Social Media and Journalism in Iran

Interesting piece by Brian McNair on social media and journalism in post-election Iran:

Current events in Iran exemplify what I called in a 2006 book, ‘cultural chaos’. A ruling authoritarian elite struggles to maintain control of information and political dominance in a world where online media and satellite news threaten to make everything it does visible to a global audience.

Internally, Iran’s protesters Google, Twitter and Facebook around the censorship, countering the propaganda which fills state media coverage and organising their opposition. The oppressive order of Islamic fundamentalism becomes the dynamic chaos of emerging democracy, and culture - communication - is the catalyst for that phase change.

As I write, the outcome of the protests is uncertain. But there is no doubt that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hold on power has never been more fragile. The Iranian state tries to disrupt email and social networking sites. Mobile phone networks are blocked and satellite dishes confiscated, but those attempts merely add more fuel to the story as reported by a globalised, always-on media, stirring up further revulsion and anger at home and abroad.

In this sense, the globalisation of news media, and the explosion of online means of communication which are, by design, very difficult for authoritarian regimes to control or destroy, is a democratising force. It erodes the barriers which those regimes erect around their countries, breaks their quarantine, raises the global political cost of their behaviour. It brings chaos, but in a good way, the way that leads to the birth of something better.

The presence of new kinds of media is not enough in itself to guarantee progressive change, or to create the public mood which demands it. In the case of Iran, the arrival of Barack Obama and his conciliatory overtures appears to have strengthened the opposition. The parlous state of the Iranian economy has been a domestic issue for a long time, and the sheer extremism of Ahmadinejad’s version of Islam can only provoke resistance in a country with Iran’s cosmopolitan history.

But the impact of these underlying factors is amplified by the globalised media, which give them heightened visibility and force. Everything plays out before a global audience, in BBC and CNN bulletins, or on Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera. Iranians themselves, many of them, are part of that audience, and take strength from the knowledge that the eyes of the world are upon them as they fight for personal freedom and human rights.

This is what happened in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago, when Kate Adie and her media colleagues covered first the pro-democacy protests, then the massacre which followed. The Chinese communists won that battle, but they lost the war, and to this day are still shamed by their actions.

The global media were in Eastern Europe in the velvet revolutions, and in Moscow during the failed coup of 1991, lending their publicity to popular uprisings.

But in Iran, two decades on, there is another factor at work. Alongside the professional journalists and foreign correspondents are armies of ordinary people, armed only with mobile phones and digital cameras, Twitter and Skype accounts, Facebook and MySpace profiles.

While John Simpson and the rest are locked in their hotels, effectively prisoners of the regime, young Iranians keep a flow of uncensored news pouring out of the country – citizen journalists if you like. They are connected to the world beyond, in a way that previous generations of protesters have not been.

Brian McNair is Professor of Journalism & Communication at the University of Strathclyde.

New UNCTAD database on global cultural trade

UNCTAD has just announced the launch of a global Database on Global Trade in Creative Products. This should provide vital empirical data on longstanding debates about globalization, culture and trade. UNCTAD describes it in these terms.

The databank is intended for use by governments, businesses, academia, the media, international institutions, and members of the creative community, including independent artists and creators. It comprises factual data by country or region on some 235 products in the categories of arts and crafts, the visual arts, audiovisuals and media, and design and creative services.

The statistics are a starting point for improving market transparency and supporting governments in policy-making. They will also facilitate better understanding of the interface between culture, trade and technology as drivers of the creative economy.

Users may view, analyse and browse the data by choosing from tabular reports, country profiles, selected products, key players in major markets, and a variety of tables and charts.

Beyond Globalization

Below is my presentation to the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University in a very wintry Melbourne.

It generated a very lively discussion, particularly round the question of whether I underestimate the role of conscious global agency in management of the world-system, as argued by Hardt & Negri and by Immanuel Wallerstein.

There was also an interesting question asked by Professor Sung Gwan Park from the Seoul National University, Korea, about whether comparable global data exists on media consumption to match that available from UNESCO and other sources on media production. If anyone knows good sources on this, I would be interested to know more.

From: tflew, 1 hour ago

Monash 2008 Terry Flew

View SlideShare presentation (tags: runaway culture geography media)

Presentation on media globalization arguing for more insights from cultural and economic geography.


SlideShare Link

ICA Presentation, and more on Neoliberalism

I presented my ICA paper this morning in Montreal. Too many paper, not enough time, as tends to happen at ICA, with six papers in just over one hour. The paper was called "Rethinking Global Media: Creative Diversity and Media Dispersal". The final paper will be sent to the International Journal of Communication shortly, but a draft is available from the ICA web site. An earlier version presented in Seoul last year can be found at the QUT ePrints web site.

It was in a session that also had papers on the Lineage online games from Korea and on the Nigerian video boom, both of which fitted the theme of my paper well.

In the question time, the all embracing trope of "neoliberalism" appeared again. The final question was "Aren't we missing the elephant in the room here, which is the global dispersal of neoliberal ideology by the dominant Western powers?". Before I could say "No", the session came to a close with that question.

I had the good fortune to meet Simon Ellis, the Head of Section for Science, Culture and Communication Statistics at the session, and we had coffee afterwards. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics is headquartered in Montreal. Among the issues we discussed, we agreed that I should have said no to the last question, as the dispersal of global media production and distribution is supported by the UNESCO data. He also pointed to some flaws with the recent UNCTAD Creative Economy report, which I have referenced in a previous post.

UNESCO are hosting a session tomorrow that I am looking forward to. There is also a session on the impact of NAFTA on the cultural and creative industries.

Is America going backwards economically?

Aside from the Democrat primaries, the major talking point in the U.S. this week is whether the United States is losing ground in the global economy. This is different to the question of whether or not the U.S. economy is in recession (or 'slowdown' as GWB prefers to put it), but is rather about whether the U.S. is losing the competitive race against the emergent economies of East Asia and the Middle East, and indeed to Europe.

Two triggers to this have been Thomas Friedman's 'Who will tell the people' article in the New York Times, and the launch of Zareed Fakaria's book, The Post-American World and the various articles and TV appearances he has made around that. Both are arguing that as much of the world has adopted a free trade, pro-globalization agenda - as the U.S. campaigned for them to do throughout the 1980s and 1990s - the ability to compete successfully in the global market is understood mostly in terms of its threat to the U.S. economy.

Fakaria likes to use examples of 'big things' to make his point (Where's the world's biggest mall? - Beijing). Friedman compares the slow death experience of time spent at a major U.S. airport to the resort/business club experience of spending time at Hong Kong International Airport or Changi airport in Singapore. But both are saying that, having mostly won the arguments about globalization and freeing up international trade, the U.S. polity has largely failed to consider the implications for the U.S. itself of a more competitive global trading regime.

I am struck by how this debate differs in the U.S. to how it plays out in Australia. The Democratic Party in the U.S. is far more protectionist than the Australian Labor Party. This particularly cam through in Hillary Clinton's campaign, where her two biggest rallying points - opposing NAFTA and getting tough on China - struck an odd tone, given that the signing of NAFTA and opening up the space for China to join the WTO were probably the two major trade policy achievement of Bill Clinton's administration.

There is also no equivalent to, say, Paul Keating in the U.S. context, who would say that protectionism s a short-term measure that costs consumers and ultimately won't save jobs, and that more trade with countries such as China not only means the relocation of steel and textile jobs, but cheaper consumer goods and the scope to develop new jobs further up the industry value chain. This is despite the fact that parts of the country that aren't obvious beneficiaries, such as North Carolina and Virginia, are becoming more prosperous and middle-class as they develop more knowledge-based industries.