Global Media Governance: A Beginner's Guide

by Seán Ó Siochrú, Bruce Girard, Amy Mahan

Overview

This book is a primer on media governance at a global level and the key influencing forces and organizations, such as ITU, WTO, UNESCO, WIPO, and ICANN. Governance oversees regulation, and questions addressed here include: Why do we regulate the various media at all? What currently are the major forms of global regulation, and how do they work? Who participates in, and who benefits from, media regulatory and governance structures? And what are the trends? Anyone interested in the media and its progressively rising influence over so many dimensions of society will sooner or later find themselves confronted with these questions. This book does not pretend to answer all the questions, but it raises key ones and points in directions where more complete answers can be found. Published in cooperation with UNRISD.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781461636779
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	05/01/2002
Series:	Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Sean Ó Siochrú is cofounder and director of Nexus Research in Dublin. Bruce Girard is a media worker and a researcher at the Delft University of Technology. Amy Mahan is a researcher at Delft University of Technology. The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) is an autonomous agency engaging in multidisciplinary research on the social dimensions of contemporary problems affecting development.

Table of Contents

Chapter 0 Introduction
Chapter 1 Introduction to National Media Regulation
Chapter 2 Global Governance Institutions
Chapter 3 Trends in Media
Chapter 4 The International Telecommunication Union
Chapter 5 The World Trade Organization and Trade in Media Products
Chapter 6 The UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
Chapter 7 The World Intellectual Property Organization and Intellectual Property Rights
Chapter 8 The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and Internet Governance
Chapter 9 Global Media Regulation
Chapter 10 Actors and Trends in Global Governance
Chapter 11 Scenarios for Media Governance
Chapter 12 Selected References for Further Reading
Chapter 13 Selected URLs

Editorial Reviews

Global Media Governance is presented as 'a beginner's guide,' and the text is indeed written in very accessible language. However, the book is much more than a textbook for 'dummies.' It is the essential guide for all who wish to understand which actors shape the future of global communication and how they do it. Urgently needed, very timely, and well documented, this book provides excellent material for students, policy makers, and practitioners in the emerging information society.. . a pleasure to use in courses on global communication.

Cees J. Hamelink

This book has strong international appeal in undergraduate media and communication studies as well as allied specialist areas in law, business, politics, government, and education. It could definitely be required reading in a unit on media globalization and is also a good resource for media and policy practitioners and activists.

Christina Spurgeon

As the subtitle suggests, the book gives the big picture and delivers a comprehensive introduction to actual issues. The clarity of the style of writing serves this objective well.

The International Journal On Media Management

This extremely useful book documents the struggle for control of media and communication. On the one hand, the corporate globalization of media fractures the public sphere, silences voices of diversity, and leads to a narrow, undemocratic global governance regime. On the other, the rise of global civil society—particularly networks of NG's—enables demands for participation in the development of global media governance regimes. The authors put it all together brilliantly.

Saskia Sassen

This book is listed as a primer and aimed at undergraduates in media and communication studies. Students in these disciplines, as well as international relations, cultural studies, politics, and international law, will find the sections devoted to the rise and transformation of key insitutions of media governance to be particularly useful. In addition, the book provides useful summaries of many key issues stemming from struggles to participate in and control the emerging regimes of global media governance.

European Journal Of Communication

In this era of transnational media and communication, the global nature of the media system has given rise to a whole new set of institutions to address fundamental policy and regulatory issues. Global Media Governance is unquestionably the best introduction and overview to this area that has ever been published. The book fills an enormous void and makes one wonder how we got by without such a book for so long. It will be mandatory reading for scholars, policy makers, students, activists, and concerned citizens for years to come.

Robert W. McChesney

The ICT revolution has made the rapid growth of global media possible. But policy and regulation relating to public interest objectives in media remains at the national level with ever-declining influence. To the extent there is governance of global media, it arises from an uncoordinated hodgepodge of specialist activities at a variety of international organizations that are poorly understood and far from transparent. This primer maps the global media governance scene in a clear and straightforward manner that will be valuable to both students and practitioners in the field.

William H. Melody