International Communication Gazette

In October 1998 the `Internet Corporation for Assignment of Names and Numbers' (ICANN), a global, not-for-profit private organization responsible for the governance of the Internet, was established under Californian law. The new corporation will be fully operational by October 2000. ICANN represents the global public Internet community as well as private industry involved in electronic commerce and has the mandate to coordinate and control the technical protocols of the Internet, the Internet address space, the Internet domain name system (DNS) and the Internet root server system. The article describes the efforts by the international community to create a mechanism for global Internet governance, and in particular for the DNS, the so-called `territory of cyberspace', where conflict between holders of domain names and trademarks has been growing over the years. After initial efforts failed to create a new mechanism under the Internet Society in 1995 and under the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 1997, the Internet Corporation for Assignment of Names and Numbers (ICANN), initiated by a US government White Paper (June 1998), seems to have received worldwide acceptance as the umbrella organization for the Internet. ICANN, its supporting organizations and its numerous committees (in particular the Governmental Advisory Committee) constitute a network mechanism which will guarantee stable and robust management of the Internet and will also give room for a dynamic and flexible response to new challenges which will emerge from the future development of the Internet. Whether ICANN, which will take over full responsibility for the Internet in October 2000, will be a purely technical organization or become an organization which deals also with the political, economic, cultural, social and legal aspects of the Internet - a `United Nations of the Information Age' - remains to be seen.

This article attempts to fill the gap in our understanding of the strategies that public service broadcasters are utilizing in relation to the Internet. It starts therefore from a discussion of corporate strategy and of branding. There then follows a survey of public service websites, their interactivity and content. It shows that the websites of public service broadcasters vary considerably. The article concludes that, by introducing a new set of competitors, the Internet is set to increase the commercial challenge to the legitimacy of public service broadcasting and has already begun to focus demands for another review of its role.

This is a study on computer-mediated communication and acculturation. An online survey was conducted on the role of Internet in the resocialization of Chinese students and scholars in the US. The study found that the Chinese ethnic Internet may help create pluralistic integration for Chinese students and scholars in the US, i.e. the more American behavior acculturation, the less American value acculturation, and the greater the Chinese values sustained. So, instead of supporting the `melting pot' theory, this study posits that Chinese immigrants may integrate in terms of broad American behaviors but not American values and that they still attach great importance to native Chinese values.

The purpose of this study is to incorporate various theoretical approaches in international communication research into the world system theory and to test this model within a comparative design based on the data collected from six countries. The results show that core nations in the world system often dominate the flow of news and coverage in international communication. If an equation can be used, one core country covered in international news would be equal to two semi-peripheral countries and about seven peripheral nations.

Using a frame analysis technique, this article attempts to depict the way US media, represented here by the Washington Post and New York Times, presented major issues and actors in the 1994 South African elections. The data in support of the study's two hypotheses reveal that the media framed issues in such a way as to encourage negotiation, reconciliation, free and fair elections and the formation of an all-inclusive government. By contrast, the media discouraged violence, belligerence and separatism. Similarly, they projected a favorable image of South African pro-election groups or personalities, while they disfavored all forces that stood against free and fair elections and the installment of a government of national unity. Coverage was found to be reflective of American journalistic values of ethnocentricism and social order. The author concludes that the US media framed issues and actors in the South African elections based on American democratic values.

The article argues that over recent years environmental issues have become a key field of international debate and that environmental issues in Brazilian newspapers are constructed through a technocentric perspective. The analysis shows that the coverage of environmental issues has been shaped by the technocentric environmental perspective, which stresses traditional beliefs and values, emphasizing progress, technology, production and materialism. It also indicates that alternative environmental perspectives which would criticize the core of industrialism and the status quo, do not receive the same amount of attention in the newspapers. The findings also show that the media are a key actor in the definition, articulation and popularization of environmental issues in Brazil.