-layered and more complex global media scene, demonstrating the “rise of the rest”.
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Participation as a Pastime: Political Discussion in a Queer Community Online
The MacBride Commission Report was arguably one of the most significant multilateral interventions in the history of international communication. This article charts its emergence at the time of deeply contested Cold War politics, coinciding with the rise of the southern voices in the global arena, led by the non-aligned nations. Thirty-five years after the report's publication, has the global media evolved into a more democratic system, demonstrating greater diversity of views and viewpoints? Despite the still formidable power of US-led western media, the article suggests that the globalisation and digitisation of communication has contributed to a multi-layered and more complex global media scene, demonstrating the “rise of the rest”.
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