Introduction: New media and the reconfiguration of power in global politics (original) (raw)
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The transformation of media power
The support or hostility of the mass media is very important for a political party during the election campaign, which can decide its election results in the countries of Western civilization. However, in recent decades the sphere of mass communication has changed, and media power now functions differently. What major analyses have been made of this transformation and the change in media support for political struggles? ChatGPT4o In recent decades, the mass media sphere has undergone a significant transformation, which has fundamentally influenced the dynamics of political campaigns in Western democracies.
The Media of Power, the Power of Media
Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 2016
This essay combines international political economy with a critical political economy of media perspective that recognizes the crucial role of transnational media corporations (tnmc) in building consent for neoliberal globalization. Media are found to be instrumental for consolidating transnational capitalist hegemony—creating a popular culture based on individualism, deference to authority, and consumerism. tnmcs consolidate diverse national media for the production of hybrid programming that features multiple local images and symbols wrapped in consumerist ideology and narratives. Examples from animation reveal consistent themes in tnmc content that entertain and appeal to diverse audiences, illustrating media’s persuasive messages essential to the cultural hegemony of transnational capitalist leadership.
Media and Democracy in the Age of Globalization
2007
Agents of participatory democracy or purveyors of consumer capitalism? Guardians of the public sphere or lap dogs of the power elite? Much of the debate about media's role in the "democratization" of various societies around the world demands an examination of the implications of such questions. For starters we might consider if mass media engender, as Marshall McLuhan once envisioned, a "global village" where democracy is encouraged along with universal understanding and the cultivation of a cosmic consciousness. Or is media transformation within new democracies nothing more than a tool of global economic powers to colonize previously "untapped" social domains via information, entertainment, and new technology? While perhaps seeming to be artificially oppositional in the face of today's complex political and cultural landscapes across the globe, these questions are nevertheless useful points of departure in that they suggest how media might serve to alter, enable, or disrupt the cultural sovereignty of nations and political potency of communities. Indeed, variations of these themes have been at the heart of controversies regarding the scope and legitimacy of regional trade agreements (Galperin, 1999a, 1999b), and within them resides the core issue of in whose interest and benefit are media and new communication technologies being used to reshape nations and "democratize" the flow of information and capital. In short, what "kind" of democratic reform is taking place, and how are media involved?
With the advent of Arab uprisings that broke out across the Middle East in 2011, many analysts tended to champion the role of new digital technologies in driving the socio-political change in the region. However the changes that new media brought about to the media and politics are indeed remarkable, this paper argues that these changes have been more evolutionary than revolutionary. That is to say the Internet itself does not usher in a fundamentally new age of political participation and grassroots democracy.
Power, Media Culture and New Media
Matrizes, 2009
Este artigo examina de maneira crítica alguns dos argumentos e contra-argumentos direcionados à Sociedade da Informação. É dada especial atenção às origens da visão predominante sobre sociedades que são cada vez mais dependentes de tecnologias da informação e da comunicação e do processamento de informações. Embora alguns pensadores entendam que esse fato está intimamente associado com sociedades cada vez mais informadas, o presente artigo destaca algumas das perspectivas mais críticas a esse respeito. Questiona-se também se, à luz da expansão da Internet e como celeiro de novas plataformas digitais, haveria evidência de alguma mudança sustentável nas relações de poder que pudesse gerar maior igualdade. Abstct This paper critically examines some of the claims and counterclaims about the Information Society. It gives particular attention to the origins of the predominant vision of societies that are every more dependent on information and communication technologies and the processing of information. Though some assume that this is intimately associated with increasingly knowledgeable societies, this paper highlights some of the more critical perspectives on this view. It also considers whether, in the light of the spread of the Internet and as host of new digital platforms, there is evidence of any sustainable shift in power relations that might yield greater equality
Media, Power and Public Opinion
Media, Power and Public Opinion. Essays on Communication and Politics in a Historical Perspective, edited by Domenico Maria Bruni, Peter Lang, 2022
This book aims at exploring in a long historical perspective and in a wide historical context the reactions of political institutions and players towards new media and new forms of communication, as well as their strategies in order to combat and/or exploit their effects and potential. This is an original and innovative attempt to combine traditional approaches to the history of the media and politics with studies that aim to directly provide some historical perspective on contemporary preoccupations with 'fake news' and manipulation of public opinion. Addressing these topics by focusing on specific events and specific contexts as case studies allows us to connect the hic et nunc dimension with the general trend of the history and verify the particular effects of general long-term trends.
Media and politics: a new paradigma?
2010
The exercise of political power in a democracy is primarily made through communication with institutions, civil society and individuals. What happens if governments have to deal with an enormous increase of mass, personal and interactive communication like the latest "explosion of communication"? The new media landscape arises issues in the relation of democratic governments with society, specially when it comes to the exercise of its power. In the past, media influenced not only the way government spoke with citizens but the political process and the media-politics relationship. Now it seems governments all over the world are successfully changing the media and the news. New attacks on the freedom of the press and journalists happen all over the world in either liberal or conservative regimes. This article with look for examples from several countries, as France, Italy, Portugal, Venezuela, Argentina, the United States and Russia, and will try to draw a picture and not just to gather a sum of anecdotical evidence. Can these strains and limitations result from the "excess" of nongovernment communications, leading governments to overtake the media, by legal procedures, exerting economic pressure, interfering in the media or upgrading their own marketing, propaganda and misinformation? The present day governmental hyperpropaganda and the constraints on journalists activity hint at the emergence of a new paradigma in the governments-media relation: severe constraints within a formal democracy. It is widely accepted that "attempts by governments to control and manipulate the media are universal because public officials everywhere believe that media are important political forces" and that, in consequence, nowhere are the media totally free from formal and informal government and social controls, even in times of peace. On the whole, authoritarian governments control more extensively and more rigidly than nonauthoritarian ones, but all control systems represent a point of continuum. There are also gradations of control within nations, depending on the current regime and political setting, regional and local variations, and then nature of news. The specifics of control systems vary from country to country, but the overall patterns are similar (Graber, 2010: 16). Hallin and Mancini (2004) theorised media systems with a mutual dependency between political and media institutions and practices, avoiding the paradigma of media always being the dependent variable on relation to the system of social control which it reflects: "media institutions have an impact of their own on other social structures" (Hallin and Mancini, 2004: 8). Considering that mutual dependency, they proposed three models of media systems: the Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist (including Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain), the North and Central European or 1 Please do not quote without consulting the author.