Page 16 - Communication Theory and Research

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Introduction and Overview 5

for at least twenty years in the age of satellite, cable and Internet, although it is
remarkable how little the actual balance of content of what is offered and consumed
has changed in that time, leaving aside the greater volume. In any case, it is clear
that the discourse of globalization has been widely heard across Europe,
although with less resonance in countries such as the UK and Germany that are
big enough to manage the challenges.
One of the characteristics of communication research (whether for good or ill)
everywhere is that it tends to respond to the circumstances and events in the
‘real world’. There is pressure for it to do so because a central feature of the
media is the continuous reporting back to society about ‘reality’ and because
news media frequently become implicated in the events they report. Even in the
spheres of entertainment and culture, the media are characterized by continu-
ously changing and evolving formats, styles and fashions, requiring a similar
response from those who study media culture. In respect of historical events, the
general consequence of this time- and space-bound feature of the field is that
attention focuses differentially on what is ‘locally’ most significant (local here
referring to Europe). In the period of development of communication science in
Europe there have been major themes that are somewhat particular to the region.
These include: the Cold War and the ‘Iron Curtain’ actually dividing Europe; the
tensions in relations with America over foreign policy and in the cultural sphere;
the gradual movement towards a more united Europe by way of the EC and later
the EU; ideological conflicts between left and right; various internal insurgencies
and terrorist movements that have afflicted several major European countries,
including the UK, Spain, Germany and Italy; varied response to the Balkan wars
of the 1990s; the response to immigration into Europe, especially in the later
phase of large-scale asylum seeking. These and other matters have often provided
the stimulus to research and shaped the pattern of topics.
After the ‘communications revolution’ of the early 1980s public communica-
tion policy increasingly took an economic and liberal turn (Van Cuilenburg
and McQuail, 2003). A well developed and flexible media and communication
system was seen as a necessary condition of national prosperity in the Information
Age. While the rhetoric of the Information Age was heard in the United States,
in practice it was left to a narrowly focused and inflexible market system to
promote innovation. In Europe, both national governments and the European
Community directly subsidized new media and used projects of law to open up
new sectors based on the new forms of communication technology. The very fact
that there are two levels of communication policy, at national and European
level, makes for a distinctive pattern of governance and ensures that a variety of
principles of the public interest – economic, social and cultural – are continually
in play. Latterly the trend in European countries has been towards setting up
a single national agency for the regulation of communication issues affecting
different media, ranging from broadcasting and telecommunications in particu-
lar, to television and even the press in some respects.
Against this background, we can better understand the evolution of the main
themes of European communication research and their particular focus. These
themes are dealt with under the following headings, with a few explanatory
remarks added.