Foundations of Global Communication

A Conceptual Handbook

Kai Hafez, Anne Grüne, Alex Skinner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032185828
• eBook ISBN: 9781000581997
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book provides a wide-ranging theoretical and empirical overview of the disparate achievements and shortcomings of global communication.

This exceptionally ambitious and systematic project takes a critical perspective on the globalization of communication. Uniquely, it sets media globalization alongside a plethora of other globalized forms of communication, ranging from the individual to groups, civil society groupings, commercial enterprises and political formations. The result is a sophisticated and impressive overview of globalized communication across various facets, assessing the phenomena for the extent to which they live up to the much-hyped claims of globalization's potential to create a globally interdependent society. The setbacks of globalization, such as right-wing populism and religious fundamentalism, can only be understood if the shortcomings of global communication are taken more seriously.

Covering all types of cross-border global communication in media, political and economic systems, civil societies, social media and lifeworlds of the individual, this unique book is invaluable for students and researchers in media, communication, globalization and related areas.

1 Theory of global communication

DOI: 10.4324/9781003255239-2

The following theoretical outline begins with an introduction to basic modes of communication in Section 1.1, which is necessary because the present book is not only about global mass media communication, but also takes into account the processes of political and social communication of various kinds. In Section 1.2, we then present the actors involved in communication – organized and non-organized social systems and lifeworlds – and consider their relationship to modes of communication. This is followed in Section 1.3 by an introductory look at the specific forms of communication characteristic of social systems and lifeworlds within the global realm. The final section, Section 1.4, provides a basic overview of the global exchanges and interdependencies between actors’ various ways of communicating.

1.1 General modes of global communication

Global public sphere and global community: synchronization and integration

A variety of concepts are of significance when it comes to global and cross-border communication. The best known is probably that of the “global public sphere” (Sparks 1998; Volkmer 2014). In the case of the mass media, we are used to asking whether a global public sphere in fact exists. Are discourses and thus topics, frames, concepts, symbols and images dealt with at the same time in different national media systems or even transnationally, that is, through media that operate in several media systems? We can call this a question of synchronization or even co-orientation and express it in simple terms as follows. Do people across the globe observe the world, with the help of media, in a similar way? Does journalistic self-observation really lead to the “synchronization of global society” (Blöbaum 1994, p. 261) by providing us with similar knowledge? While the concept of the “public sphere” is widely known, sociological concepts such as the “global society” or the “global community” (Richter 1990; Beck 2000) play virtually no role in communication research. Historically, the term “society” has been closely linked with the emergence of a media-based public sphere. In a society, people observe their environment with the help of media (Kunczik and Zipfel 2001, p. 47ff.). The concept of a “global community”, meanwhile, is problematic for communication research. It evokes a problem different from that of synchronization, namely the interaction problem, which is also a problem of integration. While direct interaction is not absolutely necessary in societies, and observation through the use of mass media is of central importance, communities are created when people interact with one another rather than merely communicating or learning about others. For a community, especially a local and relatively static one, interpersonal dialogue is virtually indispensable. Through dialogue, we optimize our knowledge and create a shared sense of togetherness as a key value.

We have thus established two basic definitions: (1) networking as interpretive information processing without interaction is observation; and (2) networking as cooperative and integrative information processing is interaction or dialogue. Both forms of communication are important in human life.

It is true that it is difficult to draw a clear defining line between society and community, given that “nations” (in contrast to the state) are also surrogate communities in the form of large groups, which can develop a sense of unity even if there is no direct interaction between all the members of the community. Here we might introduce the term “discursive communities”, which are not held together by direct interaction, but rather by a broadly synchronized public sphere: language, history and culture are hegemonically defined via storage media, and this may determine prevailing notions of communality. But like “virtual communities” (Rheingold 2000), national communities are not fully developed ones characterized by intense interaction, a pronounced sense of togetherness and clear horizons of action. If a strong sense of unity prevails, as is often the case with nations (patriotism, nationalism), then this usually implies a fusion of a discursive and an interactive community. Identification is inculcated through direct contact with a small number of community members, but is otherwise based on the shared experiences of a discursive community (one facilitated by the media). The concept of the “global community” can also be imagined as a combination of this kind. Cosmopolitanism, in other words, a worldview that goes beyond the concept of the “nation” to encompass humanity as a whole, arises through (1) direct cross-border interactions between human beings; (2) (representative) direct interaction between certain social systems across borders (such as with politics and diplomacy); and (3) globally synchronized knowledge, values and perspectives conveyed by the mass media.

The key proposition expounded in this book is that mass media alone can at most generate a “global public sphere”, but not a “global community”. The latter emerges, if at all, only with the help of other social systems and in people’s lifeworlds. As we shall see, in its current state, global mass communication is quite unable to synchronize public spheres and knowledge of the world, because national media systems are still largely isolated from one another. Furthermore, due to the monologic structure of the media – one-to-many rather than face-to-face, person-to-person or group-to-group – global mass communication is fundamentally incapable of generating community-building dialogues. Figure 1.1 illustrates the observational and public sphere-generating structure of the media system, as well as the interactive and community-generating character of other social systems and lifeworlds.

Figure 1.1 Global communication: public spheres and interactions

Perception of distance and cosmopolitanism

Why do we need an expanded conceptual model? Why do we emphasize the aspects of interaction, dialogue and the participatory community? There are, of course, instances in which the media and the public sphere generate empathy and a sense of togetherness. Media-based discursive communities may, under special conditions, create a feeling of solidarity and connectedness among people that goes far beyond the usual social coexistence within the nation and the coexistence of parallel lifeworlds. Particularly in situations of war and crisis, however, these feelings clash with an underlying patriotism. In this context, media discourses help to separate countries and populations from one another by disseminating simplistic concepts of the enemy (Hafez 2007a, p. 46ff.).

Positive facets of the global public sphere – such as media-induced cosmopolitan solidarity with refugees – are extremely unstable in nature. Lilie Chouliaraki has shown that media narratives about “distant” suffering are most successful in helping build a consciousness of community (cosmopolitanism) when they humanize and individualize suffering and create a sense of closeness by highlighting shared responsibilities and opportunities for action (2006). How unstable such phenomena are, however, was apparent in European reporting on refugees and German public opinion on this topic in 2015–16 (Hafez 2016; Georgiou and Zaborowski 2017). Public discourses are fleeting, fickle and erratic.

If we adapt the co-orientation approaches focused on interpersonal communication to the media, we come to understand that observation is a complex process in which misinterpretations quickly arise, such as so-called “pluralistic ignorance”, which is generated by assumptions about how others interpret a given phenomenon (Hafez 2002a, vol. 1, p. 171ff., vol. 2, p. 253ff.). What do non-Muslim Germans believe, based on media information, regarding what Muslims think about terror? And are they correct? Chouliaraki has been interpreted to the effect that, even under the conditions of international media reportage, as a rule, the state of tension between a universal consciousness and people’s specific (local) involvements impedes global communality, with the self-assignment to a particular community (nation, “cultural area” or religion) remaining unaffected (Yilmaz and Trandafoiu 2014, p. 7f.). Transcultural, long-distance communication through media-based observation is, therefore, not community-building or is so only to a limited extent.

Interaction, co-orientation and global synchrony

Hence, the question is: is there a need for the observation and synchronization performed by national public spheres to be joined by a true cross-border dialogue, one that better integrates national systems and allows the individual to act beyond the local level? It is true that traditional societies, the highly interactive tribes and clans that dominated social life in earlier times, were highly racist and xenophobic and that their propensity for war was quite similar to that of modern societies (Diamond 2013, p. 142ff.). The question we have to ask, then, is: why should we favour more interaction, if it is modern society, with its institutions such as the state, media and the public sphere, that has created rules for the enduring survival of human beings in the territories of other groups? The answer is that it is the cross-border interaction that began in the modern age – interaction with out-groups rather than only the in-group as in the past – that has advanced the networking of the world. It is not so much observation by the media as direct interaction between states that, to remain with the above example, has created a system of rights of residence and citizenship under international law. Like exchange at other levels of society, direct interaction between political systems and states must therefore be an indispensable part of any survey of global communicative relationships. Certainly, not every form of interaction leads to a positive, cosmopolitan sense of togetherness, because a variety of motives may play a role in any interaction and divisions may come to light. At the same time, however, in line with the claims of symbolic interactionism, it is only through direct interaction that there is any chance at all of establishing a feeling of togetherness in the form of individual, experience-based knowledge.

As yet, there is no even remotely coherent theory of the international community that also foregrounds issues of communication. However, there are numerous strands that fill in part of the picture, such as the classic research anchored in sociological communication theory, though this is geared essentially towards small groups. In symbolic interactionism, George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer underlined that the meanings of the world arise through mutual interactions (Mead 1934). Here, interaction with oneself plays as important a role as social interaction (dialogue). Blumer describes the fundamentals of symbolic interactionism as follows:

It [symbolic interactionism] does not regard meaning as emanating from the intrinsic makeup of the thing that has meaning, nor does it see meaning as arising through a coalescence of psychological elements in the person. Instead, it sees meaning as arising in the process of interaction between people. The meaning of a thing for a person grows out of the ways in which other persons act toward the person with regard to that thing.

(1986, p. 4)

This interactionist perspective differs from the co-orientation approach, which describes communicative processes through a three-step procedure. If several actors (“a” and “b”, and so on for Newcomb) are oriented towards a certain symbol (“x” for Newcomb), they are considered to be “co-oriented”, their respective interpretations of meaning can be compared and the degree of “agreement” can be measured. The next step is to determine to what extent the actors themselves assume that their interpretation of meaning corresponds to that of the others, which allows us to establish the degree of “congruency”. Finally, “agreement” and “congruency” are compared in terms of their “accuracy” (Newcomb 1953).

Direct social interaction differs from social co-orientation, which is based on observations in everyday life or may occur through media. Both objects in the environment and media may be viewed as x-objects to which people (a and b, and so on) are oriented. In contrast to the interpretation of the observable environment, media provide a kind of observation of observation, such that we gain access to the observation of others. We might also refer to direct and indirect observation. Here, media are resources for negotiating the world. They may create knowledge, but interpretations of meaning must be constantly renegotiated interactively, even within a collective framework, in order to ensure the stability of society. Both forms of observation are also significant to the process of global communication.

Direct observation of the world occurs through the physical process of individuals crossing borders (in the context of tourism, diplomacy, and so on). A perception of the world co-oriented towards media also imparts knowledge, and occasionally even cosmopolitan sentiments. But the direct interaction of people – whether in the private lifeworld or in the case of individuals performing specific roles in political and social systems – is an additional meaningful phenomenon that is important to the emotional cementing of the global community. Hence, simultaneity through observation and through mass media (as well as universal human orientations and cosmopolitan values) are important prerequisites for understanding the world. But in themselves they do not constitute understanding, because these communication processes still do not impart a stable awareness of global commonality (Axford 2013, p. 32), which can only arise through direct interaction and experiential knowledge. Successful co-orientation through mass media is a necessary prerequisite for integration into a global community, but it is not sufficient as long as re-negotiation or further processing takes place exclusively in separate social systems and lifeworlds (Hafez 2002a, vol. 1, p. 171ff.; Grüne 2016, p. 421ff.).

It is tempting at this point to apply to the global community the famous metaphor of the orchestra, as used by Alfred Schütz to illuminate symbolic interaction. Schütz contends that in order to play good music, you not only have to be able to read the right notes, but always have to pay attention to how your colleagues play as well (1951, p. 94ff.). If you see the world as an orchestra, then it is not enough to co-orient yourself within a global framework, and synchronize yourself with the world, through observation and with the help of the media. You also have to enter into direct communication with the world. Cosmopolitanism as a value is good, but global communication as a practice is better.

Discursive global society/dialogic global community: theories of communication

In contrast to global society, a global community entails more than the development of a common ethics, such as human rights and cosmopolitanism (Albert et al. 1996, p. 19, see also Etzioni 2004). These ethics can only arise through interactive action at every level, making the transition from global society to global community an intrinsically communication- and dialogue-based project. To quote Emanuel Richter:

[This project] finds expression in those ideas that may be classified as a ‘communicative’ model of global unity. This model elevates the near-revolutionary spread of communicative exchange processes within every area of life to the status of new, determining element of the global context … Expressed at the highest level of abstraction, this global community appears as a kind of ‘cognitive global society’, which glimpses nothing less than a new form of global unity in the universalization of communication. This system-theoretical take on notions of global unity thus throws into sharp relief that aspect of global society relating to the globalization of processes of communicative exchange.

(1990, p. 27...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Note on Translation
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Theory of global communication
• 2 Mass media and the global public sphere
• 3 Politics: The state’s global communication
• 4 Economy: Global corporate communication
• 5 Civil society and global movement communication
• 6 Large communities: Global online communication
• 7 Small groups: Global lifeworldly communication I
• 8 The individual: Global lifeworldly communication II
• 9 Interdependencies of systems and lifeworlds
• Conclusion and future prospects
• Bibliography
• Index