Media and Identity in Contemporary Europe: Consequences of global convergence

by Richard Collins

Overview

An integrated analysis of the central issues in contemporary media policy. Chapters focus on technological change and its impact on cultural and political identities, the role of the cultural industries in the 'New Economy' and the impact of European integration on national institutions - public service broadcasting in particular. Because technological change in broadcasting has enabled us to open up media markets, the shape of media and of society has become more internationally-oriented. Indeed, modern international media has bought into question the very legitimacy of national communities and ideologies. And this is a phenomenon whose greatest impact has been in Europe. These studies address the future of public service broadcasting and the power of national regulators to shape trans-national media relationships. The author takes an empirical approach to analysis of these issues, exploring media and communication studies very much as a social science.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781841508665
Publisher:	Intellect Books
Publication date:	01/01/2002
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	524 KB

About the Author

Richard Collins is Visiting Professor at the LINK Centre; Visiting Professor at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne; and Professor of Media Studies at the Open University, United Kingdom.

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Media and Identity in Contemporary Europe

Consequences of Global Convergence

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By Richard Collins

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2002 Richard Collins
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-866-5

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The social sciences have never given the media so much attention. In geography, sociology, economics, social psychology and in political science the media are increasingly taken as an object for study, not least because globalisation is conditional upon communication between locations, identities, trading partners and communities that were hitherto separate. By definition, if people and places are connected – as is axiomatic in globalisation – they are communicating. And if they are not communicating, they are not connected. Formerly, communication was slow, expensive and of limited practicability. New technologies have changed all this. To take two convenient examples: satellite communication has abolished the customary interdependence between cost and distance in communication; and the Internet is paradigmatic of both the convergence of hitherto distinct media and, increasingly, of the decoupling of duration and price of communication.

This is not to assert that location is unimportant and that everything and everyone is globalised, or to deny the robust continuing existence of the recognisably distinct and different media of radio, television, film, book and newspaper publishing, etc. But their importance has declined. Less and less does location define the limits of markets and possibilities of co-operative working relationships. The new media are growing faster than the old and reshaping the time honoured relationships, identities and structures of power that grew around the old media.

Hence the prominence of the two new buzzwords, 'Globalisation' and 'Convergence.' These terms signify the re-orientation and new foci of concern of contemporary social sciences and media studies. 'Globalisation' and 'Convergence' both signal themes of integration. Once, media studies could address separate media – film, television, telecommunications, the press – each in a distinct national context. Now, the national context has given way – through globalisation – to a wider international connectedness (in Europe, particularly interestingly, by Europeans' choice to create a trans-national economic, political and – perhaps – cultural community) and the media themselves are increasingly hybridised, substitutable and interdependent – through convergence.

None of this is unprecedented. Steinberg (1969), for example, showed how rapidly printing changed the diffusion of knowledge across Europe and accelerated the integration of markets (not least in printed books themselves). Marvin (1988) develops this theme in her well-named 'When old technologies were new.' But, putatively at least, the scale and pace of change has itself changed. That is why the phenomena and processes that we identify as 'Globalisation' and 'Convergence' demand attention. But how much? 'How much?' is the question that lies behind much of what follows.

'Convergence' and 'Globalisation' are more than contingently connected. For media and communication are central to globalisation for two reasons.

First, there can be no division of labour without communication between those who divide their labour. And the integration and interdependence of economies, which constitute one of the principle themes of globalisation, is a re-structuring of established patterns of labour division. The cost, functionality and accessibility of means to produce, store, process, transmit and receive information have all changed dramatically. 'Moore's Law,' (which asserts that the price of a given quantity of computing power halves every eighteen months), is paradigmatic of these changes. Now it's cheaper and easier to communicate globally than ever before. Indeed, new communication technologies have decoupled price and distance. Globalisation is intimately interdependent on global communication systems. As communicative networks grow, their utility increases exponentially as 'Metcalfe's law' states (see Chapter 11 for a discussion of 'Metcalfe's Law'). The growth of global systems of communicative interconnection is thus self-reinforcing.

Second, information has itself become an increasingly important traded commodity – the media and its contents are themselves traded internationally more and more. They constitute one of the components of the increasingly 'weightless' international economy (see, inter alia, Coyle, 1997 and Quah, 1996). Here too there is a fundamental 'law' at work. Because information is non-rival, it is not exhausted by consumption (you read this work and it remains available for others to read), development of cheap and effective reprographic technologies (technological change again), tends to extend and integrate markets across time and space. This trend is characteristic of the 'weightless' economy but is more marked for information than for other elements of the 'weightless' economy.

Again, there is nothing particularly new about this. Writing is a technique and printing a technology which permit partial realisation of this intrinsic potentiality of information. Through these technologies information is captured, recorded and made available for consumption through time. As written and, a fortiori, printed works were transported from place to place so the same information was made available for consumption through space. But what is new is the acceleration and intensification of the realisation of this inherent potentiality of the information economy. Electronic communication – telegraphy, telephony, radio, television and the contemporary convergence of all these formerly distinct media of communication into interactive multimedia – have further contributed to realisation of the inherent potentiality of information to be consumed by many across time and space at zero marginal cost.

But though these integrative trends are so salient – both in the academic literature of media and social sciences and in the daily experience of all of us – they are realised and experienced in highly situated ways. The past lies heavily – but weighs differently – everywhere. Realisation of the potential of modern media and communications to call into existence a seamless, integrated, global communicative community has been, and continues to be, conditional not only on technological change but also on the context, historical, political and cultural, in which media and communication operate. It is not only that the past shapes and situates the present but also the extent to which the future is realisable.

My evaluations of policies, institutions and informing ideologies centre on two themes: the role and future of one of the most distinctive features of media and communications in Europe, and of what Louis Hartz (1964) called 'the daughters of Europe' – public service broadcasting (Chapters 5–8). And on the power and limits of the nascent integrative regulatory paradigm for media and communications in the era of convergence – competition policy (Chapters 10 and 11). In these there is a close interdependence of themes. I argue for both public service and the market. The striking consequences of the surprisingly recent introduction of competition in European broadcasting has, overall, benefitted European consumers of broadcasting services. But, I argue, a 'one size fits all' roll-out of competition based policy and regulation is not sufficient to secure the public's interests.

Because the economics of information are different from those of other goods and services, different institutional arrangements are required to realise these interests. Public Service Broadcasting potentially (and to some significant extent actually) provides a good solution to the problems of securing the public interest in broadcasting (and in the new media post-convergence). The question is how to balance and reconcile the different institutional structures and traditions represented by competition policy and authorities on one hand and public service broadcasters and broadcasting on the other. I attempt to address these conceptual problems in Chapters 5, 6, 7, 10 and 11 and offer Chapter 8 as an account of an intriguing instance of the messy, concrete, empirical entanglement of principles and institutions that academic discourse customarily rigorously distinguishes.

The concerns which I've outlined above are explored in three principle domains. First, the relationship between media and communications and between multi-national and multi-linguistic societies – notably the European Union but also Canada. These have been the two chief instances on which I've reflected and examples from these inform empirically much of what follows. Second, the contemporary position of public service broadcasting in a radically changed policy and institutional environment. And third, the regulatory and policy consequences of 'convergence.' Though each chapter foregrounds one of these areas of concern, each echoes through other chapters. For each chapter, distinctive though its focus may be, addresses the inescapable contemporary connectedness of what hitherto was once comfortably separate.

A seamless, integrated, global communicative community? How so? If (big if!) the history of media and communications is a history of technological and institutional change directed to the realisation of an intrinsic potentiality in symbolic systems to offer instantaneous communication to any and all through time and space at zero marginal cost, then a seamless, integrated, global communicative community is the end point, the telos, of that history.

If assent can be given to this teleological historical explanation which asserts, at least for heuristic purposes, that technology is no longer a major constraint then it follows that other factors chiefly shape and constrain the realisation of this potentiality. Technological change has been sufficiently important for there to be widespread, if not universal, acknowledgement of globalisation. The 'removal' of that variable from the equation throws into sharper view, and greater relative importance, the 'other factors' – economic, institutional/political and cultural/linguistic – which constrain and shape the situated and incomplete realisation of the potential for a seamless, integrated, global communicative community.

Time for an obvious caveat. Doubtless, future writers will regard what now seems to be the leading edge of media and communication technology in the year 2000 as impossibly constraining. Media history is full of accounts of the gleeful optimism that attended the introduction of old technologies when they were new. See, for example, some of the comments at the birth of the telephone in de Sola Poole, 1983a.

What of these 'other factors'? The economic is an obvious one. The exploration of the distinctive economic characteristics of information constitutes an underlying theme throughout these essays (see, in particular, Chapters 7 and 9). But I should acknowledge something of also what's not here. In these studies, I pay scant attention to the problem of the (half) empty glass. Though I recognise (who could not?) that different parts of the world and different classes within any particular society dispose of very different levels of resources, my interest has rather been focused on the societies, and the kinds of societies, in which I've lived. My examples, and the problems which I've addressed, are drawn from the developed world (and mostly from the North Atlantic world). Where I allow the North Atlantic 'have nots' to enter these essays it's mostly under the comforting rubric of reductions in communicative inequality. I have preferred to take comfort in the affordability of the 'quality' press, the striking increases in penetration of telephony to the home and the rapid diffusion of Internet connectivity rather than reflect on the information poor and increased social stratification around cleavages marked by access to media and communications. I tend to look, in short, at the half full rather than half empty glass. See my discussions of the international context for audio-visual production in Canada (Chapter 9) as a case in point.

These essays are rooted in a political economy approach to the media. But, as the foregoing remarks about preferring to see half full rather than half empty glasses suggests, my kind of political economy is not the usual kind. Most often, a political economy approach is seen to be synonymous with Marxism. Rather as the Frankfurt School sailed under the colours of 'Critical Theory' instead of Marxism so too is the political economy school of media studies seen as Marxism conveniently conforming to an acceptable academic dress code. It would be foolish to deny the importance of Marxism in my own formation. Evidence of my adherence to one of its many quixotic forms over much of the seventies and eighties is on the public record. And these essays continue, I think, to testify to my sense of the importance of this tradition. It's one well worth arguing with. But the political economy of the media is more important and more interesting than an approach to the subject simply informed by Marxism could be. It's not only Marxists who believe that resources are scarce and that the allocation and use of these resources both express and reproduce social power. It is not only left-inclined political economists who see media and communications as a locus of power of unprecedented importance – one which requires the expression of social power through politics and law to countervail commercial power – and vice versa!

Clearly, as the last provocative sentence suggests, my work bears the marks of its formation in more than one matrix – of Marxism certainly but no less clearly in the works of the 'right': in Daniel Bell (1976) and the Peacock Report (Peacock 1986) for example. My pluralism goes with the deep habits of a more generally sceptical and empirical turn of mind.

Accordingly, the 'other factors' that are most salient in these essays are ones which, I believe, have often been neglected in the mainstream of media studies political economy: the contradictory forces of language and culture, institutions and agency. My discussions of language and culture below are framed in the context of the media and communications of the multi-national, and multi-linguistic, 'states' of Canada and the European Union. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 9 are particularly relevant. I reach two major conclusions. First, language is of primary economic importance as a factor that shapes the economies of global media and communications. In the 'weightless' economy of a decoupling of the price of communication from time and distance of communication, it is language (and culture) which limit the integration of media and other information markets. But, although integration and globalisation are constrained by this factor, nonetheless, globalisation is taking place, not least because there are very high returns to economies of scale in media businesses because of the remarkable disparity (also a phenomenon that is conditional on technological change) between first and second and subsequent copy costs in this domain. And in this process of integration of markets, there are very powerful economic advantages for English speaking producers. Second, shared language and culture are rather less important for the cohesion of political communities than the dominant frame of reference, rooted in nationalist assumptions about the necessary congruence of polity and culture, has customarily supposed. Indeed, the media are rather less important than media studies has customarily proposed.

A pendant discussion follows from the question that obviously arises if these heterodox conclusions are accepted. If that is so, why then is so much importance given in policy and regulation to trying to achieve the putatively necessary congruence between culture (and language) and polity? I find an answer in history (and economic interest) rooting my explanation of the differences in French and British European policy (Chapter 4) in the formation and national ideologies of these two major societies and cases in point. Language and culture are important and so too are institution and agency. As will by now be clear, I'm not a technological or economic determinist. What people do, and what they do through political institutions, matters very much. Hence the importance of media regulation, the self conscious attempt of political communities to shape their communicative fates. Even in an era of globalisation this counts for a lot (but not as much, as I show in Chapter 11, as regulators and policy makers customarily wish).

We move, therefore, out of political economy and into media policy. Policy studies are fuzzily defined but I take policy to be the self-conscious social shaping reflexively undertaken by sovereign political communities to realise their values. Policy studies almost inevitably have a normative character whether explicitly or implicitly. Their normativeness testifies to their authors' sense, whether well or ill founded, recognised or unacknowledged, that politics, policies and institutions can make a difference – that agency matters. I've sought to show throughout these essays (a theme that's particularly evident in the chapters constituting parts two and three of this work – Chapters 5 to 11) that though people do not make history on the terms of their own choosing nonetheless they make – and can re-make – their own histories.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Contents

1 Introduction,
Europe,
2 Challenges and Opportunities. Broadcasting in Multi-national States,
3 Television, Identity and Citizenship in the European Union,
4 Locked in a Mortal Embrace. The European Union Audiovisual Policies of the UK and France,
Public Service Broadcasting,
5 Public Service Broadcasting and Freedom,
6 Two Types of Freedom. Broadcasting Organisation and Policy on both sides of the Atlantic,
7 Public Service and the Media Economy. European Trends in the late 1990s,
8 Supper with the Devil. A case study in public/private collaboration in broadcasting. The genesis of Eurosport,
Policy and Regulation,
9 Cultural Development in an Open Economy. Trading in Culture: the role of Language,
10 Paradigm Regained? Where to in Media and Communications Regulation,
11 Back to the Future. Digital Television and Convergence in the UK,
Bibliography,