Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad
Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad
CIVIL SOCIETY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 149 decades. Based on our discussions thus far, we can point to the mass mobilizations by trade unions against the liberalization of national telecommunications monopolies and the role of marginalized racial, ethnic and/or religious minorities – making claims for recognition through the redistribution of public-media resources. The last decade has also seen successful social movements of small farmers, health workers, women’s and sexual rights activists and indigenous rights activists effectively mounting challenges to the implementation of the WTO’s Trade Related Property Rights (TRIPs) (Erni 2004; Escobar 1998; Shiva 1998). As well, transnational alliances between urban community and media activists have launched widespread alternative participatory media networks – from Indymedia to open-source and tactical media movements (Downing 2001; Lovink and Schneider 2002). On a parallel front in the policy arena, Calabrese (1999) has argued that the failures of the UNESCO debates spurred a next generation of activism through a series of international MacBride Roundtables held since 1989. Complementing these meetings, the Cultural Environmental Movement based in the US and the Centre for Communication and Human Rights, based in the Netherlands, initiated the Platform for Communication Rights and the People’s Communication Charter with the overlapping objectives of democratizing media access and formulating the basis of a ‘humanitarian agenda’ to challenge the neoliberal policy framework focused on enhancing trade. 3 Building on this momentum, in 1999 several NGOs involved in media-based activism launched a global civil society initiative entitled Voices 21 (A Global Movement for People’s Voices in Media and Communications in the 21 st century), which laid out the basic objectives for the new movement targeting the institutions of communication governance. 4 The principle CSOs involved in this effort were the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) based in the UK and the Association for Progressive Communication (APC), initially a civil society networking initiative that began in the US and UK. In 2001, these organizations became involved in shaping the terms of civil society participation in the WSIS process by establishing the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) Campaign (Raboy 2004: 228–9). The NWICO debates were carried out primarily by national state actors with the objective of transforming the rules of multilateral governance within the United Nations. Social justice claims focused on the redistribution of international communications resources, and claims about recognition were mediated through an exclusively national cultural frame – with national state representatives defining what counted as
150 MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION ‘national’ and ‘local’ culture. We have argued earlier that the issue of national sovereignty cloaked ‘internal’ injustices within Third World societies, just as the Fordist social contract failed to distinguish gender and racial discrimination. In both the North and the South, feminist groups along with a variety of ‘new’ and transformed social movements have challenged the role of states to represent what is accepted as public interest. In the field of global communication policy, we see that as the majority of Southern states were signing on to the new terms of the neoliberal information economy in the 1990s, it was Northern-based civil society organizations that began to formulate an oppositional humanitarian agenda. Calabrese has argued that the ‘legacy’ of the MacBride Commission has engaged ‘people’s’ movements in order to ‘stimulate support for a new global constitutionalism aimed at establishing social and cultural policies that would parallel the already well-developed efforts to constitutionalise global market principles’ (Calabrese 1999: 272). The CRIS campaign, which has coordinated an official civil society voice in the WSIS process, reinforced the right to communicate as a foundation for debates about social justice: Our vision of the Information Society is grounded in the Right to Communicate, as a means to enhance human rights and to strengthen the social, economic and cultural lives of people and communities. The information society that interests us is one that is based on principles of transparency, diversity, participation and social and economic justice, and inspired by equitable gender, cultural and regional perspectives. (http://www.crisinfo.org/content/view/full/79) This statement clarifies the continuities and ruptures from the social justice vision of the earlier NWICO era. The redistributive focus emphasizes open public communication and equitable access, while the claims for recognition displaces the earlier emphasis on the role of the nationstate, and instead focuses on the cultural autonomy of communities and the human right to communicate. Calabrese has argued that at the ‘core’ of the ‘movement lies the widespread recognition that the media are profoundly essential to the fulfilment of human needs and the realization of human dignity in the modern world’ (Calabrese 2004). Advocates of the CRIS campaign have argued that their more expansive articulation of the human right to communicate attempts to overcome the narrow and legalistic rendering of the individual right to the freedom of information (Hamelink 2003). In practice, however, we argue that the ‘transcultural resonance’ (Keck and Sikkink 1998) of the narrower claims for recognition without redistribution would prevail in the WSIS process, in some ways serving as
- Page 112 and 113: BROADCASTING POLICY 99 European Par
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- Page 116 and 117: BROADCASTING POLICY 103 limited way
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- Page 192 and 193: Bibliography Abramson, Bram Dor and
- Page 194 and 195: BIBLIOGRAPHY 181 Bell, Daniel (1973
- Page 196 and 197: BIBLIOGRAPHY 183 Crossroads: Whose
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- Page 200 and 201: BIBLIOGRAPHY 187 Garnham, Nicholas
- Page 202 and 203: BIBLIOGRAPHY 189 Series on Gender a
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CIVIL SOCIETY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 149<br />
decades. Based on our discussions thus far, we can point to the mass mobilizations<br />
by trade unions against the liberalization of national telecommunications<br />
monopolies <strong>and</strong> the role of marginalized racial, ethnic <strong>and</strong>/or<br />
religious minorities – making claims for recognition through the redistribution<br />
of public-media resources. The last decade has also seen successful<br />
social movements of small farmers, health workers, women’s <strong>and</strong> sexual<br />
rights activists <strong>and</strong> indigenous rights activists effectively mounting<br />
challenges to the implementation of the WTO’s Trade Related Property<br />
Rights (TRIPs) (Erni 2004; Escobar 1998; Shiva 1998). As well,<br />
transnational alliances between urban community <strong>and</strong> media activists<br />
have launched widespread alternative participatory media networks –<br />
from Indymedia to open-source <strong>and</strong> tactical media movements (Downing<br />
2001; Lovink <strong>and</strong> Schneider 2002).<br />
On a parallel front in the policy arena, Calabrese (1999) has argued<br />
that the failures of the UNESCO debates spurred a next generation of<br />
activism through a series of international MacBride Roundtables held<br />
since 1989. Complementing these meetings, the Cultural Environmental<br />
Movement based in the US <strong>and</strong> the Centre for Communication <strong>and</strong><br />
Human Rights, based in the Netherl<strong>and</strong>s, initiated the Platform for Communication<br />
Rights <strong>and</strong> the People’s Communication Charter with the<br />
overlapping objectives of democratizing media access <strong>and</strong> formulating<br />
the basis of a ‘humanitarian agenda’ to challenge the neoliberal policy<br />
framework focused on enhancing trade. 3 Building on this momentum, in<br />
1999 several NGOs involved in media-based activism launched a global<br />
civil society initiative entitled Voices 21 (A Global Movement for People’s<br />
Voices in <strong>Media</strong> <strong>and</strong> Communications in the 21 st century), which<br />
laid out the basic objectives for the new movement targeting the institutions<br />
of communication governance. 4 The principle CSOs involved<br />
in this effort were the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters<br />
(AMARC), the World Association for Christian Communication<br />
(WACC) based in the UK <strong>and</strong> the Association for Progressive Communication<br />
(APC), initially a civil society networking initiative that began<br />
in the US <strong>and</strong> UK. In 2001, these organizations became involved in shaping<br />
the terms of civil society participation in the WSIS process by establishing<br />
the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS)<br />
Campaign (Raboy 2004: 228–9).<br />
The NWICO debates were carried out primarily by national state<br />
actors with the objective of transforming the rules of multilateral governance<br />
within the United Nations. Social justice claims focused on the<br />
redistribution of international communications resources, <strong>and</strong> claims<br />
about recognition were mediated through an exclusively national cultural<br />
frame – with national state representatives defining what counted as
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