The collection of essays in Part II and III in Media Access respresent two differing views about why the digital divide exists. In Part II, the contributing authors offer a number of insights into the non-economic barriers facing individuals and groups who are less likely to access the Internet. The studies in this chapter take a micro-level approach to determine what personality traits and attitudes, for example, make some individuals more motivated to use new technologies. Part III provides a broad overview of the issue of media access, particularly Internet access, and builds on the idea that access to networked computers is not enough to ensure broad cultural adoption of this new technology. This represents a more macro-level approach to understand the underlying socio-economic, political, and cultural practices that systematically perpetuate –or in some case worsen- the digital and information divide. However, I would like to take this latter, macro approach a bit further by examining the political economy of technology diffusion. This involves a critical understanding of how new communication technologies, no matter how innovative, are always the product of and informed by particular commercial and cultural industries and their economic interests.
Political economists discuss spatialization as the process of transforming space through communication networks. In recent years, corporate concentration has been integral to this process. In the past quarter-century, the erosion of America’s anti-trust laws has allowed media corporate entities to coalesce to maximize profit. Integration among media corporations can occur when a media enterprise buys a significant part of another related media corporation that is not a direct competitor to reduce risks in each market. Media corporate concentration can also occur when one corporation extends control within a line of business, often to provide competitive advantage due to security of production by reducing competitors.
The predominately American based techno-culture industries, such as network television and internet service and content providers (such as AOL), have effectively consolidated with far reaching capacities to spread their scope across geography and national boarders to maximize profit by growth in creating new markets. The effects of predominantly American based industry consolidation with mile-a-minute communication technologies has the effect of swiftly transporting American manufactured cultural artifacts -and the ideology laced through them- across previously isolated areas. Wealth accumulates for the conglomerate as it creates new consumers across borders by usurping local media outlets and creating new consumers.
Communication technologies get preferential treatment over the public interest by governing bodies. For example, the modern state is moving away from policies and regulations that serve the public interest, such as allowing private competitors entry into a market that is controlled by a private or state-owned monopolies, toward favoring corporate interests by deregulating telephone companies. The consumer’s space is thus effected because one’s purchasing power and access to choice in the market is diminished. Also, international governmental organizations such as NAFTA and the WTO, that ensure the chore nation or national chore’s entry into periphery markets promote trade across borders and have been effective at giving the richer nations and their resident trans-national corporations more control over global communication policies. In this case, state and cultural sovereignties are threatened as governments act as facilitators, rather than opponents to the cultural imperialism that is made possible by commercial media consolidation. Thus, the resident state of the media corporation and culture industry represents an economic and political chore, whereas developing nations constitute the periphery.
This process of media consolidation’s encroachment into, or engulf of previously autonomous developing spaces (a process referred to as “spacialization”) impacts all levels of the periphery’s economy, civic life and culture. Many developing nations have been characterized as being isolated and with low productivity with respect to First World development standards. This represents an insurmountable challenge to developing successful endogenous market that can then integrate themselves competitively into the global market. As I have argued in response paper 2, historical and global forces have created dependent, or exogenous, markets in these regions with little local relevance or capacity for globally competitiveness. Aside from political disruptions, other obstacles include resistant local cultures, the lack of resources, inconsistent science and technology policy, and external market forces that limit how periphery regions can nurture and develop the By conducting two methods of research, namely archival research and personal interviews, personal testimony about the changes in the quality of life of periphery constituents could be compared to official accounts of economic and technological development in a developing country. Themes will emerge from personal and official narratives of development which the researcher can then use to determine what effect—dependency or the elixir effect—the diffusion of communication technologies has on a periphery nation and a national periphery.
The research question that the articles in Part II and III of Media Access, namely, what effect does the diffusion of new communication technologies have on developing economies or national peripheries, requires a textured understanding of the diffusion of technology innovations and constituents’ needs. Food, water, civil society, and security from war and violence may be prerequisites to using technology in a way that narrows the information gap.
1 comment:
The collection of essays in Part II and III in Media Access respresent two differing views about why the digital divide exists. In Part II, the contributing authors offer a number of insights into the non-economic barriers facing individuals and groups who are less likely to access the Internet. The studies in this chapter take a
micro-level approach to determine what personality traits and attitudes, for example, make some individuals more motivated to use new technologies. Part III provides a broad overview of the issue of media access, particularly Internet access, and builds on the idea that access to networked computers is not enough to ensure broad cultural adoption of this new technology. This represents a more macro-level approach to understand the underlying socio-economic, political, and cultural practices that systematically perpetuate –or in some case worsen- the digital and information divide. However, I would like to take this latter, macro approach a bit further by examining the political economy of technology diffusion. This involves a critical understanding of how new communication technologies, no matter how innovative, are always the product of and informed by particular commercial and cultural industries and their economic interests.
Political economists discuss spatialization as the process of transforming space through communication networks. In recent years, corporate concentration has been integral to this process. In the past quarter-century, the erosion of America’s anti-trust laws has allowed media corporate entities to coalesce to maximize profit. Integration among media corporations can occur when a media enterprise buys a significant part of another related media corporation that is not a direct competitor to reduce risks in each market. Media corporate concentration can also occur when one corporation extends control within a line of business, often to provide competitive advantage due to security of production by reducing competitors.
The predominately American based techno-culture industries, such as network television and internet service and content providers (such as AOL), have effectively consolidated with far reaching capacities to spread their scope across geography and national boarders to maximize profit by growth in creating new markets. The effects of predominantly American based industry consolidation with mile-a-minute communication technologies has the effect of swiftly transporting American manufactured cultural artifacts -and the ideology laced through them- across previously isolated areas. Wealth accumulates for the conglomerate as it creates new consumers across borders by usurping local media outlets and creating new consumers.
Communication technologies get preferential treatment over the public interest by governing bodies. For example, the modern state is moving away from policies and regulations that serve the public interest, such as allowing private competitors entry into a market that is controlled by a private or state-owned monopolies, toward favoring corporate interests by deregulating telephone companies. The consumer’s space is thus effected because one’s purchasing power and access to choice in the market is diminished. Also, international governmental organizations such as NAFTA and the WTO, that ensure the chore nation or national chore’s entry into periphery markets promote trade across borders and have been effective at giving the richer nations and their resident trans-national corporations more control over global communication policies. In this case, state and cultural sovereignties are threatened as governments act as facilitators, rather than opponents to the cultural imperialism that is made possible by commercial media consolidation. Thus, the resident state of the media corporation and culture industry represents an economic and political chore, whereas developing nations constitute the periphery.
This process of media consolidation’s encroachment into, or engulf of previously autonomous developing spaces (a process referred to as “spacialization”) impacts all levels of the periphery’s economy, civic life and culture. Many developing nations have been characterized as being isolated and with low productivity with respect to First World development standards. This represents an insurmountable challenge to developing successful endogenous market that can then integrate themselves competitively into the global market. As I have argued in response paper 2, historical and global forces have created dependent, or exogenous, markets in these regions with little local relevance or capacity for globally competitiveness. Aside from political disruptions, other obstacles include resistant local cultures, the lack of resources, inconsistent science and technology policy, and external market forces that limit how periphery regions can nurture and develop the By conducting two methods of research, namely archival research and personal interviews, personal testimony about the changes in the quality of life of periphery constituents could be compared to official accounts of economic and technological development in a developing country. Themes will emerge from personal and official narratives of development which the researcher can then use to determine what effect—dependency or the elixir effect—the diffusion of communication technologies has on a periphery nation and a national periphery.
The research question that the articles in Part II and III of Media Access, namely, what effect does the diffusion of new communication technologies have on developing economies or national peripheries, requires a textured understanding of the diffusion of technology innovations and constituents’ needs. Food, water, civil society, and security from war and violence may be prerequisites to using technology in a way that narrows the information gap.
Post a Comment