Title: Germany: more mediascapes
1Germany more mediascapes
Arjun Appadurai differentiates five dimension of
global "scapes, flowing across cultural
boundaries 1) ethnoscapes, the landscape of
persons who constitute the shifting world in
which people live , 2) technoscapes, the global
configuration of technologies moving at high
speeds across previously impermeable borders, 3)
financescapes, the global grid of currency
speculation and capital transfer, 4)
mediascapes, the distribution of the
capabilities to produce and disseminate
information and the large complex repertoire of
images and narratives generated by these
capabilities, 5) ideoscapes, ideologies of
states and counter-ideologies of movements,
around which nation-states have organized their
political cultures http//www.indiana.edu/7Ewanth
ro/appadurai.htmGlobalization
2Appadurai definition
Mediascapes refer both to the distribution of the
electronic capabilitiesto produce and disseminate
information (newspapers, magazines, television
stations, and film-production studios), which are
nowavailable to a growing number of private and
public interests throughout the world. And to the
images of the world created by these media. These
images involve many complicated
inflections, depending on their mode (documentary
or entertainment), their hardware(electronic or
preelectronic), their audiences (local,
national or transnational), and the interests of
those who own and control them. What is most
important about these mediascapes is that they
provide (especially in their television, film
and cassette forms) large and complex repertoires
of images, narratives, and ethnoscapes to viewers
3Appadurai cont
throughout the world, in which the world of
commodities and the world of news and politics
are profoundly mixed. What this means is that
many audiences around the world experience the
media themselves as a complicated and
interconnected repertoire of print, celluloid,
electronic screens, and billboards. The lines
between the realistic and fictional landscapes
they see are blurred, so that the farther away
these audiences are from the direct experiences
of metropolitan life, the more likely they are
to construct imagined worlds that are
chimerical, aesthetic, even fantastical
objects, particularly if assessed by the criteria
of some other perspective, some other imagined
world. Appadurai A. 1990. Disjuncture and
difference in the global cultural economy.
Public Culture. 2 p.35.
4German Basic Law
Basic law.Article5 of this says (my
translation) Everyone has the right to express
their opinion freely in word, writing and image
and to publish it and to inform themselves from
generally accessible sources without hindrance.
The Freedom of the press and of reporting by
broadcasting and film are guaranteed. Censorship
does not take place.
5Press ownership
Axel Springer Group WAZ (Westdeutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung) Verlagsgruppe Stuttgarter Zeitung
DuMont Schauberg Gruner Jahr, Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung Süddeutsche Zeitung Bild
Zeitung die Zeit Der Spiegel
6broadcasting
Westdeutsche Rundfunk WDR-West German
Bcasting/ Northrhine-Westfalia Bayerische
Rundfunk BR-Bavaria Ostdeutscher Rundfunk-OR-East
German Bcasting Potsdam ARD-(Arbeitsgemeinschaft
der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunksanstalten
Deutschlands) Cooperative Broadcasting - Erste
Programm/Channel 1 Zweites Deutsches
Fernsehen-ZDF SAT.1 RTL / Super RTL
Kirch-Gruppe Bertelsmann Group
7Broadcasting cont.
Nt-tv PROSIEBEN Premiere Deutschlandradio Deutschl
andfunk Yahoo, Microsoft, MSN and
AOL T-online Telekom UMTS "Universal Mobile
Telecommunications System http//www.umts-forum.o
rg Balnaves M. et al(2001), The Global Media
Atlas, BFI,London