Page 278 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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TheFutureofthe ThreeModels

example) tended to spread to every country where the printing industry
was diffused. Eisenstein’s analysis reminds us that every technological
innovation eventually leads to wide-ranging adaptations by individu-
als and social institutions. People tend to assume the behavior, forms,
structures, and, in this case, communication procedures that are as-
sociated with the new technology, and this influence often produces
common cultures of practice across different social contexts. Golding
(1977: 304), in an analysis of the spread of western practices of journal-
istic professionalism to the developing world, made a similar point: “the
transfer of professionalism runs parallel to the transfer of technology
which can be alternatively understood as the problem of technological
dependence.”
The influence of technology cannot be separated from the social con-
text in which technologies are adopted and implemented, of course, and
we should not exaggerate the standardizing effects of technologies of
mass communication. The printing press, for example, certainly dif-
fused many communication practices. But as we have seen, quite differ-
ent forms of print media developed in the different political contexts we
have studied here, and their disappearance clearly owes much more to
economic and sociopolitical forces than to any change in print media
technology. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the process of homog-
enization is also connected with technological innovation. Changes in
television technology, for one thing, clearly played an important role
in disrupting the existing media structure by facilitating cross-national
broadcasting and the multiplication of channels, developments whose
significance we will explore further in subsequent pages. In many ways
technology has increased the ease by which media content can be shared
across national boundaries, with journalists around the world having
access on their computer screens to the same sets of words and images.
News agencies, of course, have played this role for some time, providing
news written in a single style, produced to a single set of news-gathering
practices. The dominant news agencies of the twentieth century have
been the British ones, and they have played an extremely important
role in spreading the Liberal Model of journalism. Another more re-
cent example would be a service similar to Evelina produced by Euro-
pean Broadcasting Union (EBU) that provides images, filmed according
to a common standard and supplied to every European user. CNN is
obviously another powerful instrument for the spreading of common
procedures and skills, as is the Internet.

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