Promise and Peril of Media Transformation

Review by Susan Dente Ross

Washington State University

Negotiating Democracy: Media Transformations in Emerging Democracies, Isaac A. Blankson and Patrick D. Murphy, eds. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007; 285 pages.

Like most edited volumes, which comprise an increasing focus of scholarly publishing, Negotiating Democracy: Media Transformations in Emerging Democracies offers diversity sometimes at the expense of depth and focus.

The greatest strength of the collection is its inclusion of many younger scholars directing attention to relatively understudied emerging democracies. The volume focuses on the experiences of new democracies in nations including Bulgaria, Cambodia, Nigeria, and Iran alongside a section on regional trends in Africa, Central America and “the” New Europe. These novelties of voice and focus provide a fresh and expansive context in which to explore “the place of mass media in the political and cultural life of nations negotiating democratization while simultaneously contending with economic liberalization and privatization, the changing state, and the reformation of civil society” (p. 2).  Yet the descriptive nature of the text, and the need for authors to provide sometimes extensive background on less-well-known nations, produces an uneven introductory volume that fails to grapple with the more significant theoretical questions that challenge scholars attempting to articulate the empirical and normative impacts of distinct media in particular locales affected differentially by the multiple and varied pressures of globalization. In other words, this text suffers from attempting perhaps too much and delivering too little.

The book is divided into three sections but omits a much-needed introductory synopsis, section overviews, or integrating conclusion. The first triad of chapters teases out regional challenges of media independence and pluralism in Africa, of authoritarianism and broadcast quasi-monopolies in Central America, and of differential development and media practices in Eastern Europe. The second quintet of chapters provides insights into state power, democratic reform, and media liberalization in Cambodia, Taiwan, Nigeria, Iran, and South Korea. The final section again shifts geographic focus and includes four chapters that examine the influence of trade policies and media privatization on the content and influence of broadcast media in the “Arab World,” Mexico, Bulgaria, and Greece.

As this quick overview suggests, neither the chapters themselves nor the sections share any explicit connection. In place of a systematic theoretically driven or thematic treatment of the divergent impacts of globalization on media around the world, or the interconnections between globalization, democratization, and media privatization, for example, this collection provides a smorgasbord of distinct and variably interesting case studies. While the collection successfully introduces a non-representative sample of emerging democracies and evolving media, it fails to develop the theoretical implications of these examples or to provide a coherent and comprehensive analysis of the distinct patterns, trends, and practices its authors observe.

A related concern is that no central issue or variable beyond the broad overarching focus of the book’s title justifies the selection of cases in this text. While all of the countries herein examined are experiencing some form of political transformation and, arguably, democratic liberalization, significant differences exist among their points of departure, their paths, and their current states of government power and media development. The distinctions among these countries and their somewhat idiosyncratic systems of transition and development could, indeed, have formed a fascinating focal point for these studies. Separate rather than comparative analysis of the different regional and national cases, however, obscures the transnational and global implications of distinct national policies, power, and control over media; the disparate wealth of the nations and their media; and the relative “maturity” of media systems and “professionalism” of its practitioners, among many key variables.

At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, details of the unique challenges and strategies of the disparate nation-states –the empirical fodder for theorizing –are relegated to background. Rich consideration of the impact of each and all of the observed transformations remains obscure. In one such case, the differential international flows of media products from these nation-states within and against post-colonial, imperialist, and hegemonic forces of globalization remain relatively untouched.

Rather than establish a clear focus for this book, Patrick Murphy’s brief introduction presents a jumble of interesting but underdeveloped and sometimes conflicting perspectives on the complex interrelationships among and between systems of government, globalization, and media. While democratic theorists argue that independent media are an essential and foundational component of democratic societies, critical scholars and political media economists have clearly and repeatedly articulated the profound symbiosis that can (and often does) exist between government powers and media elites that generate pro-government coverage and support the status quo. Murphy describes the text as an effort to answer the core (hypothetical) question of “how media might serve to alter, enable, or disrupt the cultural sovereignty of nations and the political potency of communities” (p. 1), introduces the “hope” embodied in new initiatives of “citizen-based” media, and concludes that “the media have become the key scarce resource … in contemporary political systems” (p. 2). Here and elsewhere, he shifts his theoretical ground, alternating between critical and normative perspectives on the media, simultaneously embracing the divergent assumptions and implications of cultural studies and mass communication. Murphy does not resolve the inherent conflict here or address the challenging question of whether the two theories may, at least at specific times and under particular conditions, explicate different faces of the same reality. Rather, he first declares that “mass media have served remarkably well as a means to globalize the democratic exchange of ideas and issues capable of challenging authority” (p. 8) and then questions whether media function as “the Trojan horse that works to further concentrate capital and accentuate existing global-regional disharmony of interests” (p. 8-9).

The resulting confused perspective on when, whether, and how media may be truly independent and instrumental in liberal democratization is echoed by the vacillations among the chapter authors and represents the fundamental weakness of this text. Examples abound. First, while several chapters explore the pluralistic promise of civic media initiatives (see, e.g., Rampal’s discussion of indy media in Taiwan, Wilkinson’s view of media and political liberalization in Mexico), these chapters fail to examine the extent to which such marginal projects are tolerated by repressive governments to advance various strategic goals, not the least of which is politicians’ desire to achieve global acceptance through the apparent embrace of the freedom of expression.

The chapters dealing with Africa, Cambodia, Nigeria, and South Korea accept the perspective that mass media are a natural and unquestioned partner in facilitating democratization and liberal reform. Many of the chapters uncritically employ an historical narrative to place media systems within contemporary national contexts. The pan-African discussion of the first chapter, for example, erases the profound and relevant differences among the nations on this continent, accepts that new media ownership patterns lead unalterably to new and independent voices, and states that “independent and plural media [are] … a direct consequence of the continent’s serious efforts toward democratization and liberalization” (p. 18). In another chapter, a sweeping historical narrative of Cambodian media since the 1970s salutes the U.N. creation of a “model radio station to inform and motivate Cambodian citizenry” (p. 84) without reference to the effects of other such initiatives around the world (e.g., Bosnia) or the colonialist implications and Western hegemony of such efforts.

While a focus on recent history and contemporary on-the-ground realities produces some interesting portraits of the current state of media systems in some emerging democracies, it tends to sacrifice deep analysis. The choice of relatively recent dates (e.g., the 1980s) as the starting point for these media histories inevitably raises significant concerns about whose history is being used and with what effects. Moreover, though an historical context enables insight into the specific challenges facing a given geographical/political site, it again obscures commonalities and patterns across nation-states and regions that might offer richer insight and help inform theory.

Adopting a different theoretical perspective, the chapters on Bulgaria, Central America, and Greece overtly challenge the non-critical assumptions that dominate other sections of the book. Here the authors identify real and specific failures of the media marketplace either to expand the range of voices contributing to public debate or to challenge authoritarian governmental regimes. In his contribution on Latin America, for example, Rick Rockwell explicitly acknowledges the limits and failures of market liberalism by highlighting the long-standing co-existence (and cooperation?) of authoritarian regimes and private (independent?) media, and the extensive and ongoing power of authoritarian regimes to shape the form of media liberalism in this region. Rockwell’s chapter highlights how private media owners manipulated rather than served public policy in Central America. In their study of Bulgaria’s largest broadcast network, Ibroscheva and Raicheva-Stover describe the non-democratizing influence of Rupert Murdoch’s domination and inundation of the first private national channel in this country with translations from the Fox network. And in her chapter, Judy Sims highlights the quid pro quo between politicians and the media that drove their cooperation to privatize Greek radio into a pro-government forum.

The failure of the text to grapple explicitly with the tensions among and between its authors or to help readers understand the conditions under which media commercialism either impedes or advances democratization is a significant shortcoming. Failure to address the core question of whether (and why) private, for-profit media companies should be expected to contribute to a democratic process that inevitably raises new challenges to existing power (and profit) structures and imposes new barriers to the global marketing of their own content is a notable gap in this book. Moreover, the book’s implicit assumption that media provide information to citizens exhibits a virtual blindness to the significant globalizing influence of the rise of info-tainment (and entertainment as information) as the dominant content of commercial media.

A particularly interesting, but seemingly misplaced contribution is made by Kraidy’s examination of the connections between politics and reality television in the Arab world. This chapter is out of step with the volume because it focuses on reality TV rather than news or public information content and explores the realm of interpersonal, small group, and social communications as an adjunct to media processes and effects. Kraidy’s study of public sphere communications created by business and religious elites alongside the mediated messages of reality TV highlights the interactive creation and maintenance of democratic dialogue in which the audience is neither passive nor solely receptive.

Negotiating Democracy: Media Transformations in Emerging Democracies encompasses a variety of case studies of differing familiarity, sophistication, and interest. The book’s twelve chapters introduce a number of concepts key to informed knowledge of the competing local and global economic, political, social, and cultural influences at play in the multifaceted interconnections among media and democracies. It is a shame the editors’ failed to capitalize more fully on the most promising contributions. The absence of a solid theoretical foundation or conceptual connective tissue among the different studies limits the value of this work and its utility in the classroom. A broader definition of globalizing pressures and a more expansive conception of the relevant context for these studies would have helped avoid the simplistic embrace of media’s own normative assumptions that both media and democratizing governments seek to advance some type of “public good” rather than their own profit and/or power. In the end, the book’s attempt to traverse and transcend enormous geographic distances, political disparities, cultural divides, economic positions, social expectations, and media systems ignores the significant empirical and theoretical distinctions that could have produced a truly original work of great value. Entrenched in Western colonialist ideology and liberal myths, the authors leave the profound global implications of the significant and rapidly evolving interactions among the people, the press, and their governments for others to explore more fully.