Chapter 2: Drawing a Bead on Global Communication Theories

I. “Normative” Theories
- These categories are aimed not only at comparing and contrasting types of media across the globe or better understand our own media system, but also a give a set of rules and guiding principles about how those system should operate.

1. Four theories of the press: taxonomy on the different media systems that proposes to group media system into four categories (in order to have a better understanding on our own nation’s media system)
a. Authoritarian system is found in dictatorships, is regulated by the state, and is subject to censorship. The main objective being to “protect the established social order” (Nazi-Germany)
b. Soviet system, has the same characteristics as the authoritarian system, but refers to communist dictatorships and can be considered as “worse than the authoritarian system” (mainly found in Russia)
c. Liberal system is free market based, and ruled by “capitalist moneymaking priorities”, and claims to be a “free market place of ideas” (owned by the private, relies on advertising)
d. Social responsibility monitors the government and reports to the public sphere, operates in a capitalistic dynamic but commits to serve the public’s needs. The model is considered as the best by the three authors of the Four theories of the Press, who insist on the duties of the media in s democratic context

2. Two models added by McQuail in 1994
a. The development model is responsible for informing the public (about AIDS for example) and addresses issues of poverty, health care, education and literacy. This media system aims at helping countries to develop, and exists in the emerging countries.
b. The participatory model responds to a will for public participation in the media (community radio stations), and for democratic processes of decision making. It is usually a small-scale local media that may also address some of the issues the development model does.

3. Some limitations of these media systems
a. These models don’t seem to be compatible with entertainment
b. The distinctions between the authoritarian system, the soviet system, and the development model are blurred (the authoritarian and soviet system were very similar, and to justify their existence they tend to hide behind their “development priorities”)
c. It is not clear whether these models are simple categories or models in the normative sense: a set of guidelines that ought to be followed


II. A Different Approach I: Comparing and Contrasting Media (the Russian example)
1. A closer look at the now extinct Soviet Russian media system
a. Even if it doesn’t exist anymore, the history of this media system helps us to better understand media elsewhere in the world
b. It is very challenging if not impossible to understand how the media works on the rest of the planet if we life in politically stable and economically advanced countries
c. Generalizing about the media through the study of it in countries such as the US, England, Germany or France is impossible: the most common context for media in the majority of the world includes issues of poverty, political instability and economic crisis among others
d. Russia is a good start for someone who wants to understand in the world at large instead of having superficial assumptions about the media in the world

2. Political power
a. The Soviet media system was always used as the perfect counterexample that proved the superiority and efficiency of the Western media: while the Soviet system meant repression and censorship, Western media (liberalism) meant freedom of the press and justice
b. It is true however that the machinery of control of communication in the Soviet system was extremely developed
c. The result of this control, repression and censorship is that people didn’t believe on the official media (unless one of its topic was confirmed by conversational rumors, or samizdat – hand circulated pamphlets, poems, essays, plays, novels and other self-published mediums)
d. Two levels of the media developed at the same time: official truths that few believed and unofficial realism: a traditional dilemma found in dictatorships

3. Economic crisis
a. The economic crisis that was a daily experience for a majority of Russian during the Soviet Union era continues to be a daily experience for many citizens across the globe
b. Until the last years of the Soviet Union, the Russian media didn’t mention problems such as the decline in living standards and in productivity. Adding to that they claimed that the capitalist countries were suffering from irremediable economic problems

4. Dramatic Social Transitions
a. Russia had to overcome many difficult transitions during the 20th century: the First World War, the 1917’s revolution, the three year civil war that followed the revolution, and the Second World War among others; experiences that affluent nations didn’t have to cope with (expect for the World Wars)
b. First media transition in Russia: Even if there was an active newspaper, magazine and book industry (restricted to the elite), the imperial censorship made it extremely risky to print anything that directly criticized the czars. After the revolution, literacy campaigns began and the new revolutionary regime got to convey its message to the majority of the Russian population
c. Second media transition in Russia: Art developed so much that Russian artists were the most spectacular and imaginative in Europe and strongly encourage by the revolutionary regime. Russian media was at a top level until the Soviet Union felled under Stalin’s dictatorship that impeded artists to continue they work threatening them with disgrace, prison camps and even death
d. Third media transition in Russia: after Stalin’s death, some Russian media professionals made cautious attempts to open up the media, but the soviet media system was still there, which didn’t permit publications of real critics of Stalin’s regime
e. Fourth media transition in Russia: it was only until the 1980’s, during the USSR era, that the country experienced a movement in favor of a reform of the current media system, which led to an very prolific period for the media
f. Fifth media transition in Russia: 1991, collapse of the USSR, most media sector were under the surveillance of the government, and even if independent media existed more than under the Soviet regime, Russian lacked of “anything approaching a genuinely democratic media system”

--- the Russian example is quite the norm about the media experience, because it is the more common; media systems that are permanent and that didn’t have transitions cannot be used to generalize about the media systems around the world ---


III. A different Approach II: Globalization and the Media
1. The term refers sometimes to structural economic changes through terms such as “liberalization” or “privatization”
2. Globalization is also applied to concepts concerning cultural and media processes (the earliest concept being “cultural imperialism”, or a more recent being “coca-colonization” to illustrate the spread of American way of life and products around the world)
3. Some even interchange the terms “globalization” with “Americanization” (which made Latin Americans to create a debate)
4. Schiller argues, in 1991, there is a new form or dominance, not necessarily American (even if based in the US): transnational corporations
5. Some writers argue that audiences are not necessarily moldable audiences, that they even show resistance to some cultural invasions (that creates most of the time examples of hybridization)
6. Arjun Appadurai argues in 1996 that media and migration are strongly related within the process of globalization: “the expansion of the media images and coverage of the rest of the planet opened up many people’s to realities wider than their immediate and local experience”


IV. A Different Approach III: Small-Scale Alternative Media
1. Further definition and explanation of the term “samizdat media” (self-publications that emerged as hidden response to state-publication)
2. The impact and the role of the samizdat in the collapse of the USSR
3. The USSR is not the only example where this kind of alternative media existed (US, Europe, Canada among other countries also experienced it), indeed this type of media puts the power of media in our hands instead of in the hands of our governments