Global Communication Theories and some personal point of view

What is a theory? What is a paradyme?

A theory is used to explain social reality. It could be socially constructed, or developped by a person for a specific purpose, a focused function.
A paradyme is an approach to some phenomena that provides a group of scholars a way of looking at something.

Now that we defined briefly those two concepts, some theories about Global Communication can be presented.

In fact, concerning the Media System in the world, there are four important models:

The Authoritarian model, being the model used in China describe a system where the government literally owns Media. There are some limits to media freedom, illustrated by censorship and punishment by goverment. Media can not criticize the government. Media system is repressed, and the government takes the decision about what can be said and published.

The Libertarian model, illustrated by the United States believe in the free press theory and the free market place. The media is free, and the government has no right to interfere, influence of control. Media attacks on the government policies are fully accepted.This model seems to be utopian for me, since I believe that the media is not really free and independant. Politics have important impact on the society, the economy, and even the media. The concept of freedom is real in the surface, but deep inside, politic is there, and goverment too, in a way or another.

The Soviet Union model, like in the ex Soviet Union (today Russia), where the media has to serve the interests of the working class. It is a kind of dictatorship. There is no real public sphere, and the use of propaganda for political parties. The government has a certain role in the media, and nothing can pass on without the approval of the government. Can be giving the example of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who wanted to denounce some aspects of the Russian government and who was disturbing the political leaders. She has been killed because she wanted to talk and denounce some political decisions that were against human rights.

The Social Responsability model, highly developped in social democracies like in Europe, define media as being a tool to inform, tell the truth, being objectif and accurate. Medias have a certain obligation toward the society. The government and media are closely related in the sense that they are "working together", helping each other in order to give the best information to its population.

The three paradymes that exist in Global communication are: The Modern theory, defining the complete freedom of the media. It target capitalist, Western oriented countries. The Marxist theory, defining the dependancy of the media, and the Globalisation theory, defining the critical public sphere.

One other important theory is the Modernization theory, developped by Daniel Lerner. This theory express the fact that the differences between the countries of the North (modern societies) and the countries of the South (traditional societies) are caused by cultural differences. This theory explain the reason of undevelopment in traditional societies, being essencially caused by their cultural retardation in areas like politics, economics, and infrastrustures. Those countries promote tradition rather than innovation and that is one reason for their undervelopment. According to Talcott Parsons, are concidered developped countries that put frontiers between different spheres of activities. Other countries that still put complicity between politics and media, laws and economics are the one undevelopped (traditional societies). However, the modernism of some countries and the cultural retardation of others can be explained by the emperialism and colonialism era, giving to the modern societies the role of dominators and colonisors; the traditional societies being the colonized and dominated ones.