Is the NWICO debate obsolete?

INTRODUCTION

The debate over the role of information and communication in developing countries was never so intense before the Second World War. During the two decades which followed questions were raised on the imbalance pertaining to global news flow and later on, in other forms of media. During the 1970s, centre stage was given to the concerns about communication in ‘development’ of a nation. It would be crucial to note that this was a period of changing international political set-up and shifting of power. Many countries which were being decolonized and the prevailing ‘developing’ countries echoed similar demands regarding the bias existing in favour of the Western countries in terms of news, information and communication technology.

UNDERSTANDING THE NWICO DEBATE

“The domination endured by the poor of the world as a result of oppression by the powerful is a reality that degrades the whole of humankind as such. Hope for equality and justice is at the root of the struggle of every social group for the well-being of its members.”

(Lee, 1986: 82)

The above statement defines the concerns of the Third World countries which led to a calling for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) during the 1970s. It was mainly initiated by the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) who later raised it the General Assembly of the United Nations. During 1970s the domination of global media and information industry by a handful of transnational giants raised serious concerns about the injustice and imbalance prevailing in the processing of world information. Simply put, ‘The legal debate over the NWICO centers on the differences between the U.S. position that a free and unfettered flow of information is an established international legal principle, and the NWICO proponents' belief that a government balanced flow of information is permitted by international law’. (Wilson, 1986:108). There existed disparities between developed and developing countries, regional disparities, one-way flow, vertical flow, market dominance, distortion of content, cultural alienation, barriers to democratization, lack of critical awareness and lack of cooperation between nations when it came to communication and information sector. These problems were recognised and pointed out later in the MacBride Report titled Many Voices, One World (1980) published by UNESCO, which identified all these problems and the MacBride commission came up with recommendations.

The NWICO debate had three stages. The first stage (1973-1976) demanded ‘the establishment of a free and balanced flow of information and rejected any attempt at cultural colonialism’ (Lee, 1986: 82). This was when the term NWICO had not emerged and it was called NIIO (New International Information Order). The first phase of NWICO was criticized to be very ideology-driven (Bascur in Lee, 1982: 83). The second stage (1976-1979) of the debate was the most important one. It was during this phase when the theoretical paradigms of the first stage were researched upon and a connection between ideology and ‘reality’ in the world order was established, much to the displeasure of the developed countries. It was actually the third phase which gave a concrete shape to this debate with UNESCO publishing the MacBride Report in 1980. There were sixteen international experts in the MacBride commission which were ‘largely representative of the world’s political, economics and geographic spectrum- had been asked to study no less than “the totality of communication problems in modern societies”’ (Mowlana and Roach, 1992). MacBride report placed the communication at the centre of development process for any developing country. It stated that “development strategies should incorporate communication policies as an integral part in the diagnosis of needs and in design and implementation of selected priorities. In this respect communication should be considered a major development source, a vehicle to ensure real political participation in decision-making, a central information base for defining policy options, and an instrument for creating awareness of national priorities”

(Many Voices, One World, MacBride, 1980: 258)

The basic demands of the NWICO were the four Ds- Democratization, Decolonization, Demonopolization and Development.

‘1. News flows are castigated as “one-way flows”, and measures to ensure a more equitable balance of news flows between countries are demanded (Democratization).

2. The ’one-way flow’ and misrepresentations are interpreted to reflect a lack of respect for the countries’ cultural identities, a matter of great importance to the non-aligned countries (Decolonization).

3. The monopoly status of transnationalcorporations in terms of communications technology is perceived as a threat to national independence (Demonopolization).

4. The vital role of mass media in the development process is underlined, and the non-aligned countries join together to demand a more just distribution of communication resources in the world (Development).’ (Carlsson 2003: 12)

YES, THIS DEBATE IS OBSOLETE

With an unforeseen impact and growth of globalisation, some argue, the NWICO debate doesn’t hold much relevance now. The balance of power is becoming more and more evenhanded i.e. impartial due to emerging ‘free flow’ markets and availability of a wider variety of resources.

Dr. Ulla Carlsson, the director of The Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research (NORDICOM) wrote that when it came to the NWICO debate, there were ‘events and circumstances that led to the issue’s subsidence and subsequent removal from international agendas’ (Carlsson, 2003: 2). One of the reasons for the aforementioned is the breakdown of Soviet Union, the ‘traditional’ supporter of NWICO. Other reasons included the changing of the socio-economic landscape of the world. “..Political and academic debates over the idea of a NWICO have become rather quiescent in the past few years in light of the rapidly changing world political environment; international communication is likely to remain a highly visible global issue in the I99os. The scope and substance of discussions of this issue are expected to be shaped by two global trends now in the making: first, the widespread proliferation of new information/communication technologies, and second, the growing democratization of sociopolitical systems around the world in the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, a traditional long-time supporter of Third World calls for a NWICO.” (Aiysh, 1992: 488)

Another very important reason why this debate is sometimes rendered obsolete is because of the advent and conquest of internet over the world. The internet society or the ‘network society’ as conceived by Manuel Castells, a well-known communications scholar aptly describes the world we are living in. The internet has, according to proponents of the power of the World Wide Web; we are no longer bound by economic, social and political boundaries when it comes to communication and information being readily available to all. Internet is a medium which provides equal forums irrespective of the national backgrounds. In this age of internet, NWICO seems like it doesn’t fit, barring the areas where accessibility to internet is an issue but that is being ruled out more and more every day. Taking a very recent research example, Victor Pickard (2007), talked about NWICO, WSIS, internet governance, neo-liberalism, global communication, international communication and most recently, Internet policy. He describes NWICO as ‘a lost promise’ and that ‘NWICO gradually receded into relative obscurity following the pullout of its largest sponsors’ (Pickard, 2007: 122). The NWICO debate is often severely criticized by the West, especially in American newspapers and journals. Their argument advocating the ‘free-flow of information’ is a strong one. Their view is that the governments must not curb or regulate the information in their own countries, treating information as commodities and with neo-liberal institutions like WTO, information now is in the process to be traded freely. Whether or not this will lead to lead to adverse consequences is another matter but in a scenario like this where information is being treated as any other commodity in a ‘free market’, NWICO doesn’t hold much promise, in fact, in such cases it does not hold any relevance.

NO, THIS DEBATE IS NOT OBSOLETE

Despite the glorification and celebration of globalisation, we need to look at the criticism against neo-liberal policies around the world because the communication sector also has been engulfed in the neo-liberal policy debate. Increasing inequalities, profit-maximizing nature and imperialistic undertones are the burning issues which still haunt the communication policy making. One of the scholars whose work was on the WSIS writes that ‘the old controversy about the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) seems to be experiencing a resurrection in our times, on the occasion of WSIS. The controversy then lasted about ten years, from 1975 to 1985 and escalated into the withdrawal of the USA from the UNESCO. They have only returned as of fall 2003’ (Kuhlen, 2003: 1)

One important concern of the NWICO was the standard of reporting of journalists worldwide in case of news. This is an argument which is valid even today. With the nations claiming to have greater press freedom, technology and skilled journalists, the bias seems to be more than ever before, which is ironical but not so hard to understand given the international and national political dynamics. There was a UNESCO sponsored study called ‘Foreign Images Study, a cross-national comparative news analysis sponsored by UNESCO and the IAMCR and organized by Jim Halloran. The study monitored the foreign news coverage of selected media (including news agencies) of 29 countries during one or two sample weeks in 1979. Like the findings of other studies, the results of this project justified several, though not all, of the critical arguments of the NWICO debate’ (Schulz, 2001: 5)

In order to understand today’s communication problems, it is very important to view them ‘in a historical perspective to understand the roots of the current debate and how they relate to changes that are affecting the world today.’ (Padovani, 2005:1). In a research article of 2006 published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it was said that ‘civil society actors are calling for the use of multiple mechanisms for financing and a reduction in sole reliance on market mechanisms, echoing the recommendations of the MacBride Report.’ (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2007: 14). This is an indicator that major elements of the NWICO debate are still very much valid.

‘Recent non-aligned meetings such as the eighth summit conference , held in Harare in 1986, and the Ninth meeting of the Intergovernmental Council for the Coordination of Information  (IGC), also held in Harare in June 1987, continue to provide unqualified support for NWICO’ ((Roach, 1990: 290) and hence never let it go out of steam. These summits and conferences extended the NWICO theme to the World Summit on Information Society in 2003 and the term NWICO is still referred to, in the reports and recommendations of these summits. “Despite the fact that they were writing in the late 1970s, the authors of the MacBride Report envisaged a network akin to the globally distributed internet that has emerged.” (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2007: 20) This shows that the NWICO, though based in 1970s had envisaged a future with global governance and network. Pickard (2007) analyses that ‘by historicizing WSIS in its relation to NWICO, theorizing related debates in the context of neo-liberalism, and textually analyzing key policy documents, this analysis (that of NWICO and WSIS) brings into sharper focus the foundational assumptions of today’s global communications system’. It is very clear that to understand today’s problems pertaining to international communication and information flow, we have to go back to NWICO, and so it is certainly not obsolete.

CONCLUSION- THE FUTURE OF NWICO DEBATE

Having analysed the arguments of both the sides, the relevance of NWICO still cannot be ruled out as it is brought up in every communication policy debate.

“The political and economic context clearly has changed since the NWICO debate, but many of the political and economic issues are the same.” (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2007: 26)

Although a direct comparison between NWICO and World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) is limited by the latter’s focus on the Internet, ‘significant technological developments clearly have exacerbated concerns first addressed at NWICO. Also noteworthy are issues no longer on the table during these discussions. These omissions reflect larger political economic structural changes that have filtered down through the policy discourse. For example, according to the WSIS vision, access is a wholly good thing without qualifying whether for individuals or corporations. Furthermore, little discussion centers on transborder data flow despite the fact that 90% of the Internet belongs to proprietary networks, not the “open” Internet. These networks require special security and firewalls and generate an enormous international flow of data. Yet it has become an unquestioned assumption that this flow should be left unregulated.’ (Pickard, 2007: 134). WSIS also raised parallel concerns with the NWICO even though they had a time difference of around 35 years between them. This strongly indicates that although the NWICO debate is not as strongly valid as it was when it was established, the international communication policy debates are still haunted by the ghost of NWICO, i.e., their basic elements are the same. Therefore, this debate certainly cannot be described as ‘obsolete’ or irrelevant yet. It remains to be seen whether it ever will be. To sum up the entire argument, ‘with the rapid developments in communications technologies and the resulting expansion of Western satellite and cable television in the developing world, key issues in the 1970s debates about the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) may again be relevant’ (Thussu, 2000: 323)

REFERENCES on request

How and why is the argument of cultural imperialism unanswerable?

1.    INTRODUCTION

Cultural imperialism is a term which has been around now for approximately four decades now. It has been debated upon by some of the most well known scholars like Arjun Appadurai, Oliver Boyd-Barrett Herbert Irving Schiller, John Tomlinson, Chin Chuan Lee, Jeremy Tunstall and many more. At the heart of their discussions has always been the concern to establish this concept and define it within the periphery of various disciplines. The discourse of cultural imperialism is one with great complexities with no satisfactory answers. There are as many theories about cultural imperialism as there are people studying it. The idea of ‘hegemony’ which was conceived by Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) also took on a disguise of ‘cultural hegemony’ for scholars of culture studies. All these developments indicate that ‘cultural domination’ indeed, in its many forms, was a fascinating field of study. On empirical grounds, many theories were formulated which were largely taken as ‘axiomatic’ rather than ‘empirical’ and that is exactly what is going to be discussed in this essay. These theories were not tested, could not be applied even to specific geographical societies without considerable amount of debate but were still highly ‘believable in their nature’. India was colonised by the British Empire for 200 years and scholars of culture studies in India claim that a ‘legacy of colonialism’ still dominates the present day culture in the country. Although culture includes other aspects than media and its audiences but due to the limited scope of this essay, we shall apply the theory of cultural imperialism to the media audiences in India, test it from an ‘audience’ point of view and see whether or not we are able to find any ‘answers’ for the concept of cultural imperialism.

        2. THE CONCEPT OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

The theory of cultural imperialism is not very well defined by scholars but the closest definition to ‘believed precision’ was given by Herbert Irving Schiller. He defined it as ‘the sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced and sometimes even bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system’ (Schiller, 1976, p. 9).

There were many terms which further emerged from this term namely ‘media imperialism’, ‘cultural domination’, ‘electronic colonialism’ but more or less, all these terms were fundamentally describing cultural imperialism. John Tomlinson who in his seminal work ‘Cultural imperialism: a critical introduction’ talks about four ways to talk about cultural imperialism as a concept, says that ‘imperialism’ “grasps a specific form of domination, that associated with ‘empire’” (Tomlinson, 1991, p. 19). With such a strong word such as ‘imperialism’ being used in the context, let us look at the four perspectives mentioned above. The first one is where he talks about ‘cultural imperialism as Media Imperialism’. He asserts that although ‘media is very different from other parts of culture, but it is a part of people’s ‘lived experience’ (Tomlinson, 1991: 21) of television, newspaper, radio and cinema which act as ‘agents of cultural imperialism’. The second is the ‘cultural imperialism as a discourse of nationality’. The original concern of coming up with the theory of cultural imperialism can safely be assumed to be the threat of cultural ‘invasion’ or attack on the ‘indigenous’ culture of any nation. Although Tomlinson argues that he has his doubts about the meaning of ‘indigenous culture’ but the apprehensions of an attack leads to a study of the aspects of culture and its transitions. Thirdly, he describes cultural imperialism as ‘a critique of global capitalism’ in two ways. First being the observation that capitalism by the virtue of its nature is ‘homogenising’; the perception being that ‘everywhere in the world it is beginning to look and feel the same’. Secondly, he says that global capitalism is being criticized as spreading a ‘consumerist culture’, especially in the developing countries, assuming the unfiltered bombardment of capitalist cultural products. The fourth standpoint is the one in which Tomlinson describes the ‘cultural imperialism as a critique of modernity’. This is a rather complex and multilevel discourse to understand. It is a kind of a general description of how ‘modernity’ entails cultural imperialism by virtue of it being linked to influence of capitalism, ‘development’ and the idea of the world existing as a whole rather than just nation-states; encompassing the thought all the aspects of the ‘modern world’ extend to the whole ‘global civil society’. Now we look at the reasons as to why this concept has never received any satisfying definition applicable to any part of the world, especially India.

3.   HOW AND WHY IS CULTURAL IMPERIALISM UNANSWERABLE? – THE INDIAN AUDIENCE

The audience in India is one of the largest in the world for any country and its cultural diversity makes for an interesting case for media-audience studies. It has the world’s second largest population and seventy percent of it lives in rural areas. A case study like this proves to be an intriguing ground to test the theory of cultural imperialism. Following are the reasons why and how the concept of cultural imperialism is unanswerable when applied to Indian media-audiences.

     3.1 Cultural imperialism is ill-defined and hard to measure

The foremost problem with the concept of cultural imperliasm has been that it has never been defined clearly so as to encompass any class of audience categorised according to any specification. Annabelle Sreberny in her article ‘The Many Cultural Faces of Imperialism’ argues that cultural-imperialism ‘became one of the staple catchphrases of the field of international communication. Yet, from the beginning, the concept was broad and ill-defined, operating as evocative metaphor rather than precise construct and has gradually lost much of its critical bite and historic validity’ (Sreberny, 1997: 49).  Moreover, treating this theory as ‘axiomatic’ and ‘solid’ more terms and concepts which have shaky foundations have emerged consequently. Terms such as ‘electronic-colonialism’, ‘media-imperialism’ lack clarity and cannot elucidate the theory in terms of media audiences. The assumption of these models ‘is that the media are so powerful that they can directly inject their ideas into the audience’s heads’ (McQuail, 1987 cited in Ruddock, 2001: 40). Gauntlett describes this phenomena in his literary piece ‘ten things wrong with the effects model’ in which one of the most relevant one to the Indian case would be the argument that the ‘effects model assumes superiority to the masses. Whilst a certain population of the public feels that the media may cause other people to engage in anti-social behaviour, almost no-one ever says that they have been affected in that way themselves…they ‘know’ that the effects will only be on the ‘other people’ and insofar others are defined as children or ‘unstable’ individuals. Who are these others? The uneducated? The working class?...this reveals the kind of elitism and snobbishness which often seem to underpin such research.’ (Dickinson et al, 1998: 126). To say that cultural imperialism is hard to measure would be an under-statement.

3.2 Ignorance of audiences’ perspective

It might sound ironic but most of the studies done on cultural imperialism do not entail the study of audience. It is very crucial to research on the audiences as this concept is audience-oriented. This lack of perspective and basic foundation renders the whole study of culture and imperialism baseless but it is not possible to incorporate a ‘large audience’ in the formulation and testing of this theory because it would become too complex.  So, the validation of cultural imperialism if often taken for granted. Although there are many theories in audiences research such as the ‘uses and gratification model’ (Katz, Blumler, Gurevitch), the ‘encoding-decoding model’ (Stuart Hall), ‘effects model’ , Tactical resistance (Michel de Certeau) and each of them can be a lens through which the landscape of ‘cultural imperialism’ might look entirely new, but due to the limited scope of this essay, we shall look at the broader complexities involving some of these in understanding the concept of cultural imperialism in India. The theory of cultural imperialism is accused of having a ‘positivist bias’ of communication which has consistently taken a wrong approach to the mass-media (Gauntlett, 1998 cited in Ruddock, 2001: 38). Gauntlett goes on to explain that the media-audience scholars often regard the audiences in the ‘same way as a physicist might regard iron filings lying on a piece of paper waiting to be ionized by a magnet: playthings to be manipulated. Here again, we can see echoes of positivism, where the scientist regards him or herself as a dispassionate observer…this arrogance means that researchers can miss a good deal of the audiences’ experience’ (Gauntlett, 2001: 39). Lewis (1991) argues that ‘experiments are flawed because they assume that the world is driven by distinct forces that can be identified, separated and examined in isolation from one another. They also assume that people can be cleansed of their social backgrounds so that the effects that media have upon them can be clearly identified’ (cited in Ruddock, 2001: 39) which is not applicable in a country like India where the tradition and ideological backgrounds are still strongly attached to their everyday life and therefore, their culture.

         3.3 Classification of the audience?

As explained above, Indian audience is a hugely diversified audience in terms of culture. So, if at all there is any strong cultural influence on them, it is very difficult to assess the impact of it on the spectators. The perception of cultural domination cannot be studied without categorising audiences because it is improbable to assess the brunt of any ‘outside’ cultural pressure on a class-less audience. Now, the problem arises when we begin to classify the audience. Ruddock argues that ‘quantitative research methods are ill equipped to account for some of the ways in which audiences relate to media fare’ (Ruddock, 2001: 41). There are a few parameters like age, gender, income, lifestyle apart from long term or short term effects on audiences but more often than not, two or more of these parameters co-incide and make it extremely difficult to establish any fact with conviction.

           3.4 Problem of a specific time frame

India, in the current times, is in a phase of transition from a traditional to a more consumerist, capitalist society in terms of economy. Taking a typically neo-Marxist approach, it may be argued that this would mean that the consumption of media might also be affected by this trend towards a ‘modern’ lifestyle. Even then, majority of the population living in rural areas might have a different choice of media viewership, in fact, they do (we shall discuss it later in 3.5.1). Toffler (1980) and Naisbitt (1982) ‘have drawn on the understandable concern of individuals caught in the process of change…numerous scholarly studies have attempted to assess the impacts of individual trends but the collection if prophecies and assessments is inchoate, unwieldy, and full of contradictions’ (cited in Neuman, 1991: 5). The Western culture-industries are still not able to penetrate and conquer this audience torn between tradition and western influences due to this period of economic and social transition.

     

           3.5 Contra-flow from India

There are cases of immense resistance and ‘contra-flow’ (Thussu, 2010) to the Western media influence in India. We shall consider the main two.

          3.5.1 Vernacular news media against English newspapers and Western News Media

India has the largest number of vernacular languages- 18 being recognised by the constitution. Here is an excerpt from an Indian research aptly titled ‘Cultural imperialism or vernacular modernity?’-

“An overview of the literature on Indian news media shows that the English language media, which dominated national media market from independence till the late 1990s, is no longer the dominant market player (Jeffrey, 1993, 2000; Ninan, 2007; Rajagopal, 2001; Stahlberg, 2002). The booming Hindi news media industry testifies to the fact that vernacular media pose a serious challenge to the dominance and authority of English-language media in the public sphere. As many as 23 Hindi news channels have been launched since 2000. At the same time, according to the 2006 National Readership Survey (NRS), there is not a single English-language newspaper in the top ten in terms of readership.”(Neyazi, 2010: 909) He asserts that localisation became such an important factor in India that after the communications revolution in the country, these vernacular language-newspapers expanded their readerships manifold. It has become a serious challenge for English newspapers to penetrate the Indian media industry as the ‘discursive domain emanating from Hindi and vernacular language newspapers helps in formulating and shaping public opinion and acts as an important channel for the public to raise their grievances and hold the state more responsible’ (Neyazi, 2010: 912)

           3.5.2 The Curious Case of Bollywood

The second one is the case of Bollywood (Hindi film industry) in India, which refutes many classical Western theories of media audiences including cultural imperialism. In fact, Bollywood is an example of a contra-flow to the Western cultural influence and enjoys a huge foreign and diaspora audience. An interesting example here would be that of a Brazilian soap opera titled- India: a Love Story which is a telenovela ranking amongst the most viewed on Brazilian television. Comprising of Brazilian actors and originally in Portuguese, it is very Indian in terms of its content and the treatment of its screenplay. Back in the country, even ‘after the novelty of foreign channels wore off in the early 1990s, Indian channels consolidated their position, recorded the highest audience ratings and forced foreign channels to adopt local programming in a big way’ (Sonwalkar, 2001: 1)

The argument here is very simple, due to a contra flow of Indian media and cultural products, the concept of cultural imperialism seems shaky here because it would be an oxymoronic statement to say that a country facing cultural imperialism is the one exerting its ‘soft power’ on parts of the world and hence it is still not clear whether India is a victim of cultural imperialism or not.

4.   Ties to Neo-liberalism

Cultural imperialism can evidently be described to have ties with neo-Liberalism by virtue of being ‘imperialistic’. Capitalist or neo-liberal societies have a tendency to gain foothold and spread very fast through society to create its own authority because of its nature. This ‘authority’ or the ‘centre of governance’ then dictates terms for the ‘market space’. A similar argument can be put forth in case of culture industries and ‘cultural centers’ of the world in terms of production. This nature of cultural imperialism has been claimed to increase the inequalities among audiences as it ‘has created a new “information underclass” that cannot afford the high costs of information and new media: the computer based equipment needed to access it and the training necessary to operate the complex equipment’ and has instead ‘created a new powerful class of executives and technicians who control and have expertise in the utilization of the information technologies and the evolving network’ (Neuman, 1991: 6). A consumerist lifestyle entailing ideas of freedom, love, and democracy are the themes openly and proudly propagated by the Western media industries as a result of which neo-liberal claws have begun to dig into the cultural sphere too- an idea of consumerist ideology as perceived by Herman and McChesney (1997). How much is the audience affected by it at a personal level, remains to be verified. So, again, the audience perspective is not taken into account which renders the theory devoid of any evidence and therefore, unanswerable.

         5. Ties to development studies

The modernisation critique by John Tomlinson is closely linked to development studies. The modernisation theory in development, when extrapolated to media audience studies could be contextualised as ‘cultural imperialism as a path towards development’. There are conflicting theories when modernisation is linked with cultural imperialism. In the urban/metropolitan parts of India, the so-called cultural influence from outside has given the audiences new identities, meaning, they identify themselves not with the rural fellow Indians but start recognising themselves as a part of a ‘global civil societal construct’ (Keane, 2003) consuming the same media products across the globe. If such audiences increase in number considerably, it would be fascinating to observe the serious implications it would have on the cultural richness within India; whether or not India (or a part thereof) would become the ‘victim’ of cultural imperialism. But here we need to understand the differences between ‘media-related “behaviours” and “cultural practices”’ (Ruddock, 2001: 37). Again, I would argue, the long term effects might be different from the short term ones; there could be different implications for different kinds of audiences, an issue of classification which we have already dealt with above.

 

After analyzing all these arguments, I would argue that all the aforementioned reasons are subject to continual and simultaneous study of media audience in India as culture is a dynamic entity and the effects of outside culture on Indian media audience today could very well be refuted tomorrow. The theory of cultural imperialism still hangs in the air, waiting for a stronghold- that of verification of the effects on audiences. As Tomlinson wrote, ‘we must continually exercise judgment as to when a ‘real’ theoretical issue is likely to turn into a ‘brain-teaser’ (Tomlinson, 1991: 20).

6.   CONCLUSION

Having established that existence of cultural imperialism is indeed an impossible question to answer, at least till now, we should keep in mind the fresh audience research on a scale larger than ever before by multinational corporations for their own benefit and we can hope to use it to strengthen media audiences research on the multifarious, complex and controversial theory of cultural-imperialism.

We must keep in mind that the methodology entailing the study of cultural imperialism should be ‘different from the effects model even at the most obvious level, it should be about ‘influences’ and ‘perceptions’, rather than ‘effects’ and ‘behaviour’. However, whilst such studies may provide valuable reflections on the relationship between mass-media and audiences, they cannot- for the same reason- directly challenge claims made from within the ‘effects model’ paradigm’ (Dickinson et al, 1998: 128). As for the future of this theory, the ‘grandeur of its conception’ and the ‘conception of its grandeur’ will always be celebrated in the cultural studies but it remains to be seen whether there would be sufficient audience studies so as to validate or refute the theory of cultural imperialism.

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REFERENCES on request

Hacked by “Cyber Army”?

Official sites being hacked is obviously not a new and recent phenomenon. Belonging to government or otherwise, even the strongest of the cyber secured websites have fallen a prey to the online hacking scavengers. Owing to the recent hacking of the website of the Defense minister of India, focus is again on the intentions of hackers. What do they want? Why do they choose the internet to gain attention? Is it because the threat of being caught is negligible? Have these hackers proved to be just a medium of outsourced terrorism? What arenas does this debate open?

These are compelling questions and each of them takes us to a different debate. I saw one of the hacked websites (for confidential reasons, I cannot divulge the details) and it was full of abuses for the armed forces and government of that country. These were grotesque uncensored pictures and morbid graphics. The fact that it would be difficult to arrest such mischief makers makes the content even more morose.

What would be interesting to look at, is that whether there was any actual impact of the hacker’s agenda on the concerned government. If not, then what motive do the hackers fulfill? To gain attention? To achieve popularity? To make people aware of their cause? Does it make a difference? Has it EVER made a difference?

I am leaving you with more questions than answers, some points to think about. Or maybe it depends on the country- with the amount of usage of official websites and their reach. I would love to hear your views on this.

Reasons for Anglo-American domination of Global News

The twentieth century has witnessed the most paradigm shifts in the field of media and communication. The Anglo-American dominance of global news is much talked about owing to its duopolistic sustenance. Up till 1918, the Americans and the British were equal in terms of world news, after which the Americans were leading with the British following close behind [Tunstall 2008: 57]. The rationale for this Anglo-American domination of the world news comes from a multiple sources. The news market was on the rise throughout this century due to massive spread of Globalisation- leading to ‘privatisation’ (or ‘deregulation’ in US terms) further leading to the creation of giant media companies (Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France Presse) and later, conglomerates like News Corporation and Time Warner in the 1980s. The emergence of English as the global media language added to the already long list of strengthening factors of this duopoly. The same list included concentrated ownership of capital, first mover advantage in the global news market, relatively free press due to democratic leadership in both the countries, relative financial ‘transparency’, proximity to banking and financial industries, cross-employment in media firms, vertical integration of American companies, packaging information and entertainment together, ‘commodification’ of news, and many more causal variables.
The expansionary nature of capitalism has branched out into Globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation. The widespread acceptance of ‘global corporate ideology’ [Herman and McChesney, 1997] has led to the ‘commodification’ of news. Inarguably latest technology both hardware and software) and the input financial capital rest and can be utilised relatively freely mainly in these two countries.
As a first-mover advantage in the news market and as the originator of modern journalism, the Anglo-American hegemony enjoyed a wide-scale readership and viewership. Foreign news for television is extremely dear to collect so it was easier for these countries to incur this cost than other less economically developed countries, an idea supported by Jeremy Tunstall (2008). This development also produced some of the best professionals, journalists and technicians in this field. The reason for this was also partly because both America and Britain were democracies without military, communist or Nazi influence on their governments [Tunstall and Machin, 1999]. This contributed to a relatively free press in both the countries. It was ‘assumed’ that the news which would be printed/ broadcasted by these firms would be after a careful scrutiny of issues and substantial amount of democratic debates- the concept of non-partisan news [Tunstall and Machin, 1999]. The notion of public service is still perceived to be relevant when it comes to mega-corps like the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). There were other global players in this field namely Japan, France and other European nations but none of those enjoyed a mass audience comparable to the number of Anglo-American news consumers. The political influence across this duopoly is still rampant but the allegiance is less compared to other democratic or non-democratic countries like China, India, Pakistan, Italy, Germany, et al [Tunstall and Machin, 1999].
The geo-politics of news has for long been centered around London as it is centrally located and is the biggest media hub [Jarrah 2008]. The genesis of elite journalism including political coverage and financial news information was in Britain. Even now, the most powerful news component in terms of revenue generation is the financial information. The News Corporation (U.S.) owns the most widely read The Wall Street Journal followed by The Financial Times and The Economist (both from Britain).
The proximity of Anglo-American news media to banking and financial industries (media-finance intimacy) strengthened their dominance because the loans and financial input capital was made easily available and they were able to offset any foreign competition and deter new entrants. In other words, they still remained a duopoly and this nature of market discouraged the formation of any other genuine/ serious global news media players. Sustaining this argument is the figure of annual sales revenue for News Corporation in 2002- a staggering US$ 29,014 million [Sparks, 2007: 172].
The concept of ‘free flow of information’ has marked a new epoch. This has led to a larger role of World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the propagation and endorsement of Anglo-American domination of global news [Sparks, 2007: 184]. One can argue that if the dependency theory is put to work in this regard, we can see that the ‘peripheral’ countries still consider the Anglo-American news media model as a path they themselves need to follow and try to associate themselves with the larger aforementioned conglomerates in order to survive in the global market. Following is an excerpt to support this simple argument.
“Central to dependency theory was the view that transnational corporations (TNCs), most based in the north, exercise control, with the support of their respective governments, over the developing countries by setting the terms for global trade – dominating markets, resources, production, and labour. Development for these countries was shaped in a way to strengthen the dominance of the developed nations and to maintain the ‘peripheral’ nations in a position of dependence- in other words, to make conditions suitable for ‘dependent development’.”
- (Thussu 2003: 61)
The dependency theory also raises an interesting observation which is central to the theme of Anglo-American supremacy of world news- emergence of English as the lingua franca [Seidlhofer, 2005] and [Thussu, 2003: 181]. Be it television broadcasting or newspapers, for more than half of the international audience this is the language of world news. The United Nations (UN) also uses English language for its administrative purposes. English (origin: Britain) is ‘allegedly’ the character of neo-colonialism, a model which is noticeably associated with Britain and United States and clearly they have an advantage in this regard in terms of readability by the audiences worldwide.
English language allows for further combination of packaging ‘news’ with ‘entertainment’- the concept of ‘infotainment’ [Thussu, 1998] which is propagated all over the world on Anglo-American insistence. These giant media conglomerates are vertically integrated (mainly American media organizations) [Thussu, 1998: 64], facilitating these mergers so that the audience base is increased and to force mass-scale dumping of ‘embroidered’ or ‘fabricated’ news by “stressing the positives and concealing the negatives” and at the same time as ‘flag carriers’ of objective and commercial choices of the news audience [Tunstall, 2008: 59]. The commercial advertisement industry sprouted, as a largely non-partisan activity to generate revenue [Tunstall and Machin, 1999: 74]. Observably, there persisted some amount of political agenda and sometimes it was just to disseminate Anglo-American culture among the news readers of the world as a sign of power declaration and the celebration of their economic prosperity. These advertising agencies also claimed to have played an instrumental role in maintaining an emphasis on “‘financial transparency’ across the media” [Tunstall and Machin, 1999: 75]- one of the reasons why these Anglo-American companies were perceived to be more ‘credible’ in the global news arena.
Another fresh argument is offered by Tunstall and Machin (1999) that “there is a tendency to employ each others’ citizens among the American and British news players. For example, London-based Reuters employs numerous Americans. Britain also seemed to be the only foreign country from which American media would accept foreign news.” Given such a setting, one can safely say that this duopoly is very strong and it is difficult for other news media firms of a different nationality to be accepted as a ‘reliable’ source of global news.
Conclusion
Having enumerated the probable causal variables of the Anglo-American domination of the world news, we can evidently say that this duopoly is leading to a global news homogenisation. There is uniformity in the pattern of news worldwide due to the replication of a ‘successful’ model exhibited by the West. The positive aspects being that they have induced competition and have contributed to evolution of national media across nations. They have been trendsetters in terms of obtaining and presenting information. Due to this highly professional attitude, in the contemporary world, news is not as selective and ‘biased’ as it used to be. They have strong networks across the world and their journalists are well-paid and well-skilled.
On the other hand, the profit-making tendency of these capitalist mega-corps has paved way for a “news retail explosion” [Paterson, Christopher in Sreberny- Mohammadi et al, 1997: 152]. The ‘fabrication’ of news in the crucial events, for example, information concerning war or pre-war times and many more, is carried by the international news players to set the ‘global news agenda’ [Thussu 2003: 163]. This is sometimes an engineered process made possible by the manipulation of the kind of visuals or pictures shown, the news stories told through their media to fit a political or commercial schema. For example- “coverage of the civil war in the former Yugoslavia” [Paterson, Christopher in Sreberny- Mohammadi et al, 1997: 149] or the recent ‘liberation’ of Libya from its ‘ruthless’ dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
The Third World nations are still dependent on these global news sources of the West to gain vital information and a “vertical flow does characterise the structure of international communication” [Meyer, 1988] showing traces of imperialism and neo-colonialism.
The Anglo-American hegemony is also apparent in the news culture of ‘sensationalism’ or the use of ‘tabloids’, glorifying violence and similar elements in order to grab the attention of a wider audience, replacing the traditional form of news which aimed at providing political, financial, sports and other important events throughout the world. New and innovative ways to alter or ‘break’ this duopoly would be beneficial in order to preserve the diversity, sanctity and credibility of international news media.

______________________________________________
References on request

Understanding globalisation of Western media organisations through Cultural Imperialism

1. Introduction

Globalization in its current form has sparked off a series of complex phenomena around the world, both at an international level and within nations. Its capitalistic foundation and expansionary element give it the power to modify the shape of every entity that comes in its path. As Robert McChesney puts it, “in the past, to understand any nation’s media situation, one first had to understand the local and national media and then determine where the global market. Today one must first grasp the nature and logic of the global commercial system and then determine how local and national media deviate from the overall system.” (McChesney, The Media System Goes Global, 2010). Of course there are many discourses on whether culture can be viewed as a ‘tool of capitalism’, a presumption opposed by some theorists (Tomlinson, 1991, pp. 134-140) which I will discuss later in the essay. Keeping this background in mind, I introduce the essay with the effects of globalisation on the western media organisations followed by their commercialisation to the ‘domination’ debate, the concepts of cultural and media imperialism and finally, the relevance of the former in understanding the western media conglomerates.

2. Globalisation of western media organisations

By the term ‘globalisation’ here, I refer to its contemporary prevalent form. The media organisations at the time of their inception were largely domestic but as capitalism unfurled, these entities began to take the form of huge Transnational Corporations (TNCs) which have vertically integrated now to become conglomerates. Such Transnational media corporations, mostly Anglo-American, provide wholesome media package products instead of being a simple news media firm, or a television production house, film production company et al. The ‘dominant media flows’ are very strong against the ‘contra-flows (both transnational and geo-cultural)’ (Thussu, 2010). The globalisation process then manifested itself in another form- glocalisation. After vertical integration, this was one of the most successful strategies of these conglomerates- to ‘think globally and act locally’ (Keane, 2003, p. 87). These organisations (like Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, NewsCorp, Associated Press, Thomson Reuters, and others) originated and were concentrated mainly in the West because of the economic and political prosperity those countries enjoyed. An interesting quote which best elaborates my argument is- “As US-led Western media conglomerates have regionalised and localised their content to extend their reach beyond the elites in the world and to create the ‘global popular’, many Southern media organisations have benefitted from synergies emerging from this glocalisation process” (Thussu, 2010, p. 137).

2.1 Growth and Commercialisation

Growth of these media giants can be attributed to multiple sources- privatisation and deregulation in the West, the emergence of English as the global media language, concentrated ownership of capital, first mover advantage in the global media market, relatively ‘free media’ due to democratic leadership in most of the western countries, proximity to banking and financial industries, cross-employment in media firms, vertical integration of American companies, packaging information and entertainment together, and most importantly, commersialisation of media products. The widespread acceptance of ‘global corporate ideology’ (Herman & McChesney, 1997) has led to ‘commodification’ and gigantic growth in their scale of production.

2.2 Commercialisation to Domination
As I have argued above ‘the rise of a global commercial media system is closely linked to the rise of a significantly more integrated “neo-liberal” global capitalist system’ (McChesney, The Media System Goes Global, 2010). The fact that world institutions like World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organisation (WTO) encourage and catalyse this supremacy (McChesney, The Media System Goes Global, 2010) explains the exponential growth. The distribution systems of these organisations are the major reason which makes these oligopolies impermeable, as McChesney puts it, ‘what distinguishes the emerging global media system is not transnational control over exported media content, however, so much as increasing TNC control over media distribution and content within nations’ (2010). The authority of these corporations in maintaining control over intra-national media content in other countries leads to another realm- the discourse of imperialism.
3. Domination or Imperialism?

The oxford dictionary has a very strong definition of imperialism as ‘a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through colonisation, use of military force or other means’. Antonio Gramsci and his ideas of hegemony provided a clear explanation of the current global media situation. He suggests that ‘power is best understood as a relation’ (Simon, 1982, p. 23). It may be put forth that ‘imperialism’ “grasps a specific form of domination, that associated with ‘empire’” (Tomlinson, 1991, p. 19). At the heart of the discussion involving cultural imperialism today, lies a relationship between globalisation, media and culture.

4. Concept of Cultural Imperialism and Media Imperialism
‘Cultural imperialism’ as a term emerged in the 1960s (Tomlinson, 1991) and it begun to be studied by theorists in 1970s. It has neo-liberal foundations but cultural production is a complex process and the industries associated with it have more social impact than financial profit.
“.....cultural objects are everywhere; as information, as communications, as branded products, as financial services, as media products, as transport and leisure services, cultural entities are no longer the exception: they are the rule. Culture is so ubiquitous that it, as it were, seeps out of the super stricture and comes to infiltrate, and then take over, the infrastructure itself. It comes to dominate both the economy and experience in everyday life. Culture no longer works- in regard to resistance or domination- primarily as a superstructure. It no longer works primarily as hegemonic ideology, as symbols, as representations. In our emergent age of global culture industry, where culture starts to dominate both the economy and the everyday, culture, which was previously a question of representation, becomes thingified.”

(Lash & Lury, 2007, p. 4)

An overview of the global cultural environment reflects hegemony of a few cultural industries, explaining the overlap of culture and imperialism. This domain is what is viewed as cultural imperialism. Herbert Schiller defines it as ‘the sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced and sometimes even bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system’ (Schiller, Communication and Cultural Domination, 1976, p. 9) . Johan Galtung establishes that there is a ‘harmony of interests’ between Western powers and the dependent economies of the South. (Meyer, 1988)

When Galtung explains his model of cultural imperialism, he defines it as being a function of ‘Media Imperialism’. The dependence arising due to the rise of global media system results in what is known as the media imperialism- a highly debated concept. This mediation, as Tomlinson argues, between the ‘culture (Pool, 1977)as representation and culture as lived experience’ is what is most prone to imperialistic influence. Cultural imperialism also manifests itself in various other forms such as in food, education system, language and other things apart from the media. Thus, it is a much broader discourse entailing other theories with it such as dependency theory, hegemony-and-ideology and dominant-and-contra flows. Media imperialism is “a particular way of discussing cultural imperialism; it is not simply a name for the study of the media in developing countries or of the international market in communications, it involves all the complex political issues- and indeed, the political commitments- entailed in the notion of cultural domination” (Tomlinson, 1991, p. 22)
A different theory termed product-life cycle theory argued that expansion of media can be looked at as a normal course of a business cycle rather than a systematic domination. This theory was developed by Pool and Read (1977). It stated that, the media industry follows the production curve. There is a continued expansion in its production until the saturation of its market, after which its influence (contrary to imperialistic tendencies) begins to decline. The product-life cycle and dependency theory were both critiqued by Lee (1980), which would be discussed in the following debate.

5. Relevance of Cultural Imperialism- A debate
Globalisation of the western media organisations has intensified the debate of cultural imperialism. The main threat which is perceived from cultural imperialism is that a few cultures will dominate other cultures and the traditional cultures would diminish. There are two conflicting views to analyse the relevance of cultural imperialism in studying rising media convergence.
5.1. Yes, it is relevant.
Marxian understanding of cultural imperialism clearly confirms its relevance in studying western media organisations. Its main concern and focus is the relationships between the strong and weak nations and how the former exert power over the latter. They think of ‘cultural imperialism’ as a result of “transposing the intra-societal class conflict to the international communication system” (Lee, 1980, p. 35). The neo-Marxists conclude quite explicitly that “the international streams of communication are a manifestation of the ruling interests of the societies from which they originate and not a unanimous output of the nations involved” (Lee, 1980, p. 36). According to neo-Marxists, since there are only a few media conglomerates, the dominant ideologies and cultures of the nationals owning it would impose their country’s cultures over their audience, which is multi-cultural. Herbert Schiller in his 1976 work critiqued the theorists who by neo-liberal explanations, justified the expansion of media conglomerates and refuted the claim that it has any significant cultural impact. He argued that “though the economic imperative initiates the cultural envelopment, the impact extends far beyond the profit-seeking objectives of some huge media monopolies and cultural conglomerates....the cultural penetration that has occurred in recent decades embraces all the socialising institutions” (Schiller, Communication and Cultural Domination, 1976, p. 8). Although his work dates back to the 1970s, it still holds relevance and to sum this argument up, here is an excerpt from his interview in 1996:
“The monopolies are stronger than ever and the concentration continues. It now embraces a wide area, it is not just 'media', all forms of communication are brought together in these unified corporate conglomerates. You have Time-Warner, which has assets of about 20 billion dollar and is operating radio stations, recording studios, film studios, television programming and increasingly also retail stores, where they sell the apparels that they produce in their movies. Disney is of course an enormous conglomerate. Then there is Viacom, which owns MTV and does a great job in selling pop culture and making these kids less and less capable of doing any thinking. But it also includes computer companies, telephone companies. The television networks are all owned by super conglomerates. CBS is owned by Westinghouse, NBC by General Electric. ABC was just bought by Disney and Fox is owned by Murdoch. To think that these are crumbling, is like being in a fantasy land. We have to be careful in using the word 'globalization' in this context. It may to seem that everybody is participating in it and you will have to, and if you don't you will fall behind and lose, we have to be competitive, that thing. Globalization is a direction of super corporations. They are using the globe to market their products and penetrate every part of the world”
(Schiller, Information Inequality, 1996)
Hollywood is at the top of film industry when it comes to worldwide hegemony. According to Boyd-Barrett (1977: 131), it was the ‘economic of scale’ factor which gave advantage to Hollywood to establish hegemony all over the world which can only be handled by the super media giants with huge accumulation of capital and technology. He emphasises on the ‘consumerist lifestyle’ promoted through its films.
Non-Marxists have a ‘pluralist’ view of cultural imperialism and they separate cultural imperialism from ‘media-imperialism’, dealing specifically with the media effects in culture. Oliver Boyd-Barrett, prefers to deal with media imperialism specifically while understanding the western media organisations and their globalised form as it allows a more “rigorous examination”. He (Boyd-Barrett, 1977, p. 117) defines ‘media imperialism’ as: ‘The process whereby the ownership, structure, distribution or content of the media in any one country are singly or together subject to substantial external pressures from the media interests of any other country or countries without proportionate reciprocation of influence by the country so affected’. For the sake of simplification in this essay, I shall only restrict myself to the term ‘cultural imperialism’.
Both these views broadly explain the theoretically cited reasons which advocate the relevance of ‘cultural imperialism’ in understanding globalisation of Western media firms.
5.2. No, it is not relevant.
The first view negating the relevance of cultural imperialism is given by Straubhaar (2010) who uses arguments such as- active audiences and class (this part emphasized on “active role of the audience in selecting media inputs” (Blumler & Katz, 1974, p. 87), audience’s choice, interpretations and resistance towards mass-fed media products such as advertising), commercialisation and transnationalisation (which contradicted the view that expansion of the media multinationals was done with imperialist ambitions and instead asserted that it was a capitalistic requirement), asymmetrical interdependence (this approach underlines the importance of national media against the influence of global media and the argument of contra-flow and undermines the dependency theory) and product-life cycle theory (this contradicted the cultural imperialism by predicting that the influence of the western media organisations would fade as they lose their market share after market saturation). Thus, there is a shift ‘from total dependency to asymmetrical interdependence’ (Straubhaar, 2010).
Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi provides a very simple connection between imperialism and culture as she compares imperialism to a ‘double-edged sword’, impacting, “albeit unequally, both on the colonised and the coloniser and it must be seen as the major global diffuser of modernity, its ‘cross-cultural carrier’” (Golding & Harris, 1997, p. 66)- a comparison which in itself suggests that it is not only the dominating country at the influencing end.
Globalisation theorists have a fairly different view, used for contradicting cultural imperialism in the case of western media organisations. They believe that the notion of the ‘nation’ is fading away rapidly and is paving way for a ‘global’ territory. Globalisation in essence means that “we cannot conceive the whole in terms of one of its parts, say the First or Third worlds (as in imperialism), or as a composite system of logically prior nation states” (Beyer cited in (Ritzer, 1998, p. 82)). Ritzer (1998) quotes Appadurai (1990) while recognising “deterritorialisation as one of the central forces in the modern world”. He also states that “the global culture is not normatively binding, but simply a general mode of discourse about the world as a whole and its variety”. Many cultural theorists like John Fiske focused on active audience and their role in ‘resisting’ the ‘undesired effects’ of culture.
CONCLUSION
There is thesis and anti-thesis of the relevance of cultural imperialism in this essay but the fact which hold true is that the capitalism has managed to establish itself globally only through media giants and evidence above suggests that it has profound cultural effects too. I conclude that globalisation of western media organisations cannot be studied in isolation without viewing it through the filter of ‘cultural imperialism’. As for the counter arguments negating its significance, I would quote Herbert Irving Schiller, “I am not saying that everybody is a cultural dope. But I do have to recognize where the cultural power is” (Schiller, Information Inequality, 1996).

(words- 2545)

REFERENCES

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Castells' "Network Society" and its assessment

INTRODUCTION
The technology today and its exponential growth are transforming our society every second. We are living amidst two very different epochs. What makes this period unforeseen in history is the speed at which it is changing. Never before have we witnessed a gap between the cultures of two generations being as large as the current one. The internet has become “the fabric of our lives” and the character of our period stems from the interaction between multiple models, not of less developed societies aiming to emulate the most developed ones (castells(1942), 2001, p. 1). The number of Internet users on the planet grew from under 40 million in 1995 to about 1.5 billion in 2009 (castells, the rise of the network society, 2000, p. 24)

Manuel Castells, a professor of Sociology, and Director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), in Barcelona has been studying closely these changes and his theories have opened a new arenas for debates- debates centered about the future of the societies we are a part of. His seminal work is on the theory of ‘network society’ in which he talks about a society not restricted by time and distance- about moving away from the Gutenberg galaxy towards an Internet galaxy. Some of his key publications include a trilogy- ‘The Rise of the Network Society’, ‘The Power of Identity’ and ‘End of Millennium’ (1996) and his latest book- ‘Communication Power’ (2009). In this essay, I shall describe how Castells defines the ‘network society’ and the advantages and disadvantages of the concept for understanding the current societies.

CASTELLS AND THE NETWORK SOCIETY

The foremost question is- what is a network? Castells had explained it as “a set of inter-connected nodes. A node is the point at which a curve intersects itself. Networks are very old forms of human practice, but they have taken on a new life in our time by becoming informational networks, powered by the internet”. (castells, the rise of the network society, 2000, p. 501). He states that the internet and wireless communication “is the technological basis for the organisational form of the Information Age: the network” (castells(1942), 2001, p. 1). We are living in a second world which is virtual- after the advent of internet. “Networks are becoming the preferred way of organising in virtually all domains of social life” (Stalder, 2006). The society is influenced by any changes in the technology and with the internet revolution it has taken an immaterial shape.
“The trends observed in the last decade seem to support the relevance of this analysis of the transformation of time, however abstract it appears to be. The process of globalization has accelerated the tempo of production, management, and distribution of goods and services throughout the planet, measuring productivity and competition by shrinking time to the lowest possible level”
(castells, the rise of the network society, 2000, p. 50)
There are networks at every level in the society- professional, institutional, personal and so on; there are ‘network states’, ‘networked individualism’ and even ‘network of networks’ on the internet. In traditional societies, there was a vertical social structure- hierarchies but the network society has a horizontal communication system. These lead us to the concept of network society which refers to a society in which time and distance is immaterial. According to Castells, “three independent processes came together, ushering in a new social structure predominantly based on networks: the needs of the economy for management flexibility and for the globalisation of capital, production, and trade; the demands of society in which the values of individual freedom and open communication became paramount; and the extraordinary advances in computing and telecommunications made possible by the micro-electronics revolution…..thus internet became the lever for the transition to a new form of society- the network society- and with it to a new economy” (castells(1942), 2001, p. 2). This theory was empirically conceptualised and took a holistic view of the social study, i.e., to understand one aspect of the society, on needs to understand the whole of it. The key dimensions of Castells’s concept of network society are- network, nodes, space of flows, power and counter power among others. By ‘space of flows’ Castells understood that these are:
“the material arrangements that allow for simultaneity of social practices without territorial contiguity. It is not a purely electronic space. It is not what Batty has called a cyber space, although cyberspace is a component of the space of flows. It is made up first of all of a technological infrastructure of information systems, telecommunications, and transportation lines. The space of flows is also made of networks of interactions and the goals of each network configurate a different space of flows”
(castells, Grassrooting the space of flows, 2005). The relationships of “power and social priorities, derived from a technology’s situation are thus, in a sense, designed into instruments” (Barney(1966), 2004, p. 54)
The network society is a virtual extension of one’s self in “all its dimensions, and with all its modalities” (castells(1942), 2001, p. 118). Although it is closely linked by the theory of ‘virtual communities’ but they are fairly distinguishable; the scope of this essay doesn’t allow me to explore and make comparisons between the two.
ADVANTAGES OF THE CONCEPT OF NETWORK SOCIETY FOR UNDERSTANDING CURRENT SOCIETIES

Castells’s conception of the networks has a wide scope and is indeed, very flexible. The concept of network society uses networks as the only connecting thread which is adaptable and can be applied to a large range of social structures and organisations. The networks in today’s society “are proliferating in all domains of the economy and society, outcompeting and outperforming vertically organized corporations and centralized bureaucracies” (castells(1942), 2001, p. 1). Before the arrival of internet, networks had to face hurdles in “coordinating functions, in focusing resources on specific goals, and in accomplishing a given task, beyond a certain size and complexity of the network but in today’s society, the description of ‘network society’ fits considerably because due to internet and technology, there is an unprecedented combination of flexibility and task performance, of coordinated decision-making and decentralised execution, of individualised expression and global, horizontal communication, which provide a superior organisational form for human action” (castells(1942), 2001, p. 2). The boundaries between mass media communication and other types of communication are blurring which is inducing the technological scientists to produce more and more user-friendly devices for better inter-personal and mass ‘self-communication’ (castells, communication power, 2009) i.e. a form of communication which has emerged with “the development of the so-called Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, or the cluster of technologies, devices, and applications that support the proliferation of social spaces on the Internet thanks to increased broadband capacity, open source software, and enhanced computer graphics and interface, including avatar interaction in three-dimensional virtual spaces” (castells, the power of identity, 2010, p. 25).
The element of space of flows in the concept of network societies as perceived by Castells is “becoming increasingly the space in which most important activities operate in our societies. There is interaction; there is connection” (castells, Grassrooting the space of flows, 2005). The information sharing system characterising the network societies can enhance our knowledge about everything we need to know and thus helps us to reach a conclusive rationale through which the problem solving becomes faster and easier for the human mind.
In his theory of informational/ network society, he makes another important point that “our societies continue to perform socially and politically by shifting the process of formation of the public mind from political institutions to the realm of communication, largely organized around the mass media” (castells, communication, power and counter-power in the network society, 2007). To a large extent, political legitimacy has been replaced by communication framing of the public mind in the network society, as one can see from the arguments he gives. Castells extols the role of NGOs to elaborate his concept of a network state in a network society. According to him these NGOs would be considered as ‘neo-governmental organizations’ rather than non-governmental organizations. These would, as he envisions, guide the network society on behalf of the humans.
In understanding the current society, it becomes relevant to study this theory on informational networks because of the rising role of ‘power-players’ using internet as “a tool of surveillance as in the U.S., using manual control of email messages when robots cannot do the job, as in the latest developments in China, treating Internet users as pirates and cheaters, as in much of the legislation of the European Union, buying social networking web sites to tame their communities, owning the network infrastructure to differentiate access rights, and endless other means of policing and framing the newest form of communication space” (castells, communication, power and counter-power in the network society, 2007)

DISADVANTAGES OF THE CONCEPT OF NETWORK SOCIETY FOR UNDERSTANDING CURRENT SOCIETIES

Felix Stalder points out correctly that “Castells tends to offer very broad and general definitions that shift much of the explanatory work to their empirical application” (Stalder, 2006, p. 170). Many critics of Castells’s work have pointed out to the fact that even if his model of network society is foolproof, what does one gain out of it? Ironically, he studies ‘network’ society in isolation. Perkmann (a critic of Castells) terms the theory as an “empty signifier” because of its vague nature and broadness. This critique is “understandable because Castells is not only extremely frugal with his definition of networks, but also does not use, or even refer to, any of the standard categories developed by network analysts over the last two decades” (Stalder, 2006). It might be because his thesis is based on empirical evidence and is relatively new; not much work has been done on it. There are a few other challenges of the network society as described by Castells himself, in his book The Internet Galaxy (castells(1942), 2001).
The first one is ‘freedom’ itself owing to expansion of media monopolies free communication and information flows become restricted and/or manipulated. The next challenge is that instead of the north south divide (determined by space of places) there are other kinds of isolated nodes unevenly dotting the world network maps; these are the people switched off from the network societies. Another major limitation is the storage and ‘knowledge generation and absorption capacity’ of human beings. By this, Castells means that “there is no more fundamental restructuring of education (castells(1942), 2001, pp. 275-279). The education system is transforming into a virtual network consisting of those distributing knowledge and those receiving it. An unforeseen challenge to the concept of network society arises in the form of developmental concern. In network societies, a substitute has still not been provided for physical forms of labour employment and institutions for social security.
“The mechanisms of social protection on which social peace, working partnerships, and personal security were based need to be redefined in the new socio-economic context”
(castells(1942), 2001, p. 278).
This new economy after the advent of network society is in need of market regulations and institutions for stabilizing monetary and fiscal crisis. Castells, along with the above drawbacks also recognizes environmental degradations as a concern beyond the scope of the concept of network society.
A persistent criticism of contemporary mode of communication in the network society is critiqued to have lost the personalised communication. The ‘reality’ element from the real world is diminishing i.e., “new technologies are also fostering the development of social spaces of virtual reality that combine sociability and experimentation with role-playing games” (castells, communication, power and counter-power in the network society, 2007, p. 28). Internet is leading to isolation of individuals from the real world; “faceless individuals practice random sociability” (castells(1942), 2001, p. 116).
Castells’s book (castells, communication power, 2009), states specific aspects of the network theory and the review of the book brings out a point- “….Castells’
s account
 is 
undercut 
by 
a 
rather 
old‐fashioned 
analysis 
of 
the 
media and 
a 
confusing 
framework 
of 
how 
audiences 
make
 sense
 of 
media 
messages. 
It 
is 
also
Limited 
by 
Castells’ 
focus 
on 
communication 
power 
as 
the 
‘shaping 
of 
the 
public 
mind’.
This
 weakens
 his 
analysis 
of 
the 
most
 important
 form
 of
 power 
in
 the 
network
 society:
The 
power 
to 
construct 
socio-technical 
networks” (Kavada, 2011)
One of the sharpest criticisms to the theory of network society has been- the non existence of the “actors and institutions able and willing to take on these challenges”. (castells(1942), 2001, p. 280). To explain this point further, real world still has geographical divides which leads to different consequences for different people in the network society- a claim which refutes the essence of the theory of network society.
CONCLUSION

There have been other theorists apart from Manuel Castells who have worked on the concept of network society like Darin David Barney, Felix Stalder. They are all contemporary theorists. The theory of network society is more relevant today as compared to any other era in history.
But in nineteenth century, a German sociologist named George Simmel conceptualised ‘a web of relations which was, in essence, analogous to today’s definition of network society. He talked about Dyad and Tryad (A dyad is a two person group; a triad is a three person group), asserting that as the number of people in a web of relation increases the ‘individuality’ of each person involved decreases but at the same time, due to increase in the number of entities involved, it became more and more difficult to exert control over one individual, hence the ‘freedom’ was retained. This debate of ‘freedom’ vs ‘individuality’ is relevant even today, with Castells’s network society at play. Simmel, in his work finally suggested that in an effort to become a member of a larger group (network), one must become a part of a ‘family’ (smaller network) first to retain both their individuality and freedom.
Also, in understanding the current informational societies we must not ignore the one-third population of the world which operates outside the domain of the network society and according to the internet-world, still lives in the ‘dark-ages’. Such a society needs to be studied in order to conform with the totalistic view of the theory of network society as viewed by Castells. But the changes in our society due to the effect of internet are very visible to us in everyday lives and can be better understood by this theory; wit few minor drawbacks which will become clearer in the due course of time, this theory can be used a powerful tool for the future generations to understand this era of communication revolution.
I would thus conclude that Manuel Castells’s work helps us to understand how the “Internet came into being, and how it is affecting every area of human life--from work, politics, planning and development, media, and privacy, to our social interaction and life in the home. We are at ground zero of the new network society” (12ja)

(references overleaf)

REFERENCES
1. (n.d.). Retrieved january 9, 2012, from http://books.google.co.in/books?id=1t_tAAAAMAAJ&q=castells+internet+galaxy&dq=castells+internet+galaxy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YC0LT8fVJabL0QGxsv3RAg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA
2. Barney(1966), D. D. (2004). The network society. cambridge: polity.
3. Bennett, W. (2003). New Media Power: The internet and Global Activism. In n. couldry, & j. curran, contesting media power: alternative media in a networked world. oxford: rowman & littlefield.
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5. castells, m. (2009). communication power. oxford: oxford university press.
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7. castells, m. (2005). Grassrooting the space of flows. In M. Abbas, & j. n. erni, internationalizing cultural studies: an anthology (pp. 627-636). oxford: blackwell.
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13. Kavada, A. (2011). Book Review of Communication Power. Westminster Papers in communication and culture , 197-200.
14. Stalder, F. (2006). manuel castells: the theory of network society. cambridge: polity.