Media and Globalisation MEVIT 3220 & MEVIT4220

Globalisation and National Responses: Policy and Regulation

Dumisani Moyo

Main Texts for today’s lecture

• Van Binsbergen and van Dijk

• Tomasellis & Heuva, Horwitz: Resistance, negotiation

• Sonwalker: Murdochisation

• Miller: Global Hollywood and division of labour

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

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

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

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

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 Barrett’s 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 Thiong’o - there has always been resistance

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

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)

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

Sonwalker’s article on Murdochization

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?

Media Policy and RegulationSupranational 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 People’s Rights

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

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

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 Mandela’s 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

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

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

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

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

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 …