IICS515-OCIntercultural and International Communication Theory

October 27, 2014Communication Policy and Governance in Global Context

Outline

1. Introducing Communication Policy: Why It Matters

2. Communication Policy and the Public Good

Source: Marc Raboy. “Making Media: Creating the Conditions for Communication in the Public Good,” published in the Canadian Journal of Communication in 2006

3. Global Organizations and International Communication

Source: Thomas McPhail, Chapter 5, “The Medium and Global Technologies and Organizations.” IICS515 textbook

4. Communication Policy and Communication Rights

Source: Marc Raboy and Jeremy Shtern. Media Divides: Communication Rights and the Right to Communicate in Canada.

5. Cyberbullying: A case study in policy

Key conceptsMcPhail:

• International Telecommunication Union (ITU)• World Trade Organization (WTO)• OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development)

Raboy:

• spectrum scarcity • spectrum abundance

Raboy and Shtern:

• right to communicate and communication rights• negative and positive rights• New World Information And Communication Order

(NWICO)• free flow versus balanced flow• social cycle of communication

Note regarding our McPhail reading for this lecture

• This lecture will make use of McPhail’s chapter 5, “The Medium: Global Technologies and Organizations,” and not Chapter 6, “The Internet”

• You are most welcome to read chapter 6 and to use it in any of your research papers, but it will not be addressed in this lecture

• Chapter 5 is more important to us as a showcase for discussing communication policy

1. Introducing Communication Policy:Defining governance, policy and regulation

Governance refers to the legitimate state of governing: the administrative oversight and management asserted by a private or public organization over an area of responsibility

• The CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunication Commission) is the body with governance of broadcast spectrum in Canada

• Industry Canada and the Ministry of Canadian Heritage also have some responsibility with regard to telecommunication, media and cultural governance

A policy is a line of argument rationalizing a response or course of action taken by a government, non-profit or private organization in regard to an issue

• Policies offer philosophical direction and justification for the views of a government (or any other non-profit or private organization) on a particular area of governance, such as broadcast and telecommunication policy

• An example of a policy in Canada relating to media and communication is the Broadcasting Act of 1991, which governs Canadian broadcasting

• Other documents giving policy direction in Canada’s communication environment include the Telecommunications Act of 1993, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms

• Ongoing policy statements, sometimes quite complex in nature, also give new life and contemporary relevance to existing policy, e.g., Navigating Convergence II (2011) and Voices of Diversity (2008) at CRTC

A regulation is a rule that has the force of law• Regulations enact the larger vision of a given policy in the form of more

particular and prescriptive requirements • These regulations ensure that the parties involved behave in conformity with

the policy and respect the authority implied in governance• An example of a regulation attached to the Broadcasting Act of 1991 are

(among many examples) the Broadcasting Information Regulations of 1993

RegulationEnforcement of policy and concrete

manifestation of governance

PolicyLegal and philosophical rationale

GovernanceAdministrative oversight

Communication policy categories

Telecommunication policy

• Areas of interest: telecommunications (including satellite, cellphone, landline, Internet)

• Historically focused on media “pipeline” and not content

• Often known as “common carriage” domain (carrying media without regard to content)

• In Canada: Telecommunications Act, 1993

Media policy

• Areas of interest: traditionally print and broadcast media, cable

• Historically focused on media broadcast content, not pipeline

• Now increasingly and uneasily concerned with digital media

• In Canada: Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Broadcasting Act, 1991

Cultural policy

• Areas of interest: galleries, museums, diversity, performing arts, film

• In Canada: various policies, including Status of the Artist Act, Copyright Act, Multiculturalism Act

•Telecommunication policy and media policy begin to blur in a convergent communications environment

Themes in media policy(i) Media policy and communicative space

• Media policy is vital because it is here that the “communicative space” in which other issues in society are discussed – health, economics, politics, social welfare, environment – is created

• As media policy goes, in some sense, so then does our discussion, understanding and action on all other (non-media) issues facing society

• There are many more stakeholders in the contemporary media environment than in the past, i.e., everyone is potentially a media “creator” given Internet and cheap and easy-to-use digital tools like cameras, editing software, and this makes policy development much more complex

(ii) Media policy and non-media-related areas of society

• Media has become so important to our economy, politics and culture that public policy debates and decisions in non-media areas, i.e., health, economy, environment, now directly affect media policy

• Example: whether Canada’s economic development and competitiveness in the world economy needs a BCE merger with Astral to create a Canadian conglomerate capable of competing with big international media companies like News Corporation, Disney, etc.

• Likewise, media policy issues affect non-media areas of society, e.g., the question of whether copyright laws stifle or encourage technological progress and economic growth

(iii) Media policy and deinstitutionalization

• Technology is leading to a “deinstitutionalization” of media, taking them out of public organizations (e.g., CBC) and large private corporations (e.g., CTV, Global) and into decentralized systems (e.g., Internet)

• It is more difficult to create policy in a deinstitutionalized environment, as media are located in many places and take unfamiliar and highly personalized forms, thus presenting an obstacle to policymakers and the public in regard to how to think about how best to frame policy

*This material taken from Philip Napoli’s article and from Sandra Braman, “Where has media policy gone? Defining the

field in the 21st century.” Communication Law and Policy, 2004

Themes in media policy

(iv) Policy relating to information technologies is displacing attention to media policy

• Media policy (which historically addressed radio, TV, print, film) is currently being swamped and obscured by the policy debates and the huge volume of laws created to address new information technologies and issues, e.g., intellectual property, combatting piracy

• Because discourse relating to information technology tends to be interested in legal, economic and technological issues, the social and political questions that typically attach to media policy have gone missing from policy debates and policy making

“An over-emphasis on what is new about digital technologies exacerbates the danger that fundamental principles developed over centuries to protect civil liberties and promote effective democratic processes will be lost in the electronic environment.” (Braman, p. 155)

(v) Media policy and complexity

• The complexity of digital media technologies, such as the Internet, tends to overwhelm policy makers’ understanding and the capacity of regulators to manage the electronic environment, e.g. the CRTC, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission

• New media technologies, e.g. Four Square, Facebook, Twitter, are not always well understood by the policymakers who must create policy for them

“Policy makers are most comfortable making law when they feel they understand what it is that is being regulated, but we are still just learning about the effects of the use of meta-technologies.” (Braman, p. 158)

Themes in media policy(iv) Media policy and confusing new patterns in media form

and content

• The Internet brings into convergence different kinds of communication relationships, each of which used to be regulated separately and have separate laws and policies attached to them, e.g., one-to-one communication, one-to-many communication, and many-to-many communication

• The creation of new media genres, e.g., reality TV, satiric news shows like “The Daily Show,” mash-ups on YouTube, that conflate types of programming (news and entertainment, entertainment and “real” people) that have different laws (e.g., libel in journalism, copyright laws permitting use of copyrighted material like news show content for satiric purposes) leads to confusion as to how to regulate and to write policy

• In our electronic media environment, historically separate media, functions and industry have blurred, which is leading to difficulty in determining the proper subject of policy, e.g., Apple TV (blurring TV and Internet), smart phones with downloaded music and video

• The era of ubiquitous embedded computing, e.g., building of computer and communicative functions into cars, homes, RFID chips, is leading to questions as to whether non-media technologies should be regarded as subjects of media policy

2. Communication Policy and the Public Good

•Marc Raboy is Beaverbrook Chair in Ethics, Media and Communications in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University

•Raboy is arguably the leading Canadian scholar on matters of policy, and we are using this article to think about what policy is and why it matters to the public

•This content comes from Raboy’s article, “Making Media: Creating the Conditions for Communication in the Public Good,” published in the Canadian Journal of Communication in 2006

•Raboy is also co-author (with Jeremy Shtern) of the chapter on communication rights that follows after this section

•We’re using this section to think about what policy is and why it matters as part of our concern to introduce ourselves to the theory of international and intercultural communication in IICS515

Marc Raboy

Raboy: Bringing the public into the media policy-making process• Raboy opens here by arguing for the benefit of placing media and cultural policy on the public’s agenda

• That is, he advocates making the public aware of and a participant in media and cultural policy-making

• This represents a different view of the public as it contrasts with the traditional expert and stakeholder approach to media and cultural policy

• That is, it invites the public into the process, rather than defining it as a specialized and narrow issue, and leaving it to state regulators, government and academic policy experts, or the media and cultural industries, e.g. TV, telecommunications, film

• The reason why the public ought to participate more meaningfully in media and cultural policy is because media has entered our lives so overwhelmingly that understanding media and managing its place in our lives through policy is now a matter of generalized public concern

• Through policy, the public “makes media” and thus makes the conditions under which they work, play, vote, and use media in many other ways in their lives

• With the withdrawal of the Canadian and other states from policy-making and regulation of media, private media companies work to fill the vacuum

• Raboy makes the case for the public’s greater involvement as a stakeholder in policy-making, and an end to this history of public withdrawal and the resulting vacuum

• While we are meeting with new forms of media today, e.g. tablet computers like the iPad, the old issues of freedom of expression, ownership, the public interest, remain very much alive and present today

• Because media has become global, and because there is an emergent global infrastructure for governance and policy and regulation, the urgent need and value of involving the public directly in policy-making has grown proportionately

The biggest issues in the media today

“The most important issues surrounding media today concern the emergence and shaping of a global media environment. A new general framework of media governance is taking shape. Who decides how issues of media governance get resolved—and consequently, how media are used—is therefore a question that goes to the heart of how every society in the world today will experience the 21st century.” (Raboy, 290-1)

What higher-level themes are of importance in thinking about media policy?

1. The “double-edged sword” of communication technology• It expands our ability to participate in public life• But, it increases the power of governments and corporations to surveil us, sell to us, limit our

expression

2. The changing nature of the public sphere• The public sphere is becoming “deterritorialized,” that is, no longer attached to physical spaces,

e.g. cafes, town halls, or delimited and defined areas, e.g., the nation state• The public sphere is likewise losing its traditional national definition, e.g. Canadian culture, and is

therefore becoming global, diverse, distributed

“… the communicative space of reference today is the whole world. This does not mean the eclipse of the nation-state or the national media. What it means is that the world is the necessary reference point for any meaningful discussion of national politics anywhere.” (Raboy, p. 295)

3. The recognition that communication studies in general or media policy in particular are not specialized and “walled-off” areas of concern, but points of access to understanding reality at large

• In a world in which media are so instrumental and embedded in everyday life, economics, politics, culture, etc., communication studies and media policy are windows onto the entire contemporary condition

• Raboy quotes Harold Innis, the founder of communication studies scholarship in Canada, stating that communication studies is “a pathway to plunge into the deepest, most intractable problems of contemporary life” (Raboy, p. 297)

Media governance:the 20th and 21st centuries compared

18th to 20th century modern media governance

21st century postmodern media governance

•General focus of governance is national in character•States are expanding into public life, and gradually develop an arms-length relationship to media so as to ensure the autonomy of media institutions and freedom of expression •Media serve to expand the sphere of human freedom to democratize societies, e.g. media supporting freedom of speech versus repressive states and their regulation of expression•Media are an extension of people’s participation in civil society, e.g., public service broadcasters like the CBC, and a means to the creation of national identities in emergent nation-states of the modern era

•General focus of governance is global in character•Withdrawal of the state from policy-making, regulation and governance•In the vacuum left by the state’s withdrawal, greater presence of both corporate and independent interests, e.g. NGOS and advocacy groups relating to media and culture such as UNESCO, media-driven citizens’ groups like Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, Mediawatch •International trade policy, e.g., NAFTA, act to curb and limit the ability of states to protect media and cultural industries

“The global media environment is a new frontier where rules are being made on the go; as in every frontier institution, the powerful are making the rules to suit their particular needs.” (Raboy, p. 296)

What does the 21st century media environment look like?

“This was roughly the portrait, then, in the early 21st century: increasing concentration of media ownership and loose minimal regulation regarding the most basic elements of social responsibility for commercial mass media…; continued persistence of public broadcasting with a serious funding and legitimacy crisis in the wake of government fiscal policies and dropping audience shares vis a vis commercial media; recognized legal status and minimal regulatory and financial support for alternative community-based media in some parts of the world; and basic struggles for freedom of expression and liberalization of state-controlled media in many parts of the world.”

Raboy, p. 297

A new basis for a 21st century view of media and cultural policy: from scarcity to abundance

• Raboy argues that, in a previous era of scarcity in the electromagnetic spectrum, regulation was appropriately focused on allocating these scarce resources carefully and rationing slices of spectrum to license holders in radio and TV

• By “spectrum scarcity” we mean the limited amount of room for broadcast in the analogue electromagnetic spectrum, which placed a cap on the number of radio and TV stations who could broadcast

• Technological change—notably digital broadcast and cable, and expanded bandwidth in Internet and wireless cell—has meant that scarcity of EM is no longer a problem in the digital era

• For that reason, we need a policy regime based on the assumption of abundance, not scarcity

“In short, we need a new regulatory paradigm, focused on how to guarantee communicative access and equity in a context of information abundance.” (Raboy, p. 299)

What are the issues that will define media policy in the 21st

century?

1. The revitalization of public service broadcasting• Raboy speaks in the Canadian context to the

weakness of the CBC’s board, given the number of political appointees there

• There is a need for improved funding to the CBC, as public funding of media in Canada is weak by international standards

• There is value in a return to regional programming sensitive to cultural differences in CBC-TV, and a turn away from a single homogeneous national CBC

2 Importance of asking more from private broadcasters in return for their use of publicly owned EM spectrum

• Canada has one of the most concentrated media systems in the world

• We ask too little of of our private broadcasters in return for their license privileges

• We need to require of private media a greater contribution to independent and community media

3. Policy measures to promote pluralism and diversity

• There is a need to to encourage independent media and non-profit community media

EM spectrum

3. Global Organizations and International Communication

• When we make a cell phone call, use the Internet, or tweet a message, we normally give little thought to the technology and institutional arrangements that make this possible

• But as students of international communication, it is our responsibility to look past the narrow frame that is our call or message, and understand the history, institutional framework, and politics behind that simple act of communication

• This chapter by McPhail is intended to introduce us to some of the institutions that provide the framework for global communication

• McPhail’s particular emphasis is on the most important of these institutions, and that is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations agency

• We can appreciate that, in our digital age, the global telecommunication system is the means by which the world quite literally talks to each other

• The organization that has, since 1865, helped to assemble that global telecommunication network is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

• The ITU is the oldest international organization in existence today, yet one few people know about apart from those involved in representing the interests of governments and corporations as these relate to telecommunication

• The ITU is an international governmental organization, attached to the United Nations, constituted by a large number of state and also private sector partners drawn from the telecommunication industry

• The ITU is thus responsible for much of our global communication system today, and that includes:

Satellites (data, radio and television signals) The Internet

Cellphone calls

ITU’s website

The early history of the ITU

• The telegraph was invented in 1838, and its design is now credited to two American inventors, Alfred Vail and Samuel Morse (hence the “Morse code”)

• The ITU was originally known at its creation in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union

• It has that name because the telegraph was the first (and then only) piece of global communication infrastructure until the invention of the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell, 1876) and the wireless telegraph (i.e., radio, in 1895 by Guglielmo Marconi)

• Over the decades, the ITU became responsible for establishing global technical standards and policy governance for a long list of media technologies as they became functional

Telephone in 1876 Wireless telegraphy in 1896

Commercial broadcast radio in 1920 Commercial television broadcast in 1939

First full-function communication satellite (Telstar, 1962)

• The ITU was always a partnership of governments and private sector companies, e.g., Western Union, the telegraph monopoly in the 19th century

• The countries of the developed world had a significant advantage in the creation of the ITU, and its allocation of broadcast spectrum and electromagnetic frequencies, because of “squatter’s rights”

• That is, by virtue of having access to spectrum and preferred frequencies with the electromagnetic spectrum, developed world nations were able to claim the best space and to influence the policy emerging around their “squatter’s” ownership

The young Marconi and his wireless telegraph, 1896

Alexander Graham Bell, with the first telephone, 1876

Tensions at the ITU between developed and developing world nations

Houlin Zhao of China was elected

Secretary-General of ITU in October 2014

• The problem of “squatting” by developed world nations within electromagnetic spectrum and the preferred frequencies therein would later come to create serious tension with developing world countries as they emerged from colonialism and sought to establish their own access to global telecommunication

“Generally, the ITU gave priority to those nations that had the economic and technological sophistication to occupy a frequency first. These were not the nations that most needed the frequency. The fortunate nations were primarily core nations that relied on the squatter’s rights tradition to claim prime spectrum positions.” (McPhail,. p. 82)

• Over the decades, especially after World War II and with the rise of the newly independent nations of post-colonial Africa, Asia and Latin America, the conversation at the ITU has shifted from highly technical matters relating to protocols, spectrum, frequencies, and other engineering matters, to issues relating to social justice and cultural autonomy for the developing world

“The role of the ITU has expanded enormously as a result of technological innovation and the multiplicity of new stakeholders ranging from governments to broadcasters to manufacturers, so that it has become the major global organization dealing with the substantial telecommunication sector. Many of the member states and related organizations now expect the ITU to take into account the cultural, social and non-economic dimensions of issues in making frequency allocations and other major decisions.” (McPhail, p. 84)

• Access to telecommunication services through the ITU has become essential for any nation, rich or poor, insofar as such access is important to economic development

Example of ITU issue and the “squatting”

problem: geostationary

satellites

• The world is surrounded by a belt of satellites at 22,300 miles (35,888 kilometres) from the earth

• These satellites are called geostationary satellites because they maintain a constant position relative to the Earth, moving with it as the world turns

• Because of this, satellites at this distance can maintain a reliable “footprint” over a wide area on Earth, and don’t have to pass a signal to another satellite that is coming over the horizon (as is needed when satellites are at a lower altitude)

• As has been typical of the “squatting” problem for decades, developed world nations and their media corporations have established themselves and their satellites in the best places within this geostationary belt on a “first come, first served” basis

“… these allocations have been historically awarded on a first-come, first-served basis, which means that the core nations and the former Soviet Union came first to the table to make specific requests for operational satellite parking spots.” (McPhail, p. 85)

Geosynchronous belt of satellites

The Maitland Commission

Cover of the Maitland Commission report (1985)

• The tension between the history of squatting and the technical and engineering perspective on telecommunication from the developed world nations, and the social and cultural concerns of the developing world nations, came to a climax at the Maitland Commission of 1983-85

• Like the McBride Commission at UNESCO in the 1970s, the Maitland Commission was focused on the inequality that characterized the developed and developing world with regard to telecommunication access and quality of services

• To put that another way, what the McBride report was to the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debates of the 1970s, addressing media and culture there, the Maitland Commission and Report were to telecommunication

• The Maitland report recognized the fact that the world had been divided into two halves: an information-rich developed world, and information-poor LDCs

• The Maitland Commission helped to shift the conversation at the ITU from purely technical concerns to social, cultural and development concerns more responsive to the LDCs

“The Maitland Commission argued that although telecommunication systems were once considered a luxury, they are now viewed as essential components of development. Indeed, one might argue that a telecommunication infrastructure is a pre-requisite for any type of social or economic development in peripheral nations.” (McPhail, p. 87)

WSIS, WTO and OECD

• McPhail closes the chapter by addressing three major global events and organizations that have had significant influence on international communication

(i) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)• The World Summit on the Information Society was established in 2003 to establish a global intergovernmental dialogue about

the then-new digital media and a broad and equitable framework for building infrastructure for and distributing digital media technology and services

• In many ways, it served as a digital-age equivalent of the New World Information and Communication Order debates of the 1970s, and was sensitive to the issue of the “digital divide” or the division of the world into the information rich and the information poor

(ii) World Trade Organization (WTO), formerly known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)• The World Trade Organization was originally called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and it was formed in

1947 to establish a new global institution for discussing global trade, negotiating trade agreements, and liberalizing trade among countries

• The GATT (it became the WTO in 1995) was created in part because the World War I and II were the product in part of economic trade barriers that had led the various countries of the world into a form of economic warfare

• Trade liberalization was thus understood as an antidote and solution to another world war• The WTO has influence over global trade in media and cultural products, e.g., Hollywood film, and has historically taken a U.S.-

centered view of media and cultural goods by defining them as “commodities” like any other product, and not being sensitive to the impact of “cultural imperialism”

(iii) Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development• The OECD is the “club” of the wealthiest countries in the world• It is roughly synonymous with the “West,” as we defined it earlier in IICS515• The OECD was formed out of the organization that, in 1947, helped to implement the U.S. Marshall Plan in Europe• The Marshall Plan was a massive transfer of U.S. capital to assist Europe in recovering economically from WWII• The OECD operates as a massive “think tank” or intellectual resource for the Western nations, and gives those nations an

ongoing advantage relative to the rest of the world by offering research and coordination among the advanced capitalist and democratic countries

The digital divide today

Intelsat (now known as the International Telecommunication Satellite Organization, or ITSO)

• Intelsat (now known as ITSO, though McPhail doesn’t indicate this) is the global intergovernmental satellite agency responsible for managing global satellite services

• It is separate from the ITU, but cooperates with it• ITSO was an intergovernmental organization from its foundation in

1965, until 2001 when it underwent a form of privatization• The environment in which ITSO operates has been subject to

deregulation, privatization and other forms of neoliberal reconstruction

• Also, new satellite consortiums like Eutelsat (European consortium) and Inmarsat (a consortium especially involved with mobile services) have emerged to compete with ITSO

• The result is yet more concern that developing world nations, given the strong pro-market orientation of satellite services in the world, may not have their concerns regarding culture and development taken into consideration

“But the peripheral nations are now fearful that their interests will be totally neglected in a privatized environment in which the sheer weight of economics and profitability will dominate future decision-making…. Without access to Intelsat’s infrastructure, they could lose connection to the outside world.” (McPhail, p. 89)

ITSO website

What are the general trends that McPhail identifies relating to the institutional framework for global communication?

1. Tensions between developed nations and LDCs, notably in view of the historical problem of “squatting” in the EM spectrum

2. Shift from taking a purely technical and engineering view for problems to being sensitive to social, cultural and development issues relating to telecommunication

3. Increasing involvement of private-sector corporate telecommunication and technology companies, almost all of them located in the developed world

4. A general environment of neoliberalism, privatization, and deregulation, making it difficult for the ITU to maintain its legitimacy as a U.N agency committed to the public interest (not the corporate interest)

5. The revival of concerns typical of the NWICO and the McBride report in later conferences, such as the WSIS

4. The Right to Communicate: Media Policy and Communication Rights

Definition of a right:

“A right can be understood as a norm that must be adhered to without qualifications or deviations.”

(Smith, p. 441)

•The discourse of human rights in the West dates back to the Magna Carta in 1215, the charter that the English barons successfully negotiated with the highly autocratic King John to reduce the power of absolute monarchy and distribute it among the barons

•As the constitutions of the United States and France are written in the 18th century, the idea of human rights is further articulated and codified into law, e.g. the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights

•In the modern world, human rights emerges as a concept in the Abolitionist debate and social movement directed to the end of slavery in the 19th century

•The right to communicate and communication rights are an acknowledgment that the concept of human rights is made to extend to communication in a comprehensive and complex way

•This reflects the central importance of communication to political, social and cultural life

This section of the Powerpoint includes material from several sources:

(1) Media Divides (a book co-edited by Marc Raboy, and from which our chapter comes)

(2) Richard Smith et al, “Communicating with (Some) Canadians: Communication Rights and Government Online in Canada.” Canadian Journal of Communication, 2009

(3) Sean O Siochru, Introducing Communication Rights

H isto rical co n text fo r d eve lo p m e n t o f co m m u n icati o n righ ts

(1) 1948 UN Conference on Freedom of Information and 1948 General Assembly• Post-WWII debate between capitalist and communist bloc about “free flow” versus “balanced”

flow of information in the context of the Cold War• This debate sets the stage for later debates about communication by locating communication in

relationship to international law, the state, corporations, civil society, and the obstacles to freedom of speech

• UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights published in 1948 by UN offered Article 19 (freedom of expression) as a fundamental and universal human right

(2) Jean D’Arcy’s 1969 paper for the European Broadcasting Union• Here the right to communicate is first articulated, as D’Arcy evaluates the UN Universal

Declaration of Human Rights 20 years after it was written• D’Arcy acknowledges the shortcomings of Article 19, and looks to improve on how we define the

political and legal nature of communication by conceptualizing communication rights

(3) 1971 Telecommission in Canada• This was a Canadian commission formed by the then-Department of Communication to explore

communication rights• It produced an early, famous, and benchmark document called Instant World: A Report on

Telecommunications in Canada• This document placed Canada briefly at the forefront of communication rights thinking in the

world

Historical context for development of communication rights

(4) New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debates in the late 1970s and early 1980s

• Many Voices, One World is published in 1984 as a report on these debates (this is also known as the MacBride report, as the chair of the committee that did this research was Irish politician, Sean MacBride, one of the founders of Amnesty International)

• A PDF copy of Many Voices, One World is here• The NWICO debates represented an effort by countries in the developing world to establish

some defense (through national controls on Western media and cultural products) against what they perceived as the invasion of cheap Western media and popular culture (“cultural imperialism”) and the “Americanization” of their cultures

• The NWICO debates came at a time after the former colonies in the developing world had achieved independence, and sought to restore their cultures they believed damaged and suppressed during decades or centuries of Western rule (echo here of residential schools and First Nations in Canada)

(5) United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003-2005• The WSIS represented an attempt by the UN to host a global conversation among nations and

civil society groups about closing the “digital divide” and ensuring equity as the Internet and digital culture was built

• Key WSIS documents (and contemporary updates) here• Discussion of communication rights in a digital culture was continued here, notably in the

context of a counter-summit (the Platform for Communication Rights) developed at WSIS

The milestones in communication rights

Emergence of the idea of

human rights in 13th century Magna Carta

(England) and 18th century

Enlightenment

Human rights enshrined in law in American and

French revolutions, in

anti-slavery Abolitionist

movement in 19th century

UN’s Article 19 in 1948:

Freedom of expression (as a negative right)

Jean D’Arcy’s 1969 critique of

the limits of Article 19 and advocacy for

communication as a positive right

Concept of “the right to

communicate” and

development of communication

rights in 21st century

The Right to Communicate: Evolving Past the Freedom of Expression Captured in Article 19

•The “right to communicate” is a concept originating with a United Nations director and former French TV executive, Jean D’Arcy•The concept represents a constructive critique and improvement on Article 19 in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1948 document that defined as a universal right the “freedom of expression”• Article 19 reads as follows:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

•D’Arcy and other critics have since recognized that the “freedom of expression,” while a vital human right, implies that everyone has the equal ability, power and resources to communicate—that there is a “level playing field”•The “freedom of expression” also has a one-way quality or direction to it, insofar as it suggests the freedom to speak without any obligation of those to whom a message is directed to reply, e.g., government, large media corporations, powerful private interests

“That is, although one may be free to impart and receive information, according to D’Arcy, this freedom could be interpreted in a non-interactive sense and would not protect the sort of two-way communication facilitated by developments in telecommunication.” (Smith, p. 438)

John D’Arcy (1913-1983)UN Universal Declaration of

Human Rights

The New World Information and Communication Order—

1980

Sean MacBride (1904-1988), chair of the MacBride commission

•The MacBride Commission, chaired by the Irish politician Sean MacBride (a founder of Amnesty International), was founded by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) •It was created to develop a new basis for global culture in the wake of the end of the colonial era and the new presence of the developing world• The MacBride Commission, which reported in 1980, argued that the developed world advocated a doctrine relating to world media that imposed itself unjustly on the developing world, and perpetuated a kind of colonialism of the imagination•The “First World” doctrine MacBride criticized was called the “free flow” doctrine•The “free flow” doctrine was believed by many to be a justification for cultural imperialism – the extension of Western power and ideas through a purely capitalist view of culture that demanded no barriers to Western ideas•Western media attacked MacBride Commission and its report as an assault on traditional press freedom and news values•We can see parallels between the MacBride report and the WSIS (World Summit on Information Society) debates about who controls digital culture and what becomes of it

Industrialized West Developing world

•Free flow of information (“the free flow doctrine”)•Traditional news values favour press freedom•No state interference in media

•Balanced flow of information•Press values in favour of economic development•State involvement in media

Eleanor Roosevelt (U.S. First Lady, wife of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt) with UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The negative right of “freedom of expression” or “free speech

assumes that everyone has an identical capacity to exercise their

right to free speech

The right to free speech does not mean that you have a right to a

response from someone or thing; it’s a one-way right

The positive rights more complexly captured in

“communication rights” acknowledges that not everyone has equal power to express free

speech, e.g. individual versus large media conglomerates, or

people in countries without strong free speech protection

Communication rights assume not only the right to free speech, but

the right to be heard and responded to by the state,

corporations, interests

Tensions and differences between negative and positive rights view of communication

What are communication rights?What are the communication rights? What are the general dimensions in

society relating to communication rights?

•A right to freedom of expression and opinion•A right to participate in one’s own culture and use one’s mother language, including ethnic, religious, or linguistic minorities•A right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications•A right to information regarding governance and matters of public interest (access to information)•A right to the protection of the moral and material interests of authorship•A right to one’s honour and reputation and to protection against unwarranted damage to them•A right to privacy•A right to peaceful assembly and association•A right to self-determination and to take part in government•A right to free primary and secondary education

Source: Media Divides, p. 30

•Communicating in the Public Sphere: The role of communication and media in exercising democratic political participation in society.

•Communication Knowledge: The terms and means by which knowledge generated by society is communicated, or blocked, for use by different groups.

•Civil Rights in Communication: The exercise of civil rights relating to the processes of communication in society.

•Cultural Rights in Communication: The communication of diverse cultures, cultural forms and identities at the individual and social levels.

Source: Communication Rights site

How do the right to communicate and communication rights relate?

The right to communicate:

Gives holistic and singular form to the

many communication rights

Represents an ultimate goal for

advocates of communication rights

Communication rights:

Represents all the existing human rights that have a bearing on

communicationGive material, real-world form to the

more abstract “right to communicate”

“Calling for the realization of communication rights, and reaffirming that everyone has – or should have - a right to communicate are entirely complementary. The right to communicate can be used as an informal rallying cry for advocacy, appealing to a common-sense understanding and the perceived needs and frustrations of people in the area of communication. It can also be used in a formal legal sense, in which a right to communicate should take its place alongside other fundamental human rights enshrined in international law. Communication rights is a useful term that relates immediately to a set of existing human rights, that are denied many people, and whose full meaning can only be realized when they are considered together, as a interrelated group. The whole is greater than the parts.”

From Sean O Siochru, Introducing Communication Rights, p. 5

Thinking about rights in general terms:first and second generation rights

First generation “negative” rights Second generation “positive” rights

•Are typically “negative” rights, and date to the 18th and 19th century and the rise of liberal democracy

•Negative rights are “rights that proscribe state interference with individual freedoms” (Media Divide)

•These are rights or freedoms from state interference, curbing the power of government relative to various kinds of freedoms that accrue to you as an individual

•These negative rights are enshrined in constitutions, bills and charters of rights, and the rule of law

Examples: •Right to exercise one’s religion without restriction•Right to own private property•Habeas corpus (state’s obligation to tell you what your alleged crime is when arrested)•Right to free speech or freedom of expression

•Are typically “positive” rights, and date to the 20th and 21st century and a time when the nation-state is part of a global economy, culture and political system

•Positive rights are “rights that require states to create conditions in which individuals and collectives can enjoy collective and positive rights” (Media Divides)

•These are rights to something and accrue to people as part of society and humanity

•In that, they are sometimes referred to as social rights

Examples:•Right to food and shelter•Right to an education•Right to a minimum standard of living or minimum income•Right to health care•Right to communicate and communication rights

The social cycle of communication

Generate ideas and opinions

Express and speak

Be heard (listen)

Be understood (understand)

Respond and shareLearn,

enhance, create

Seek and receive ideas

Black: first-generation “negative” right to freedom of expression (Article 19)

White: second-generation “positive” communication rights

“[Communication rights] imply and seek to bring about a cycle that includes not only seeking, receiving and imparting, but also listening and being heard, understanding, learning, creating and responding.”

Sean O Siochru, Introducing Communication Rights, p. 7

5. Cyberbullying: A case study in

policy

Amanda Todd testimonial on

YouTube

• In cyberbullying, we recognize a media issue that has significant policy implications and an international nature

• In 2013, the Canadian government tabled a new bill titled Bill C-13, Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act.

• Prior to its tabling, the Standing Committee on Human Rights in the Canadian Senate produced a research report on one of the more sensitive parts of this controversial bill: the provisions relating to cyberbullying

• Bill C-13 is currently making its way through parliamentary process, having been given two readings thus far, and will likely be voted on in the fall 2014 session

• Cyberbullying has been in the news in the last several years because of the suicides of two Canadian teenagers, Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd, suicides believed to be a result of their being exposed to quite extraordinary instances of cyberbullying

• Sexually explicit images of both teens were widely circulated via social media, leading to their online harassment by individuals around the world

• Since their deaths, their cases have been the subject of much attention from media, politicians, and the general public

• What is distinctive about the cyberbullying part of the bill is that it takes a rights-based approach, and places the rights of children and teenagers in the context of what the Senate report calls “digital citizenship”

• Based on today’s lecture, we are familiar with the history of the idea of the “right to communicate” and the distinction relating to negative and positive rights where communication is concerned

• The Senate committee produced a short and easy-to-read document, entitled Cyberbullying Hurts: Respect for Rights in a Digital Age, for distribution to parents on the topics of cyberbullying, young people’s rights, and digital citizenship

• As reflected in the content of this document, it is clear that the idea of “communication rights” and the “right to communicate” are principles that inform this policy and how it is being communicated to parents, young people, and the general public

Discussion of cyberbullying and policy

Cyberbullying PDF

1. How does our understanding of policy help us make sense of this sense?

2. What part might the policy play?

3. How does a communication rights perspective help us understand this?