Spaces of Identity

Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries

David Morley, Kevin Robins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134865307
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

We are living through a time when old identities - nation, culture and gender are melting down. Spaces of Identity examines the ways in which collective cultural identities are being reshaped under conditions of a post-modern geography and a communications environment of cable and satellite broadcasting. To address current problems of identity, the authors look at contemporary politics between Europe and its most significant others: America; Islam and the Orient. They show that it's against these places that Europe's own identity has been and is now being defined. A stimulating account of the complex and contradictory nature of contemporary cultural identities.

1

GLOBALISATION AS IDENTITY CRISIS

The new global media landscape

For business purposes … the boundaries that separate one nation from another are no more real than the equator. They are merely convenient demarcations of ethnic, linguistic and cultural entities. They do not define business requirements or consumer trends.

(IBM, 1990)

FROM NATIONAL TO GLOBAL MEDIA

Until very recently, what has prevailed in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, has been the system of public service broadcasting, involving the provision of mixed programming – with strict controls on the amount of foreign material shown – on national channels available to all. The principle that governed the regulation of broadcasting was that of ‘public interest’. Broadcasting should contribute to the public and political life of the nation; in the words of the BBC's first Director-General, John Reith, it should serve as ‘the integrator of democracy’ (quoted in Cardiff and Scannell, 1987: 159). Broadcasting should also help to construct a sense of national unity. In the earliest days of the BBC, the medium of radio was consciously employed ‘to forge a link between the dispersed and disparate listeners and the symbolic heartland of national life’ (ibid.: 157). In the post-war years, it was television that became the central mechanism for constructing this collective life and culture of the nation. In succession, radio and television have ‘brought into being a culture in common to whole populations and a shared public life of a quite new kind’ (Scannell, 1989: 138). Historically, then, broadcasting has assumed a dual role, serving as the political public sphere of the nation state, and as the focus for national cultural identification. (Even in the very different context of the United States, where commercial broadcasting was the norm from the beginning, national concerns were paramount; the ‘national networks’ of CBS, NBC and ABC served as the focus for national life, interests and activities.) We can say that, on either side of the Atlantic, broadcasting has been one of the key institutions through which listeners and viewers have come to imagine themselves as members of the national community.

Now, however, things are changing, and changing decisively. During the 1980s, as a consequence of the complex interplay of regulatory, economic and technological change, dramatic upheavals took place in the media industries, laying the basis for what must be seen as a new media order. What was most significant was the decisive shift in regulatory principles: from regulation in the public interest to a new regulatory regime – sometimes erroneously described as ‘deregulation’ – driven by economic and entrepreneurial imperatives. Within this changed context, viewers are no longer addressed in political terms, that is as the citizens of a national community, but rather as economic entities, as parts of a consumer market (Robins and Webster, 1990). The political and social concerns of the public service era – with democracy and public life, with national culture and identity – have come to be regarded as factors inhibiting the development of new media markets. In the new media order, the overriding objective is to dismantle such ‘barriers to trade’. No longer constrained by, or responsible to, a public philosophy, media corporations and businesses are now simply required to respond to consumer demand and to maximise consumer choice.

Driven now by the logic of profit and competition, the overriding objective of the new media corporations is to get their product to the largest number of consumers. There is, then, an expansionist tendency at work, pushing ceaselessly towards the construction of enlarged audiovisual spaces and markets. The imperative is to break down the old boundaries and frontiers of national communities, which now present themselves as arbitrary and irrational obstacles to this reorganisation of business strategies. Audiovisual geographies are thus becoming detached from the symbolic spaces of national culture, and realigned on the basis of the more ‘universal’ principles of international consumer culture. The free and unimpeded circulation of programmes – television without frontiers – is the great ideal in the new order. It is an ideal whose logic is driving ultimately towards the creation of global programming and global markets – and already we are seeing the rise to power of global corporations intent on turning ideal into reality. The new media order is set to become a global order.

In considering these questions, let us begin with what we would call the mythology of global media. A fine example of this is the ‘Worldview address’, delivered to the 1990 Edinburgh International Television Festival by the late Steven Ross (1990), then head of the world's largest media corporation, Time Warner. According to Ross, Time Warner stands for ‘complete freedom of information’, that is for the ‘free flow of ideas, products and technologies in the spirit of fair competition’. National frontiers he sees as a relic of the past: ‘the new reality of international media is driven more by market opportunity than by national identity’. We are, says Ross, ‘on the path to a truly free and open competition that will be dictated by consumers’ tastes and desires’. It is a world order in which the consumer is truly sovereign.

The world that Time Warner is anxious to construct will be ‘a better world’ (for Time Warner and for the consumers of its products). ‘The competitive market place of ideas and experience can only bring the world closer together’, Ross maintains. ‘With new technologies, we can bring services and ideas that will help draw even the most remote areas of the world into the international media community’. A world ‘closer together’, it is assumed, will be a more democratic one. Thinking of recent events in Eastern Europe, Ross associates the free flow of communications with the overthrow of totalitarian societies. ‘Who’, he asks, ‘could have imagined the satellite, the fax machine, CNN, television – and even records and movies – as tools of democratic revolution?’ From this point of view, media corporations are now at the cutting edge of the new world order. ‘It is up to us’, says Ross, ‘the producers and distributors of ideas, to facilitate this movement and to participate in it with an acute awareness of our responsibility as citizens of one world …. We can help to see to it that all peoples of all races, religions, and nationalities have equality and respect’.

For Ross, the global media corporations of the 1990s are now finally and truly realising what McLuhan predicted in the 1960s. In the eyes of Ross communication is a good thing and the more freely it flows, the better it is; experiences shared on a global scale, through the new communications media, will help us to transcend the differences between different cultures and societies, and to work towards ‘genuine mutual trust and understanding’. The message is simple and uplifting: it is the story of progress towards freedom and democracy on a world scale, and of the responsibility of companies like Time Warner to ‘actively lead the way toward making the world a better place’.

Steven Ross offers us one way of interpreting the significance of globalisation in the media industries. And, indeed, there is something attractive about his ‘worldview’, with its appeal to international democracy and the ‘interconnection of cultures’. Nonetheless, it is all too easy to see how in reality the ‘free circulation’ of media products might be about corporate power and profits, rather more than about a ‘better world’. What we are being asked to buy is very much an idealised image of a new media order, an image which bears little relation to the real order that is presently taking shape around us.

THE NEW MEDIA ORDER

Herbert Schiller's interpretation of the new media order differs considerably from that offered by Steven Ross. ‘The actual sources of what is being called globalisation are not to be found in a newly achieved harmony of interests in the international arena’, Schiller argues. What he sees is ‘transnational corporate cultural domination’; a world in which ‘private giant economic enterprises pursue – sometimes competitively, sometimes co-operatively – historical capitalist objectives of profit making and capital accumulation, in continuously changing market and geopolitical conditions’ (Schiller, 1991: 20–1). What is emphasised here is the historical continuity, and consistency, in corporate motivations. What is recognised and acknowledged is that, in the 1990s, the context of this drive for market and competitive position has been significantly transformed. The struggle for power and profits is now being waged at the global scale (Aksoy and Robins, 1992).

What we are seeing is the construction of the media order through the entrepreneurial devices of a comparatively small number of global players, the likes of Time Warner, Sony, Matsushita, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and the Walt Disney Company (see table 1). For viewers, the new media order has become apparent through the emergence of new commercial channels, such as BSkyB, CNN, MTV or the Cartoon Network. What we are seeing is the development of a new media market characterised by new services, new delivery systems and new forms of payment. In place of the mixed-programming channels of the ‘traditional’ broadcasters, we now have the proliferation of generic channels (sport, news, music, movies). It is estimated that the 59 channels licensed to operate in the UK in 1992 will increase to around 130 by 2002 (Booz-Allen Hamilton, 1993: 9). In the United States, there are soon likely to be more than two hundred channels. It is, of course, the global media players that are investing in these channels (and the UK is only one small part in their global jigsaw).

Global corporations are presently manoeuvring for world supremacy. There are three basic options open to media corporations: ‘The first is to be a studio and produce products. The second is to be a wholesale distributor of products, as MTV, CBS, and HBO are. The third is to be a hardware delivery system, whether that hardware is a cable wire or a Walkman’ (Auletta, 1993b: 81). The objective for the real global players is to operate across two or even all three of these activities. It is this ambition that motivated the takeovers of Hollywood studios (Universal by Matsushita, Columbia/TriStar by Sony, Fox by Rupert Murdoch). As Steven Ross (1990) observes, ‘mass is critical, if it is combined with vertical integration and the resulting combination is intelligently managed’. The issue for media corporations now is to decide what scale of integration they need to achieve, and are capable of managing, in order to build globally.

But there is more to it than just integration within the media sector. What we are beginning to see is a much more fundamental process of transformation, in which entertainment and information businesses are converging with the telecommunications industry. A sign of things to come was the projected, but ultimately unsuccessful, merger, in 1993, of the telecommunications company Bell with the largest US cable company, TCI. The new company would have become the world's largest media corporation. It was described, by Bell Atlantic's chairman, as ‘a perfect information age marriage’ and ‘a model for communications in the next century’ (Dickson, 1993). The new ‘multi-media’ giant would have provided not only conventional cable television, but also telecommunications services, computer games and software, home banking and shopping, video on demand, and other interactive services. The aim is still to develop information and communications ‘super-highways’ that will move us beyond the era of mass media and into that of personalised media and individual choice.

Table 1 The world's top 20 audiovisual (AV) companies by turnover

But it will be personalised media and individual choice, of course, on the basis of what is available and for sale. Global corporations are securing control over programming (production, archives), over distribution and over transmission systems. The flow of images and products is both more intensive and more extensive than in the past. What should also be emphasised is how much American cultural domination remains a fundamental part of this new order, though now American or American-style output is also the staple fare of non-US interests too (Schiller, 1991). As a writer in the Financial Times recently observed, ‘soon hardly anywhere on earth will be entirely safe from at least the potential of tuning in to cheerful American voices revealing the latest news or introducing the oldest films’ (Snoddy, 1993).

What corporate manoeuvres and machinations are seeking to bring into existence is a global media space and market. In the mid-1980s, Saatchi & Saatchi were talking about ‘world cultural convergence’, and arguing that ‘convergences in demography, behaviour and shared cultural elements are creating a more favourable climate for acceptance of a single product and positioning across a wide range of geography’. Television programmes such as Dallas, or films such as Star Wars or E.T. were seen to ‘have crossed many national boundaries to achieve world awareness for their plots, characters, etc.’ (Winram, 1984: 21). Theodore Levitt, whose influential book, The Marketing Imagination, helped to shape the Saatchi outlook, was, at the same time, pointing to the increasing standardisation and homogenisation of markets across the world. ‘The global corporation’, he argued, ‘looks to the nations of the world not for how they are different but for how they are alike … it seeks constantly in every way to standardise everything into a common global mode’ (Levitt, 1983: 28). Of course, if it is profitable to do so, global companies will respond to the demands of particular segments of the market. In so doing, however, ‘they will search for opportunities to sell to similar segments throughout the globe to achieve the scale economies that keep their costs competitive’ (ibid.: 26). The strategy is to ‘treat these market segments as global, not local, markets’ (Winram, 1984: 19).

There appears to be the same logic at work in the 1990s. American movies – such as The Flintstones and Jurassic Park – are still breaking box-office records across the world (hence the keen struggle to acquire Hollywood studios and archives). Satellite and cable channels are also making headway in marketing standardised product worldwide. MTV, recently invited into Lithuania to help promote democracy, and CNN, now on twelve satellites beaming ‘global village’ news the world over, seem to have come close to finding the answer to global marketing. The new ‘super-highways’, still in their early stages of development, seem set to push processes of standardisation further. But they are also likely to add more complexity, delivering ‘personalised’ and ‘individualised’ services to specialised and ‘niche’ markets. Such strategies, it should be emphasised, ‘are not denials or contradictions of global homogenisation, but rather its confirmation … globalisation does not mean the end of segments. It means, instead, their expansion to worldwide proportions’ (Levitt, 1983: 30–1).

So much for the logic of corporate ambition. The question that we must now consider is how this logic unfolds as it encounters and negotiates the real world, the world of already existing and established markets and cultures. Cable News Network (CNN), launched in 1980 by the American entrepreneur Ted Turner, has achieved its phenomenal success through the worldwide distribution of a single, English-language news service. Increasingly, however, the channel is confronting the accusation that it is too American in its corporate identity. CNN's global presence is interpreted as an expression of American cultural domination, and this clearly raises problems as to its credibility as a global news-provider. Back at company headquarters, this also translates into a fundamental dilemma over market strategy and position. CNN's present news service has been successful in reaching the world's business and political elites, but it has not significantly penetrated mass markets, where local affiliations and attachments are far stronger. To reach such viewers ‘CNN would have to dramatically change its vision of a single, English-speaking global network’, and ‘to effect that change Turner would need to seek partners and would need to localise’ (Auletta, 1993a: 30). CNN is having to recognise that the pursuit of further success will entail the production of different editions, in different languages, in different parts of the world. To this end, collaboration with local partners will be essential. In the context of growing competition – from, among others, Sky News, BBC World Service Television and Reuters – CNN must learn to reconcile global ambitions with local complexities.

The case of Star TV provides another good example of the necessary accommodation between global and local dynamics. As part of their strategy for global hegemony, media corporations have sectioned the world into large geo-economic regions. Star, a Hong Kong-based company which began broadcasting in August 1991, has effectively constructed the Asia region; stretching from Turkey to Japan, from Mongolia to Indonesia, it encompasses thirty-eight countries (though only thirteen receive Star signals at present). The station combines pan-Asian programmes and advertising with a certain amount of material targeted at ‘spot markets’, such as India or Taiwan. It also sought to balance Asian programming (Indian or Chinese pop music and films, for example) with ‘Western’ channels (MTV, BBC World Service Television, Prime Sports), many of which are highly popular and welcomed as forces of internationalisation and ‘modernisation’ (Poole, 1993). Acknowledgement of its success across this vast region came in July 1993 when Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation paid US$525 million for a controlling share of Star TV. For Murdoch, the Asian region was part of his ‘global dream’, and he will clearly seek to market his Sky channels there. But he also recognises the enormous cultural and linguistic differences within the region, and is planning to create separate services for India and China, and possibly also for Indonesia (Snoddy, 1993). Given the diversity and complexity of this market, and the enormous political (China, Indonesia) and religious (Malaysia) sensitivities, Murdoch's ‘local’ partners are crucial to the future success of Star. Success will depend on finding the right balance between market integration and market diversity.

In his ‘Worldview address’, Steven Ross (1990) acknowledged that global media must ‘be sensitive to the cultural environment and needs of every locale in which we operate’. Anxious to avert charges of cultural homogenisation and domination, global corporations are concerned to develop local credentials and credibility (though in this context, of course, ‘local’ may amount to a multi-national region).

CULTURE AND POLITICS IN THE NEW MEDIA ORDER

During the 1980s, we saw considerable efforts by the European Community, on behalf of European media corporations, to construct a ‘European audiovisual area’. In this context, we can identify some of the tensions and problems arising out of the globalisation process. The clear objective of the European Community has been to bring into existence the European equivalents of Sony and Time Warner. It has sought to make the painful transition from the old public service era, in which broadcasters provided a diverse and balanced range of programmes for citizen-viewers, to a new regime in which the imperative is to maximise the competitive position of European media businesses committed to satisfying the needs of consumers in global markets. It is the logic of industrial concentration and integration, working towards the creation of a few media giants. It is also the logic of globalisation, pushing towards the greater standardisation and homogenisation of output, and detaching media cultures from the particularities of place and context.

And yet there is also another, and contrary, force at work, challenging the imperatives of globalisation. As an antidote to the internationalisation of programming, and as compensation for the standardisation and loss of identity that is associated with global networks, we have seen a resurgent interest in regionalism within Europe, appealing to the kind of situated meaning and emotional belonging that appear to have been eroded by the...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• SPACES OF IDENTITY
• Title Page
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Introduction
• 1 GLOBALISATION AS IDENTITY CRISIS: THE NEW GLOBAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE
• 2 REIMAGINED COMMUNITIES? NEW MEDIA, NEW POSSIBILITIES
• 3 CULTURE, COMMUNITY AND IDENTITY: COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF EUROPE
• 4 EUROCULTURE: COMMUNICATION, SPACE AND TIME
• 5 NO PLACE LIKE HEIMAT: IMAGES OF HOME (LAND)
• 6 TRADITION AND TRANSLATION: NATIONAL CULTURE IN ITS GLOBAL CONTEXT
• 7 UNDER WESTERN EYES: MEDIA, EMPIRE AND OTHERNESS
• 8 TECHNO-ORIENTALISM: JAPAN PANIC
• 9 THE POLITICS OF SILENCE: THE MEANING OF COMMUNITY AND THE USES OF MEDIA
• 10 THE END OF WHAT? POSTMODERNISM, HISTORY AND THE WEST
• Bibliography
• Index