Keywords

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Chapter Objectives

  • The objectives of the chapter are as follows:

    1. 1.

      To situate the main dimensions of media governance within the context of media convergence.

    2. 2.

      To contextualise media convergence within the transformations of globalisation, policymaking, and cultural change.

    3. 3.

      To explain the purpose of studying media governance as a way of understanding the multiple and complex factors that meet in the configuration of the communicative spaces of democracy.

Introduction

Convergence signals a new state of media landscapes around the world. New technologies become increasingly versatile and integrated, so that communications in general, from telecommunications to computer terminals and from televisions to the Internet, can be used in connection with each other, through each other, and because of each other. This means, for example, that there is no broadband connection without telecommunication structures and no wireless Internet without mobile phones, ipads, and overall technologies of reception, such as computers. Moreover, it means that established media, such as television screens, encompass new media, as they are ‘transformed’ into Internet portals or perform functions of storage media.

Technologies, however, are not the only element that converges in the current transformations taking place at world scale. Discourses of security (Sarikakis 2006) and crises, or of piracy for instance, have enhanced a process of multiple convergences involving, apart from technology, major actors in the world politics, transforming the territorial organisation of the planet, and creating new challenging conditions for regulation, culture, and democracy. The transforming scenarios accompanying technological convergence demand new forms of reflection on world communications and power.

Still, technology is not the cause or the sole origin of such a major shift. In practice, the idea of technological change precedes and sometimes even dictates policymaking in the media field (Sarikakis 2001). The fact that the debates around new media have been framed predominantly technocratically, rather than socially, demonstrates how powerful ‘myths’ are. As Mosco (2004) argues, it is the technological, digital, and sublime upon which normative frames of regulation for the global Information Society are designed. The myths surrounding technological breakthroughs seem to repeat themselves across the ages of modernity, promising ‘revolution’, emancipation, liberation (ibid). Yet, the citizen as the main recipient of the effects of policy is effectively removed from the centre of politics. As technological development is not an accidental event, but rather a social process, it has major consequences at the social, cultural, and economic levels. These can be addressed with appropriate regulation. Indeed, the regulation of media becomes crucial in cementing change and normalising their transformation. The direction regulation may take, that is, which changes it settles down and which ones it challenges, is subject to a number of conditions and depends on who the influential actors are in policymaking, what the dominant ideas are, how wide the range of legitimate routes is, and which interests may prevail. Hence, the regulatory field is a space of power struggle and debate, tension, and intention. Regulation, therefore, is not a neutral process.

This chapter discusses challenges to the regulation of the media in the public interest. It explores the ways in which the process of convergence is transforming paradigms of media governance and in particular how these changes challenge notions of citizenship and democracy.

Media and Governance

As boundaries—technological, geographical, and even those of time—become blurred, everyday experience and management of the media change. The convergence of telecommunications and computing technologies has brought about the technological ‘revolution’, and information superhighways are providing the infrastructure for a global interconnectedness (Sarikakis and Thussu 2006: p. 3). In this context, ‘Information’ earned the status of a key strategic resource for the global economy which means that regulating the media does not equal simply regulating the media objects per se, but also the issues surrounding them.

Here, it is important to briefly review the meaning of media governance in these new contexts. For a start, the concept of “governance” refers to forms of steering, managing, and directing. In political sciences and particularly the study of European integration, “governance studies” emphasise the exercise of authority in the EU system and in particular a drift of authority away from government (Rosamond 2000: p. 109). ‘Governance’ is a meta-theoretical term, which entails references to the complexity and multilevel involvement of actors, institutions, and principles that shape a particular area of public life and, in our case, media and communications. Governance refers to the political process of decision-making and its formal and informal structures, within which this process takes place, and to spatio-temporal dispersions that go beyond the clearly defined spaces of “government”. We prefer to remain with the definition offered by Sandholtz and Stone Sweet (1998) that best encapsulates the political function of this phenomenon, that is, governance is understood as the process and sum of institutional functions and the creation of policy regimes through regulation.

The study of Governance brings to the fore the complexities of decision-making processes, and the conditions related to the exercise of power. The concept offeres the possibility of considering extensively a wide range of institutions involved in policymaking. Governance also involves complex and non-hierarchical participation of several actors negotiating at distinct levels. Governance therefore can be studied on three different levels: (1) the macro-level refers to the role of international relations and international organisations, state constellations, multi-state agreements, transnational corporations, etc.; (2) the meso-level involves states and governments as well as regional authorities; (3) and the micro-level relates to everyday practices, codes of conduct, voluntary codes, and forms of self-regulation. Armstrong and Bulmer (1998) see institutions as “normative vessels” in which ideas occupy a very important position in policymaking or, as Rosamond (2000: 119) proposes, as actors that “perform a guidance function” and construct social reality. Regulating the media is, therefore, crucial in cementing change and normalising practices.

The study of media governance is relatively recent (Donges 2007). Historically, debates around media regulation shifted towards governance at around the time of the two World Summits on the Information Society both, in Geneva 2003 and in Tunis 2005. Global media transformations have helped consolidate studies on the interaction between systems, actors, ideas, and discourses. Therefore, it can be argued that media governance is strongly linked to the global changes at macro- and micro-levels. Raboy (2004) and Sarikakis (2002, 2004) pioneered also the introduction of the term to communication and media studies in their work on global and international communication policy. In their work, governance was approached as a field of interaction of power and actors involved in international policymaking on a multileveled constellation. Their works explored supranational institutions like the European Parliament (Sarikakis 2002, 2004) governments and global actors, such as civil society (Raboy 2004) and ideological dispositions. Today, the study of media governance includes normative debates around what constitutes “good governance” (Donges 2007; O Siochru and Girard 2002; Price 2002; Puppis 2008; Burch 2004).

As the multifaceted roles of media in everyday life shape democratic culture, the ways in which media are controlled are important. Their expansion into public spheres across borders and their role as facilitators or shapers of public sphere practices demand that we take a closer look. However, prioritising a technocratic normative frame, within which much of media policy has been shaped in the past two decades, has meant that less attention has been given to keep citizens inside the equation of policy.

Convergence of Technologies, Actors, and Politics: Policy Implications

The ‘hardware’ of communication technologies is partly steered through the governance of infrastructures, such as the installation of optic cable for broadband and Terrestrial Digital Television. It is also governed by global trade agreements that regulate access to key raw materials, for instance, lithium, necessary for the creation of modern batteries. Moreover, it is also governed by technological availability, itself, dependent on market and political actors that regulate the circulation of technologies in hardware or software, and intellectual property issues around them. This includes a major transformation of the ecosystem of devices: apparition of new gadgets like tablets, hybrid devices like mobile phones with cameras, e-book readers, and tablets, or for example, the proliferation of software platforms (web 2.0). This new ecosystem creates new spaces of social interaction that include networking activities and p2p exchanges, collective production of content, and mutation of advertising forms.

The ‘software’ of communication technologies also converges. The process of digitisation, which includes a major convergence of interconnected devices and a software-isation of telecommunications, facilitates the mediation of financial relations and transactions through new technologies. This changes the roles of more infrastructures available and new contents development; providers see the opportunities and adapt, creating new routes of transmission. The convergence of software and protocols has allowed the homogenisation of markets at world scale, the access to remote control devices, and access to remote data, while the gathering of big pools of personal information for police, security, medical, or consumption aims crosses any imagined boundary creating a scene of permanent visibility. But ultimately, hardware and software and the routes of transmission can be interchangeable.

As technologies are converging, the “place” of policy becomes less “fixed” and more complex to follow. For instance, everyday “settings” of social media technologies concern users/citizens directly. Social media applications reveal to various publics users’ geo-location alongside their personal data. Questions about technical standards or technological knowledge must be considered for their impact on information and democratic praxis, and human rights, such as freedom of expression or association, anonymity, or privacy.

Other experiences of augmented reality, the streaming consumption of online products, or cross-media entertainment productions present challenges to existing laws. Consumption of cultural goods based on several devices, which act simultaneously and/or consecutively, raises new questions about the circulation of the material consumed, particularly when the user becomes an integral part of the process of production. In this case, authorship and intellectual property are not easily traceable or identifiable. Moreover many would argue that copyright in the digital world is an obsolete market and legal mechanism. The argument is fundamental: there are three main conditions for copyright regulation: the materiality of works, their originality, and the identification of the author (Phillips 2009; Grad 2003). However, the production and consumption of virtual goods through online platforms (like iTunes or Netflix) challenge the materiality of the copyrighted goods. On the other hand, the capacity of the users to create and publish remixed and mashed up materials challenges the limits of originality. Finally, the tension between the owner of the intellectual rights of cross-media products and the user/generator of content challenges any assumptions about identified authorship (Rodriguez-Amat and Sarikakis 2012). This is an example of how the convergence of technologies runs parallel to certain cultural transformations involved in the making and consumption of cultural products.

A way of responding to these challenges is the ‘Convergence of policies’, which means that media policies, as ‘solutions to problems’, tend to be similar, based on the common—or a dominant—definition of a policy ‘problem’. For example: “Digital Convergence requires policy convergence and the willingness to adapt regulatory frameworks where needed so that they are consistent with the emerging digital economy” (European Communities 2006: p. 3). The literature describes four types of policy convergence (Bennett 1991): (1) ‘emulation’ where in one country is copied what is done in another, as in the case when in several countries the British model of Public Broadcast Service is emulated; (2) ‘elite networking’, in which international communities define policies directions that are later implemented in countries, as in the case of G8 or G20 decisions that are adopted at a national level; (3) ‘harmonisation’ which is an EU approach and describes the process by which commonly agreed directives ‘harmonise’ members states’ national policies; and (4) ‘penetration’ where external actors and interests enter the domestic policymaking process.

Globalisation and technological convergence extend beyond the jurisdiction of the nation state whose role in policymaking is changing. Communication Issues have ceased to be purely ‘national’ and demand solutions that often cross borders of local institutions. An example is when global media corporations negotiate with governments as in the recent cases of conflict between German law and Google Street View. This conflict led the Global Company to negotiate with the German Government in several occasions leading utlimately to implement a ‘voluntary data protection code’ (O’Brien 2010 and BBC 2010). Another example is that of the case of the Hollywood majors negotiations with the Catalan Government (Rolfe 2011) or the Government of Quebec (Coupal 2010) about the provision of dubbed copies of the films in local languages. Moreover, social media cross borders: although Facebook, for example, is located in Palo Alto (California) and abides by the federal law of this state, its activities are global. Issues raised by these activities, such as questions of privacy or protection of children from grooming and bullying online, are considered in the comprehensive Programme of Safer Internet of the European Union. With its Safer Internet Centres spread over the 30 European countries and a multi-stakeholder approach, the programme “aims at empowering and protecting children and young people online by awareness raising initiatives and by fighting illegal and harmful online content and conduct” (EIS 2012a). A recent example of policy is the Strategy for a Better Internet for Children, a plan set “to give children the digital skills and tools they need fully and safely to benefit from the digital world”, and “aims to unlock the potential of the market for interactive, creative and educational content online” (EIS 2012b). Such a policy brings together the European Commission, the Member States, as well as the mobile phone operators, handset manufacturers, and providers of social networking services. Facebook among other social media has not adhered to the EU guidelines fully in relation to the protection of children (EC 2012: p. 12; Fox 2012) which indicates the challenges of regulating a global media industry and the inadequacies of self-regulation, in this case of the social media industries.

Or to give a different example, the protection of cultural production vis-a-vis the market domination by the Hollywood movie industry is a long-standing and still important policy concern for all actors involved. With technological convergence, the argument for content quotas that ringfence certain percentages of broadcast time for ‘domestic’ productions is challenged as redundant in the era of infinite space for all tastes. This debate has concerned international negotiation rounds, such as the General Agreement Trade Services (GATS 2012) and the World Trade Organization (WTO 2012) rounds with certain impact on the audio-visual industries.

Regulatory practices are said to lie in the hands of several actors. For instance, the organisers of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 and 2005 raised a mode of participation of non-state actors to unprecedented levels including besides governments, UN bodies, other international organisations, non-governmental organisations, private sector, civil society, and media (Hintz 2009: p. 115). This phenomenon is called multi-stakeholderism and means that a plethora of actors participate in the policymaking process. It implies a more equitable and open system of decision-making and is the dominant model of global governance today. The most broad in coverage and scope model of governance is the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) which, derived from the World Summit on Information Society in Tunis 2005, is a space for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. The IGF mandate is, for example, “to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the Internet” by discussing public policy issues of Internet Governance; “to facilitate the exchange of information and best practices, and in this regard make full use of the expertise of the academic, scientific and technical communities”; as well as “to interface with appropriate intergovernmental organizations and other institutions on matters under their purview” (WSIS Tunis 2005). The IGF attracts around 2000 participants attending it physically or remotely participating every year and it is being hosted in all corners of the world: Athens, 2006; Rio de Janeiro, 2007; Hyderabad, 2008; Sharm el Sheikh, 2009; Vilnius, 2010; Nairobi, 2011; and Baku, 2012. States, international organisations such as the Council of Europe, and also Google and Facebook participate in debates about issues affecting societies in relation to the Internet. Despite the impressive organisation and high number of participants, it would be a mistake to assume that all participants negotiate on the same basis of power. As this is not a policymaking forum, ultimately, policy decisions are shaped by elite actors.

Hence, although the concept of multi-stakeholderism implies equity in the process of decision-making, institutions participating in the process of media policy converge in pools of unequal responsibility and negotiation. Policy transfer is, for instance, a form of policymaking that transcends state institutions. International alliances by influential forces (other states or coalition of corporations, but also regional organisations) mediate changes at the national level. Governance on European Union (EU) level is formed through the participation of governments, civil society, European (supranational) Parliament, and the private sector. The EU is one such international actor of great importance to global policy that “affect other ‘third’ countries as well as member states, or regional organisations such as the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Mercado Común del Sur (MERCOSUR) and organisations such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and World Bank and other organisations” (Sarikakis 2013, p. 13). The process of Europeanisation, that is the ‘convergence’ of legal frameworks and their harmonisation, requires and depends on the participation of the nation state. Here, various established and other actors participate. The European Parliament sets an example of an accountable body outside the nation state (Sarikakis 2009).

However organisations, such as the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT), the Business Roundtable (BRT), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), or the Global Business Dialogue on electronic commerce (GBDe), produce policy agendas based on the principles of private interests. At an international level, the state functions as a unit of reference. Policies now take place in de-nationalised spaces that shape the function of communication globally (Chakravartty and Sarikakis 2006). The case of the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) is an example of such dynamic. The document was initially drafted and negotiated by Japan and the USA in 2006, and later Canada and the European Commission, the European countries, as well as Switzerland incorporated in 2007 to the preliminary talks; and in June 2008 official negotiations started with Australia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, and Singapore. However, participating countries in the drafting of the document are not the same that signed it. Moreover, the Agreement defines the Acta Committee in its article 36 (ACTA 2012): an independent body formed by the representation of the signing state but that does not depend on any broader institution except itself (Sarikakis et al. 2013).

The long process of definition of the ACTA Agreement and its global range as well as the progressive transformation of several national Intellectual Property regimes worldwide are part of a global discourse related to the problem of piracy and the illegal consumption of protected works on the Internet. In the last decades, global discourses about and practices of piracy, security, and theft or financial and political crisis have justified particular strong regulatory decisions. In many cases the resulting conditions put democracy under pressure. The state of exception allows the implementation of policies which are not always in line with established principles of communication rights. In 2007, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) described that almost half of its 56 member states imposed legal liability for journalists who obtain classified information. Banisar (2008/2009) observed that a significant trend in the use of state secret laws is “to penalise whistle-blowers and journalists who publish information of public interest”. The classic works by Ellul (1973) and Herman and Chomsky (1988) on propaganda have shown that the close relation between media and power has been related to, at least, three forms of control exerted over the media: structural control, control over diffused content, and control as the planning of content to be published. The case of structural control is probably the most widespread form because it exerts its power creating conditions of ownership, access, or licence of the means of communication. Influence is not exerted over the content but over who earns the right to communicate or the right to receive information. The first form of structural control refers to the control exerted over the ownership of the media: public or private media, monopolistic or pluralistic spaces, and the degree of concentration in the media ownership are forms of analysing how media are controlled. Another form of structural control can be exerted through the forms of access to media: is it a public access service, does it demand direct or indirect tax, is it directly paid by the user, or only certain professionals can access this information. Media can be controlled by deciding who accesses them. The third type of structural control is the license. It refers to the conditions under which one can participate in the common/public communicative spaces; for instance, the use of electromagnetic waves—either for mobile, television, radio broadcasting, or Ham radio—is regulated in many countries. Not everybody can freely use any frequency except when it is under the explicit permission (licence) of the authority. These three forms are common mechanisms of defining public communicated spaces.

On the other hand, media can be controlled by interfering on the content of what is published. This is what is usually known as censorship before publication. This is probably the most unpopular form of exercise of intervention. However, regulatory systems still maintain some decision mechanisms over content, so that unlawful material can be taken down from public space. Sometimes, a form of censorship may be applied without the need for state intervention, when for example media exercise self-censorship or when there is pressure to do so: for instance, youtube may withdraw alleged offensive or copyrighted content. Similarly, Facebook claims to pay attention to both users’ comments and judiciary authorities.

Finally, the third form of control mentioned above is the process of ‘designing’ content to be published. This form is often enacted in the press rooms and official speeches, because it is omissions, what is left out. This is a form of exerting influence: the public presentation of new laws leaving out particular details, or avoiding to mention information in a press release generates a routine of public communication that does not reach the information intentionally absent in the institutional message. This is a form of control based on the decision of what will enter the public domain and what not.

These several examples of convergence at multiple levels show how the progressive blurring of the boundaries between production and consumption of media products, services, contents, DIY-culture on the Internet, self-disclosure on social media, as well as products by ‘amateurs’ forms the constellation of a whole (sub)culture. Cultural transformation generates a content-based media industry, which is fundamental in the functioning of social media business models, such as Facebook. But it also enhances practices and understandings that create a sense of common experiences, common ‘fate’, and common concerns.

Cultural Convergences

To assume that policy consists of ‘rational’ actors pursuing ‘rational’ goals, alone, would ignore the immense role ideas, discourses, and ‘ways of doing’ play in the governance of communications. In other words, cultural shifts are part and parcel of the shift in policy paradigms in the media. Culture is at the core of political representation and cultural recognition of citizens in the production, circulation, and consumption of media. Culture is a fundamental component in global media governance: traditionally, and predominantly in broadcasting policies, it is around debates on culture and identity where claims for the recognition of difference among human societies, in contrast to the universalising tendencies of the market, take place. This dilemma is found in protectionist approaches towards national film making or broadcasting. Cultural convergences emerge in the ways in which ideas about social cohesion and protection of identity are enmeshed in resistances to homogenising effects of a ‘global’ culture. The duality between local cultural practices of protection and the global dynamics of cultural standardisation intersects with debates about whether it is possible—or indeed desirable—to intervene and to what extent. These are the historically persistent dilemmas about nationalistic processes of domestic homogenisation as a form of protection, as a response to global cultural imperialism. On the one hand, this complexity is translated into permanent deceptive dilemmas: xenophobic politics often abuses the discourse of the protection of national identity as a mechanism of social exclusion of the domestic cultural and social minorities. On the other hand, neo-liberal discourses promote a form of cultural laissez-faire that turns cultural freedom into facets of cultural relativism. The struggle between the extreme notions of absolutism and relativism is reflected in communications as a ‘push and pull’ tendency in the normative framing of decisions. For example, regulation, such as special taxes, may be framed as a necessary step for the protection of national industries or national identity. At the same time, another piece of policy on the liberalisation of media markets may be framed around the freedom of individuals to ‘choose’ their media. In both cases, it is important to ask who benefits from these measures and what is their impact for the citizens, and in particular those social groups that occupy vulnerable positions in society, such as children, low socioeconomic classes, women, ethnic or linguistic minorities, and so forth.

The ways in which communication technologies are governed within this context define and regularise integrated markets and audiences while constructing nodes of concentrated economic and political power (Chakravartty and Sarikakis 2006). Infrastructures, inventions, and the extension of technologies worldwide are not neutral. A major cultural metamorphosis defines new spaces of struggle and negotiation between operative forms of established institutions and new styles of governance that can empower the user, the consumer, and the citizen. But the media play also a role as social mechanisms of control and taming social behaviour; their role as interfaces between the public and private spheres of social life triggers also major questions concerning the regulation and the transformations of the perception of privacy and identity. A closer look shows that whereas technologies are global, they are not equally owned or equally shared. The expansion of technologies demands infrastructures and investment, but also expertise and applicability. The spatial interconnections that overcome the traditional states actors in a network of power nodes form specific geographies that are characterised by their position in decision-making, production, and consumption of cultural goods. These spatial organisations are harmonised with the spread of decision-making power nodes of global urban centres and have worldwide ramifications (Sarikakis 2012). For example, the political centres of Brussels, Washington, and Montevideo demonstrate that the kinds of actors geographically concentrated and situated and the kinds of political and economic policy output of these centres are strategically connected (ibid). A lot can be concluded from the study of the positioning of these actors, whether governmental or non-governmental organisations, lobbies, or international actors. Convergence takes place as a particular hierarchical world order that embeds disparities in regulatory interests: for example, while geographies of invention aim to organise a system of intellectual property regimes that favour exports and worldwide protection of the exportable creations, and geographies of development aim to establish forms of protection that allow the domestic growth of own technologies. The enhancement of technological rights such as the free universal access to broadband or access to information are not only regulations that channel and further technological development, but also set regulatory frames that may address social equalities and differences.

The Impact of Convergences: Some Conclusions

This chapter has shown that neither technological evolution is neutral nor that is it the source of all forms of convergence concerning the communicative spaces. After a short revision of the concepts of governance and media governance the chapter has provided examples, cases, and sources to map several forms of convergence that involve the media. After all, media governance not only describes the conditions under which the convergence of media takes place but also identifies how often disconnected regulatory frames, processes, and institutional functions combine to define communicative spaces and forms of citizen participation and democracy.

After reviewing the meaning of media governance in the literature, the chapter has identified several levels of convergence that involve the media and communicative spaces: hardware and software of communication technologies are transformed simultaneously in a complex process of digitisation and ecosystem of devices and platforms. The text has shown that such aspects of media convergence also provoke the loss of fixity of policies and the difficulty of tracing them. Similarly, current regulatory frames are challenged as is the case of intellectual property laws in the contexts of cross-media productions or user-generated contents.

One of the forms of responding to this new state of media has been the convergence of policies, that is, the implementation of similar policies in different scenarios and the harmonisation of, for instance, regulatory frames between countries. Convergence of policies includes also the need of policies that cross national borders.

The global scene of these agreements and the phenomenon of multi-stakeholderism increase the complexity of media governance and the process of policy definition and decision-making. The chapter has described some of the deriving inequalities and how there is a tendency to de-nationalise policymaking challenging the conditions of legitimacy for resulting regulatory frames.

Furthermore, the presence of global discourses such as the crisis, piracy, or security frames the tendencies in policymaking at a global scale and generates states of exception that may be used to justify policies that can eventually curb the democratic purpose of the media regulation. Within this context, the chapter also described briefly the three main mechanisms of control exerted over the media: two referring to the content as the control over the diffused (censorship) and the control over what is published and a third form of control over the structure of the media.

The multiple forms of convergence described have to be related to a broader cultural process of cultural convergence. Regulation over the media involves the consideration of the cultural transformation and the dilemmas between global and local culture, and industries, the protection or the liberalisation of the cultural markets. The governance of these relations involves the practices, regulation, and ideas that define the conditions for the shaping of public spaces, where ultimately democracy and citizenship emerge.