Detailed Outline : Drawing A Bead On Global Communication Theories.

Lamiae Mejjane
Dr. Ibahrine
Fall 2007

outline 2: Drawing A Bead On Global Communication Theories.

A) 'Normative' theories

• According to a book entitled Four theories of the Press: Taxonomy (the division of all the various versions and aspects of a topic into systematic categories and sometimes subcategories as well) was created.
• Media systems are grouped into these categories:

1. Authoritarian (dictatorial such as the media of the fuscist regimes of Hitler)
2. Liberal (left-wing as in current American Parlance)
3. Soviet Theory (which assigned the media a role as a collective agitator)
4. Social responsibility theory (media ownership is a form of public trust rather than an unlimited private franchise)
5. Development media theory
6. Democratic-participant media theory

• News and information were the primary roles of media

1. deontic of normative (explain and contrast comparative media systems)
2. development model (addressing issues of poverty)
3. participatory media (democratically organized media)

B) A Different Approach I: Comparing and Contrasting Media

• Soviet media had a strong overlap with media under other dictatorships and with so-called development media
• those who live in economically advanced and politically stable countries are in a poor position to understand how media work on much of the rest of the planet
  

1. Political Power: media was very controlled by the Soviet state
2. Economic Crisis: economic crisis in Russia was profound except in the 80s and 90s when oil revenues shot up.
3. Dramatic Social Transitions

• The soviet state went into its first media transition after the revolution
• the second media transition during the revolutionary era
• 3rd media transition: after the death of Staline
• Final media transition: after the collapse of the USSR in 1991

4. small-scale alternative media

C) A different Approach II: Globalization and Media

• Globalisation means 'liberalization' and 'privatization'
• Globalization also means 'cultural imperialism'
• Hybridity approach (ex: Spanglish, Hinglish)

D) A Different Approach III: Small-Scale Alternative Media

• Smizdat media: it refers to the hand-circulated pamphlets, poems, essays, plays, short stories, novels, and, at a later stage, audio- and video cassettes (magnitizdat) that began to emerge in Soviet Russia and later in other Soviet bloc countries from the 1960s onward. the term literally means 'self-published'

E) Conclusions