The Global Media,
Communications and Cultures of
Consumption
• What this lecture is essentially concerned
with is the production of the images and
‘cultural values’ that shape human
behaviour by global capitalist agents
• More particularly we are concerned with
two things
• First: We are concerned with who has
power in those industries whose explicit
purpose is to communicate ideas and
produce images.
• Second: We are concerned with the nature
of consumption in general
Structure of Lecture
• Section One
• Analysis the structure of the global media
and communications industries
• Section Two
• Highlight the main points of Baudrillard’s
and Fine’s theories of consumption
• Briefly seek to relate their conclusions to
contemporary processes of globalisation
Section One
• Contrasting Images of Digital
Democratisation/Global Media Village and
Cultural Imperialism
• Useful to review facts
• First, retreat from public broadcasting and
regulation to more free market based
system (changes in way Public Service
broadcasters behave).
• Privatisation of the Communications
Infrastructure.
• Technology convergence of different media and
technologies and the ability for information to
transcend distance
• Most striking trend is the growing market power
of a small number of firms
• Bagdikian argue that between 1983 and 1994
number of global media companies fell from 50
to 20
• Links between these firms Disney union
with ABC, Time Warner CNN
• Media sector is characterised by global
monopoly capitalism
Global News Agencies:
• Associated Press (AP)(USA)
• Reuters(UK)
• United Press International ((USA) )
• Agence-France Presse (AFP)(France)
• Bloomberg (USA)
Company
Rank
1
Fortune
Global 500
Revenues Rank
1999
13
Revenues
$
Millions
Nippon Telegraph
and Telephone
(Japan)
AT and T
28
(USA)
SBC
42
Communications
(USA)
Deutsche Telekom 77
(Germany)
93' 591.7
5
WorldCom
(USA)
79
37' 120
6
Verizon
Communications
(USA)
97
33' 174
7
BT
(UK)
110
30' 546
8
Olivetti
(Italy)
112
30' 088
9
France Telecom
(France)
118
29' 049
10
GTE
(USA)
152
25' 336
2
3
4
62' 391
49' 489
37' 835
• With media deregulation
we see the rise of
imported programmes. In
the German private
television sector US
imports account for 32%
to 52% programming
• This is important because
the images and sounds
we consume important in
making us who we are
and shaping our
conception of the good
life
Although links between ownership,
control and nationality are complex
• In some respects non-English
economically advanced states feel most
threatened
• Large section of the World remain outside
global communications loop.
• In 1993 Africa 16 (267 Europe) daily
newspapers, 173 (982 North America)
Radios and 39 (406 NA) TVs per thousand
• Half the world has never made a phonecall
and 24 OECD countries with 15% world
population account for 71% of lines
• Wireless networks still require
infrastructure
• Ideas of information society and global
village are flawed.
• Although based upon the truth that middle
class individuals do enjoy the ability to
offer the world the opportunity to
broadcast there opinions. It conceals
domination and Liberal quasi-censorship.
Section Two
• Baudrillard focuses on symbolic value rather
than use value
• Consumption is a means of social differentiation.
• In the contemporary era “functionalist discourse
serves as a alibi for the function of invidious
distinction”
• Accumulate objects as symbol of our social
progress but they also remind us of our
frustrations (some tensions in arguments about
differentiation and consumption)
• For Baudrillard exclusion is as much a
matter of culture construction as lack of
purchasing power, the advent grade
• Different ‘things’ have different meanings
for different classes
• Goods fully forged in alliance with
individual consumer
• Ben Fine ‘Systems of Provision’ Approach
• For Fine Baudrillard work is fundamentally
flawed and represents a mirror image of
conventional economics relative neglect of
sociology of consumption
• Fine uncomfortable with simply reducing
consumption to social meaning and
neglect of production
• Also Fine demands that we do is
understand how commodities are
historically specific and constructed.
• Fine systems of provisions approach seeks to
once again place production at the centre and
combine an analysis of material and the social.
• As a centre piece of analyse is leading firms
themselves and how they seek to construct
‘meaning’
• System of provisioning approach (Horizontal and
vertical linkages) demands study of the wider
social, culture and political milieu
•
•
•
•
•
Example Fine (1998) focuses on is Food
Agriculture support policies by state.
Health campaigns by state
Major retailers and industry lobby itself
Body images generated by media and diet
industry (gendered)
• That which can happily co-exist for capital
can have terrible impact on individuals
• Co-existence in contemporary society of
mass obesity and anorexia/bulimia
• US 31% men, 24% (40%) women
overweight
• $40 billion cost of tackling obesity, $20 diet
industry
• Although arguably
other cultural milieu
promote a more
‘healthy’ body shape?
• 64% women and 23% of men who have
never been overweight have been on diets
• Ideas of consumption satisfying utility and
consumer sovereignty are actually fairly
meaningless
• Personally, I am all for state regulation. No
thin models, bans on junk food etc.
• Personally my favourite example of a System of
Provision is chairs
• 70% of the population in core capitalist states
suffer from lower back pain, accounting for 13%
of sickness absences in the UK
• 85% of lower back pain in the UK is classified as
being ‘non-specific back pain’ meaning that it
‘results from postural and mechanical stresses
on spinal and paraspinal structures (Speed,
2004: 1120).
• Most chairs are frankly useless, see the
following by Ralph Lauren
Corbusier’s recliner
.
• A Good chair
Factors at Play in the Chair system of
provision:
• Global chair industry
• Control of Workplace
• State regulation
• Symbolic Power of the Change
• Regulation of the body!
• How does this all relate to globalisation? If
the act of consumption is simultaneously a
economic and social one than how things
produced and are sold critical is critical to
the construction of culture. So economic
changes cannot but be culture changes.
Not simply in the image industries but in all
industries
• Perhaps culture cannot simply be reduced
to material culture but material culture is a
key competent. Foolish to simply dismiss
arguments formation of global culture
(although they have limitations)
Conclusions
• I think it difficult to be entirely comfortable with
way global media and communications
industries are currently organised. The problem
is devising attractive system.
• Formal communications/media democracy hides
real power relationships
• Although anarchy of market complicates things.
Profit makers not propaganda machines