Media and Globalisation MEVIT 3220

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Media and Globalisation MEVIT 3220 MEVIT4220

• Globalisation and National Responses Policy and
  Regulation
• Dumisani Moyo

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Main Texts for todays lecture

• Van Binsbergen and van Dijk
• Tomasellis Heuva, Horwitz Resistance,
  negotiation
• Sonwalker Murdochisation
• Miller Global Hollywood and division of labour

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(No Transcript)
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National Responses Policy Regulation

• Intro
• Weak states, failed states, the nation-state
  project?
• Africa in the global debate
• Relevance to global economy - Castelles
• Source of raw materials, little processing
• Victimhood
• Colonisation, plunder and dispossession
• National TV, foreign images
• Global media situation M-Net, CFI, BBC, VOA, etc

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Cultural imperialism debate

• Cultural imperialism and resistance the 60s
  (particularly in Latim America)
• Expansion of American TNCs to S. America in 60s
  and 70s gave rise to this debate along with
  American mass culture, mass products
• Cultural imperialism debate NWICO debates
• Walter Rodney How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
• Belgian Amand Mattelart, Hebert Schiller (USA),
  and Canadian Dallas Smythe
• Influenced by Gramsci, the Frankfurt School

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Critique decline of cultural imperialism

• Central to cultural imperialism thesis was the
  aspect of victimhood Cultural domination N/S,
  atomised society at mercy of cultural industry
• But by the late 70s, questions were being raised
  about the claimed international influence of mass
  culture, about passive receivers of mass mediated
  messages
• Katz and Liebes (1984) Once Upon a Time in
  Dallas different readings, sociao-cultural
  frames in decoding - diversity rather than
  homogeneous

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Critique and Decline Cultural imperialism

• Challenge also came from active audience
  theories - audience resistance
• John Fiske (1986) - polysemic reading of texts
• Stuart Hall (1973) - preferred meaning (Encoding
  and Decoding )
• Oppositional meanings, e.g. portrayal of women

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Critique and Decline Cultural imperialism

• So, is cultual imperialism dead??
• Not quite
• Term expanded to mean not just American
  domination, but also TNCs from Europe, Asis, etc.
  though USA still dominant
• Oliver Boyd Barretts work on news flows between
  North and South still influential
• Cultural imperialism and literary theory
• Still many forms of resistance to cultural
  imperialism - active and passive
• Ngugi wa Thiongo - there has always been
  resistance

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Neoliberalism and the Developing World

• Dying down of resistance discourse (cultural
  imperialism and NWICO) and ascendance of
  neo-liberalism in the 80s
• IMF/WB, trade regimes such as GATTs, WTO and the
  drive for privatisation, deregulation opening up
  of markets
• Role of consultants, global civil society in
  spreading the new ideas
• Reforms in telecomms

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The wider context

• The Four waves of marketisation
• 1. Policy changes in the USA from the 1980s
  onwards
• 2. Changes in other industrialised countries
  (Western Europe, Canada, Australia, etc). See,
  e.g, Humphreys, 1996 Collins and Murroni, 1996
  Levy 1999 etc.
• 3. Changes in transitional and mixed societies
  (see, e.g. Curran and Park, 2000 Price et al.
  2002)
• 4. Convergence, and new laws that seek to reflect
  these changes (Hesmondhalgh, 2002)

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African responses

• Van Binsbergen and van Dijk African Agency in
  Appropriation of Global Culture
• Responses of African societies to various forms
  of globalisation reinterpretation of Christian
  faith and domestication of certain practices
• Creative appropriation of global culture - the
  new ICTs and the traditional mass media
• Reflexivity
• Gewald and the hijacking of CNN - linked to
  Sonwalkers article on Murdochization

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African responses some cases

• But how did African countries respond in terms of
  media policies?
• South Africa Negotiated liberalisation (Horwitz,
  2001 Heuva and Tomasellis, 2004)
• Zambia Reluctant liberalisation
• Zimbabwe Musical chairs?

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Media Policy and Regulation

• Supranational Ragulatory Frameworks
• SADC Protocol on Transport and Communications
• TRASA Telecoms Regulators Association of Southern
  Africa
• COMESA towards harmonisation of ICT policy
• African Charter on Broadcasting (MISA, USAID,
  OSISA)
• Declaration on Human and Peoples Rights

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South African response

• Robert Horwitz central argument is that,
• Though globalisation creates pressures,
  opportunities, and constraints, communications
  reforms are shaped largely by domestic actors
  through domestic political institutions
  (Horwitz, 2001).
• Domestic political environment shapes media policy

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South African Response

• Brief historical background SA
• - First colonised by the Dutch, then the British
• - Under Apartheid grip for since the late 1940s
• - The media served white interests, and used as a
  tool of repression
• Broadcasting in particular was used as a tool for
  divide and rule (Bantustan radio)
• Public service broadcasting and John Reith

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South African response

• Converging interests on the eve of independence
  in 1993
• The NP feared the prospect of having broadcasting
  in the hands of a black majority government in
  the post-independence era
• Nelson Mandelas ANC on the other hand feared the
  idea of going into elections with the SABC in the
  control of the NP
• The NP therefore wanted to move with haste to
  privatise the SABC, which would guarantee
  continued white ownership

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South African Responses

• Broadcasting and nation-building 11 official
  languages
• Three tier broadcasting system comprising of
  public service, commercial and community
  broadcasters - all mandated with a public service
  role

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South Africa and the region

• Some recent developments
• SA has moved way ahead of even most European
  countries in terms of setting up a converged
  regulator (ICASA) (Collins, 2004).
• Influence of South African model in the Southern
  African region

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Zambia

• Reluctant despite donor pressure
• Licensing Christian community broadcasters
• Selective implementation of new laws (the ZNBC
  Act and the IBA Act of 2002
• Monopoly has been broken, but state broadcaster
  remains dominant
• No independent regulator appointed despite new law

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Zimbabwe

• Change without change playing musical chairs
• Extreme resistance 75 local content
• Ban on foreign ownership in broadcasting
• Ban on foreign reporters operating within
• More repressive laws
• No independent regulation
• State monopoly broadcasting persists

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Some implications

• The state still matters
• Policy still shaped at the national level despite
  weakness of the African state
• Global pressure for communications reform have
  produced varied instead of homogeneous responses
• The poor can creatively appropriate, negotiate
  and even domesticate global culture
• African film, URTNA, SABA, Nollywood
• Cultural imperialism?
• Unbalanced flows sill persist