Global Communication and Media Policy

This week’s chapter is called “creating a global communication infrastructure”. Since the beginning of the chapter, two terms are highly important in order to understand the material: liberalization and privatization of the international communication. First, let’s start with the “privatization of the international communication sector” (Thussu 67) . In the chapter, Thussu defines it as a “telecommunication company that goes from public to private”. It’s not the government who controls its communication or economic movements anymore, it’s a particular person or a group of people who own it and manages its activities. Indeed, this action of privatization is made in order to achieve specific goals vis-à-vis the societies and the particular all over the world. Amongst these goals, we can cite: “enforcing the international trade agreements, remove hindrances hence increase income and growth” (Thussu 68). The agreements were set in order to regularize the trade across the borders be...

As in the first part of this reaction, I’ve summarized what he chapter was about and I commented on the “free flow of information”. In the second part, I’d like to comment on the “hegemony” part concerning the international communication. As defined in the chapter, hegemony is the cultural control that exercises a specific country over another indirectly through many components we express ourselves and identity through, such as the clothing, the music, the trends … This phenomenon of exporting a specific aspect of a country’s culture to another (sometimes many countries at the same time) is based on global communication. Indeed, media plays a very significant role in this hegemony. It’s thanks to the western  TV programs that are accessible in the Eastern countries. Youth are among the huge consumers of foreign media programs hence, they want to imitate whom they watch (actors, celebrities…) in the way they dress, the way they talk, what they consume for food and drinks,...

This week’s chapter is called: “Approaches to theorizing international communication”. It is mainly about an introduction to the world of the different theories related to the field of international communication in order to have a better understanding of the material and how things work. The text tackles different theories, concepts and key terms: 1. Free flow of information: used mainly for propaganda. It is beneficial at the economic and political level as well to provide information that is accessible for everyone. This approach has helped many Western countries keep a economic relationship with the “Third World Countries”, sell their products and strengthen their own markets. 2. Modernization theory: is tightly linked with “Free flow of information” in the way that the Western countries make their country/culture/economy/known over the seas. The major aim of this theory is indeed transferring the economy and the political models of the west. This theory is also cal...

The chapter I'm about to discuss is called " The Historical context of international communication" taken from  International communication: continuity and change  by  Thussu, D. K.  In order to introduce the material, I'll start with a brief summary then provide a personal critique about one aspect of the essay that has grabbed my attention.   First, the chapter does represents global communication from its beginnings when thanks to many means of communication such as the telegraph and the newspapers have tied many useful links at the worldwide level and that's how the information was travelling faster with the time and this is also how the world was and is still becoming more connected.  A long time ago from now, especially at war time, media was progressing at the same time as the historical events such as world war two. It’s been way through which the societies were directly or indirectly linked and aware of each other’s...