Media,Culture & Society

This article examines the process of telecommunications reform in the `new' South Africa. In many, if not most countries, telecommunications reform has been pushed by political and economic elites, whose ability to bring about policy transformations derives largely from the insulation of `reform' from normal political decision-making channels and distributive claims. In marked contrast, telecommunications reform in South Africa was conducted within a democratizing context and was itself a democratic process of a unique, participatory kind. The tension between participatory and electoral democracy was, for the most part, productive of a viable and legitimate reform policy.

We can only understand the scope, nature and underlying driving forces of the major changes now occuring in telecommunications networks if we grasp the linkages between the technical design of the relevant technologies, the corporate and government policy decisions shaping telecommunications products and services and the changing perceptions and behaviours of network users. In this article we attempt to grasp these linkages by developing a socio-spatial understanding of telecommunications networks. We extend and adapt the theorizing of Giddens, Goffman and others on the dynamics of social interaction in physical settings to electronic settings. This is done by delineating a series of socio-spatial concepts — `space', `environment', `proximate space', `virtual space', `public space', `private space'. We suggest these concepts, when integrated with `institutional' and `strategic conduct' analysis, provide a framework for guiding research on these linkages. The introduction of `call management services', particularly Calling Line Identification, in the United States is discussed as an exemplar of the utility of the framework. We conclude by discussing some of the policy implications of the proposed concepts.

This article reviews the literature on the relationship between telecommunications and economic growth and argues that its weakness is its technocratic perspective. It then goes on to argue for an approach that does not view telecommunications as an exogenous driver of economic development, but which assesses the relationship between telecommunications and economic growth within the broader framework of global economic transformation and the location of the specific country within the matrix of a world capitalist system.

This approach is then exemplified by a study of Singapore and the stages through which its telecommunications and economic development has passed over the last 30 years.

This article, based on ethnographic research on a small island off the coast of South West Ireland, studies the role of the telephone in changing the social relationships on the island. It compares the impact of the telephone with that of television. Television was seen by the islanders as ahistorical. It was seen as the new and as impacting decisively on their way of life. The telephone, on the other hand, was seen as a continuation of older forms of communication. The article traces the implications of the shift from a communal telephone to private domestic telephony and contrasts the islanders' adaption with that of the Amish. It argues that telephony has facilitated interaction with modernity and that the question is not whether modernity has eroded community but, rather, in what form has community been preserved. Its conclusion is positive, that the impact of telephony, both on its own and in combination with broadcasting, has been progressive and liberating, the old patterns of communication behaviour being replaced with the relaxed, democratized practices of public discourse.

This article contributes to the debate on globalization and the mass media. It argues that news agencies played a key role in globalization, using the early submarine cable networks, as early as the latter half of the 19th century; that manipulation of time and space on a global scale was an essential component in the construction of news as a category and in its commodification. The article then goes on to argue that this new global news space was not, as some postmodern enthusiasts have argued, frontierless but that, on the contrary, the news agencies, in pursuit of their commercial ends, erected a series of impermeable barriers which they controlled.

This article differentiates press barons from `classic' press owners and defines press baronage as a specific type of newspaper ownership. It constructs an ideal-typical figure of the press baron along two axes. From an economic point of view, they were prepared to invest capital in the press, they made profits out of journalism and they built press conglomerates. From a journalistic perspective, they were journalists of great experience and skill and, in some cases, the inventors and developers of discursive strategies and journalistic practices still in use today. The article then goes on, through a comparative historical analysis of the press in the United States, Great Britain and France between 1830 and 1930, to show that the press baron was primarily an Anglo-American phenomenon and it adduces a range of economic, political and cultural factors to explain this.

Technological developments are breaking down the barriers between previously distinct media sectors. The current media ownership regulations are considered to be too inflexible to allow firms to take full advantage of the multimedia opportunities offered by the new technologies. Thus a search is on for new methodologies to measure and control concentration of media ownership, including cross-media ownership. Both the European Commission and various Member States favour a new ownership control regulatory regime which would reflect these market changes. A fresh framework of rules for calculating limits to concentration in the media market as a whole is now under consideration. The dual objective of such regulation is to allow the media industry to exploit the new opportunities, while at the same time safeguarding the public interest in media diversity. Various proposals have been put forward for the measurement of media market shares in the light of the two above objectives. These include measurement of audience share and of revenue share. This article assesses the feasibility and effects of these various proposals. It examines the problems associated with all types of concentration measures and assesses their appropriateness in the broad context of media concentration's impact on the public interest. At the end alternative proposals are put forward for a better measure.