Page 102 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Hans J. Kleinsteuber

G¨ utersloh, has settled parts of its top management in New York and ob-
tains its highest turnover in the United States. It is a good example of
how a global structure dissolves national boundaries and enterprises are
becoming transnational actors.
In international research, controversial positions are developed on
this point: a rather affirmative view stresses the chances offered by global
media, for instance the capacity to break up the traditional authorities
internationally and promote social change (Demers 1999). The critical
analysis focuses on terms such as transnational corporate capitalism;de-
scribesthedestructionoflocaltraditions,primarilyintheSouththrough
theNorth(Hollywoodization);andtheactivitiesofthelargestmediaplay-
ers, which remain unhindered by democratic control (Sussman and Lent
1991). These theoretical perspectives see, for example, the construction
of global “Electronic Empires” as central and are often linked to polit-
ical economy approaches, a direction of thought that is strong in the
international context, but almost forgotten in Germany (Thussu 1998).
In this context, two aspects are usually dealt with: The question of
how existing communication cultures react to threats from the outside
and develop their own adaptation and countering strategies. Another
direction stresses the necessity to react to tendencies to globalization
with demands for democratization, which corresponds with the general
tendency in the direction of more democracy in the world. “Democ-
ratizing Communication” is thereby used as a concept to oppose the
media-industrial imperative, evaluating the manifold experiences of the
world with comparative methods (Bailie and Winseck 1997).

TheTechnical Future of Communication
Media and communications technologies always originate in one cor-
ner of the world: telegraphy and the computer in the United States,
broadcasting technologies in Europe. They then spread to the rest of the
world. Technologies represent an aspect of universal similarity as they
tend toward global resemblance in their technical construction, while, in
comparison, cultures seem to have many facets and to be inconsistent.
The former produce conformity, the latter favor difference. In reality the
situation is more complex, because, for instance, the same technologies
can be used in different ways. Technologies developed in the Western
world (such as the Internet) and designed for individual use (in house-
holds) are in other places used much more collectively (e.g., Internet
cafes). Illiterate oral cultures conquer radio technologies in a completely
new way as they discover it as an opportunity for sharing traditional

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