The Global Media, Communications and Cultures of Consumption

1. The Global Media, Communications and Cultures of Consumption

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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).

6. 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

7. Links between these firms Disney union with ABC, Time Warner CNN • Media sector is characterised by global monopoly capitalism

8. Global News Agencies: • Associated Press (AP)(USA) • Reuters(UK) • United Press International ((USA) ) • Agence-France Presse (AFP)(France) • Bloomberg (USA)

9. Table 1. Top Ten Global Telecommunications Corporations

10. 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

11. Although links between ownership, control and nationality are complex

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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.

15. 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)

16. 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

17. 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

18. Also Fine demands that we do is understand how commodities are historically specific and constructed.

19. 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 (Horizontaland vertical linkages) demands study of the wider social, culture and political milieu

20. 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)

21. 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

23. Although arguably other cultural milieu promote a more ‘healthy’ body shape?

25. 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.

26. 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

28. Corbusier’s recliner .

29. A Good chair

31. 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!

32. 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

33. 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)

34. 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