Global Communication and Media Policy

The second chapter of the book is complementary to the first one, in the sense that they both tend to contextualize the study of global communication, through presenting the key references to know. The second one aims on one hand to explain the key theories approaching international communication, and on the other hand, to assess their validity and usefulness in understanding the subject. From the different approaches presented throughout the chapter, the one I was the most interested in was the part on ‘Hegemony’, and this is the one I will talk about here. The conception of hegemony by Antonio Gramsci is presented in the reading as a strong influence in the study of ideology (which concerns both critical theorists and cultural critics). Gramsci addresses the way dominant social groups or classes exercise control over the society by “build[ing] a consent by ideological control of cultural production and distribution”. Ideological power is therefore exercised through a control over so...

The use of communication as a tool has been often observed in history. The evolution of communication is strongly correlated to economic, political or military historical situations. Throughout my reading of the textbook’s first chapter, I have been particularly interested in the concept of propaganda, and in how it was adapted to different technological advances and new medium; in order to serve political or military purposes. I wished to focus here on the way Radio in particular has revolutionized propaganda, and made it a phenomenon of masses. From centuries before the invention and then popularization of radio, communication was already used as a way to spread ideologies to the masses. Writing is an example of that, as the popularization of it to non-formal languages, thanks to the printing revolution, had “undermin[ed] the authority of priests, scribes and political and cultural elites”(p.13), which means that these actors were using their domination on printing as way for id...