Page 202 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

Media convergence, communications regulation 181

ownership and pluralism following the failure of efforts in the 1990s (Harcourt
2005) and modest initiatives to monitor and examine concentrations since then.
In 2012–13 media reform groups, academics and media from nine European
member states launched a European citizens’ initiative on media pluralism, using
the EC petition mechanism to demand action by European institutions to safeguard
the right for independent and pluralistic media.
In Western media systems policy-makers have favoured the convergence,
consolidation and integration of communication companies. Cross-ownership
and integration has become an increasingly accepted norm despite opposition
from civil society groups, some political actors and bodies such as the Council of
Europe. Processes of digitalisation and technological convergence, while complex
and uneven, have undoubtedly influenced the weakening of sectoral regulation
and of command and control measures (such as entry control) which have
underpinned broadcasting regulation. Technological change, it is argued, has
undermined the rationale (scarcity, market failure), desirability and capacity of
sectoral regulation, in particular content regulation. The locus of communications
policy is shifting from traditional to convergent media and to the broader areas
of information and digital communications policy. This involves a host of critical
issues for researchers amongst which are data protection, privacy, Internet content
controls and censorship, Big Data and the implications of copyright, digital
rights management and other intellectual property rules.

Internationalisation of communications policy

The internationalisation of communications policy in its modern form may be
traced to the co-ordination of global telegraphy networks established by the
colonial powers and the US in the nineteenth century. Yet from the early years
of radio, policy actors and debate focused on mass communications, organised
mainly within national boundaries. Regulatory power was distributed among
governments and parliaments, regulatory agencies and the judiciary, with varying
levels of influence and accommodation for businesses, political parties and
organised civil society groups. Through the twentieth century, cultural regulation
of broadcasting was a matter of national sovereignty, even though the allocation of
radio spectrum was and remains a matter requiring international co-operation to
minimise interference and ‘spill over’ effects. From the 1970s, however, inter-
nationalisation of telephony (beyond international connectivity of mainly mono-
poly national services) and broadcasting was accompanied by a shift towards
1
transnational policy regimes. Key trends include:
shifts from national to transnational regulatory authority
erosion of distinctions between different media through convergence,
conglomeration and new media developments
strengthening of private media industry rights, especially in intellectual
property rights (IPRs), with global rules imposed on national-level regimes