Page 81 - Cyberculture and New Media

72 On the Way to the Cyber-Arab-Culture
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Gibson’s original use of the word space in cyberspace
relates to electronic spaces created by computer-based
media. Today, it has been adapted by an emerging
cyberculture as a general term for digital media space.
Cyberculture represents the merging of the present and the
future and the total encroachment of technology into human
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lives.

In this chapter, I describe cyberspace in one particular cultural
context – namely, the Arab world. Cyberspace and new technologies in the
Arab world have created a new cyberculture that I refer to here as “Cyber-
Arab-Culture.” This newly emerging cyberculture is described here as a
product of the notions and processes of globalization, democratization,
privatization, digitization and Arabization.

2. Globalization: International Communication and the Flow of
Information
International communication can be understood as communication
that occurs across international borders. International communication in the
contemporary world “encompasses political, economic, social, cultural and
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military concerns.” The focus of scholars studying international
communication in the early decades was on the flows of information between
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and among nations. Another understanding of international communication
focused on propaganda. Harold Lasswell’s analysis of propaganda in World
War I assumed that no government could control the minds of people without
using propaganda, and therefore the mass media could move societies for
good or ill. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and scholars of that period, such
as Walter Lippmann, advocated using the mass media for the betterment of
all people. The idealism of international communication scholars in that early
era, particularly concerning the media’s potential for improving the world,
continues to some extent today.
Linked to the research undertaken in international communication,
as McDowell explains, are the unbalanced flows of news and entertainment
between countries, and the rise of the large digital delivery corporations in
telecommunications, software, online media, and other communications
spheres. The implications of these developments, and the factors underlying
them, are important elements of such research. But more significantly,
McDowell considers the role of the state in shaping national media, and the
roles of intergovernmental organizations in shaping world media industries,
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flows and uses. McDowell shows that “effects of the dominance of media
corporations on individuals, cultures, and politics across national boundaries
have been debated at different times, whether called cultural imperialism or
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transnational media.” In fact, “one-way media content flow from one