Media

"Media" is, in many ways, an old term. A "medium" is, in the strict sense, an agent of transmission.
The ancients believed that the universe was composed of the medium of ether. To understand it better, air, or the
water is a medium. In this sense, a medium of transmission - or communication - is a neutral agent. However, it
You can easily see that despite its seemingly objective state, the nature of a medium already determines
the type and quality of the information that can pass through it.

The modern use has appropriated the term with the meaning of means of communication. Although currently
We would consider the book or the press as media; the term gained relevance with the emergence of communication.
a long distance through technology - or telecommunication. Telegraphy was the first means of communication
truly modern, quickly followed by telephony, radio, television, cable broadcasting and
satellite, and of course Internet. All this development occurred in the last 150 years, mostly during the last
century with the Internet in the last decade.

Throughout the progress of technology, each new generation of communications brought with it its burden of
utopias of creating public spaces for participatory interaction among informed citizens who make use of their
right to speak. Every new means of communication simultaneously constitutes a point of dispute between logics.
competing societal roles of the State, the market, and civil society. Historically, the struggles for freedom
of the press, and the freedom of expression that it implied at that time, have stimulated and participated in the great
democratic battles against censorship, human rights, slavery, etc.
These struggles have greatly contributed to the development and founding of our democracies and the principles
and legislation that prevail today in terms of the rights to information and communication. Thus
they managed to model an intersection of media spaces in which various forms of media coexist
communication and media institutions.
Today we consider the media as the mass instances of communication, whether it be the press,
radio and television in their public, private, or community meanings. They are mechanisms that allow the
mass dissemination of information facilitating the construction of social consensuses, the construction and reproduction
of public speech and certain levels of interaction mainly of new independent, alternative media
and community.

The role and place of the media in society:

Reflections on the media traditionally focus on the capability of institutions.

media and communication technologies play a role in the democratization of societies, in
the creation of a public sphere through which people could participate in civic matters, in the enhancement
of national and cultural identity, in the promotion of creative expression and dialogue. Therefore, the debates on
the different forms of censorship and the ownership of the media have always been part of
the work agendas. The meaning of the questions posed by market logics as well as state logics is
rather on how to establish a means for advertising, how to generate financial benefits for shareholders and how
to serve as instruments of propaganda and social and political control.

In almost all national contexts, some form of government intervention - or regulation - is considered necessary.
that allows the media to play one or the other of the aforementioned roles. As soon as
the production and distribution of the media requires a greater degree of organization and resources than can be
provide artists or individual creators working in relatively small groups - that is, as soon as
the media is industrialized - typically the state assumes some form of structural organization,
either directly or through a remote authority. This can be done in various ways.

In the free market model, the state creates an environment in which media corporations
they enjoy full freedom to operate commercially; access to the market in some sectors such as broadcasting
is still mainly controlled through the granting of broadcasting frequencies, while the area
The printed press is open to anyone who has the resources to own and operate a medium.
of communication. In the authoritarian model, the media is considered an extension of authority.
state. The public service model emphasizes the creation of radio and television services for public service,
in the financing of non-profit community-based media and various restrictions
about the ownership of commercial media (limiting the number of distribution points that a
a private company could control or prohibit foreign ownership of such media.
In reality, in many societies, if not the majority, the media operates according to a mixed model.
based on a combination of two or more of the aforementioned. In most cases, there is an instance
regulatory body that dictates and controls the operating rules at the national level.
Currently, everyone recognizes that the logic of the market is what predominates and imposes its values.
its conditioning on the modes of production and distribution, which brings greater consequences about
the content and the very nature of the information.
Now, new and much more complex challenges arise related to media concentration.
communication, the standardization and the poverty of contents, the imbalance of information flows and the lack
of cultural diversity, the regulating role of states in national and international plans, and the necessary
redefinition of a public service in terms of information.

In addition to this, the recent digital revolution is calling into question the media regarding their own
definition and redefine its role in completely new terms placing them in an 'information society'
that strives to define.

The relationship between the media and the information society indeed poses a challenge.
apparently paradoxical. On one hand, mass media (press, radio, television) experience a
process of concentration of property and horizontal and vertical integration of sound, audio, and image thanks to the
the advent of numerical support. On the other hand, the Internet and digital support in general individualize and democratize
access to communication and interaction, allowing the unprecedented development of new alternative media or
cooperatives that simultaneously affect traditional mass media.

The relationship between the media of 'communication' and the society of 'information' thus appears in the form
of a contradictory dissociation that is difficult to explain without considering the definition of the project of society of the
information, the context in which the actors who build the information society evolve and the challenges
what technological advances propose.

Current state: globalized media:

An analysis of the current state of the media, especially in this time of globalization, illustrates the
new challenges that reposition the role of the media within a society of shared knowledge.

It is important to highlight that in the context of neoliberal globalization, "digital" information has transformed into
a commodity that circulates according to the laws of the market of supply and demand.

According to this logic, the media are not selling information to citizens, they are selling the citizens.
to the advertisers. To this extent, the contents result in distortion of reality, strengthening stereotypes
and clearly reducing the diversity of the distributed content. As a commonly used example -
result of this deregulation process of the last 30 years, we can mention the statements of the head of
the U.S. regulatory agency under Ronald Reagan in 1980, who in the midst of deregulation fever declared
that television was like any household appliance, like a 'toaster with images.' And since they are not regulated
toasters, why regulate television. The truth is that the privatization and liberalization that accompany
Globalization has not produced more diverse and pluralistic media.

The emergence of the Internet revolution and the digital age attracted the information sector, with the prospect of
easy profit, to a plethora of industries from the most varied sectors - electricity, information technology, armaments,
construction, telephone, water. They built gigantic empires that seized the means into a few hands.
communication and vertically and horizontally integrated the sectors of information, culture, and entertainment,
previously separated, with the development of conglomerates where knowledge and content are transformed
in a new merchandise.

These multimedia conglomerates influence all aspects of cultural, social, and political life. However,
its very logic has generated that mass media have ceased to function as a counterpower. The media of
mass communication (radio, newspapers, television, Internet) realign in accordance with a global vocation, and no longer
more of a national character. The process of media concentration translates as the control of a wide variety
of media in different countries and continents. Therefore, they do not act as a counter power within the countries.

These main groups are: Vivendi Universal, AOL Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Viacom, and Bertelsmann.
General Electric, Microsoft, Telefónica, France Telecom. The real power is now in the hands of these.
conglomerates that have more economic power than most governments. The absence of the main
Media conglomerates in the debates of the WSIS reflect this reality.

The concentration of media ownership means, for example, that the five largest conglomerates in the United States...
Densely control almost the entirety of the radio and television chains in this country. What matters is not the number
of television channels but the diversity of sources and owners. The first case results in a simplified message.
for mass consumption. With this, the right to information appears to be limited and under scrutiny. On one hand,
The end of state monopolies in Southern countries and in Europe has brought advances in media plurality.
Although there is concern about the delegitimization of traditional media. However, deregulation
this process is favored because although the laws of freedom of the press have been established to limit
State power is now insufficient to ensure that information and communication are a common good.
As Ignacio Ramonet points out, although freedom of speech is guaranteed in Northern countries, the right to
being well informed is questioned by the concentration of the media.

Finally, these conglomerates do not differentiate the three traditional forms of communication (written, verbal or with
images), promoting both the Internet and telecommunications in general as a new and powerful medium that
it covers cultural, recreational and sports activities, communication and information. To this extent, each
It is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the different industrial sectors of information and those of mass culture and
fun. The large global conglomerates acquire multimedia dimensions and sell their products under
other media apart from radio, television, and traditional newspapers, that is to say with films, videos, compact discs,
DVDs, amusement parks, cinemas, theaters, sports.

The development of global information networks like CNN has been imitated by other networks.
American and global, among others BBC, with great impact. The manipulation of information and resistance.
In the southern countries of the planet, it has given rise, in the first place, to the Arab chain Al Jazeera, to counteract
the campaign against Islamism. More recently, Telesur has emerged based in Venezuela, to counteract the
U.S. propaganda. These experiences evoke the questioning of the MacBride Report in the 1970s and
the failed hopes of the non-aligned countries in a project of 'New World Order of Information and of
"Communication" proposed by UNESCO.

And at the same time, they reveal the adaptability of traditional media to new technologies and their
persistence as mass vehicles for the production of social and political consensuses.

The new means of communication. The appropriation by communities and citizens:

The impact of new communication media in the society of knowledge and knowledge is linked to the
possibility of greater ownership by those who use it, whether as an individual or as an active community or group.
By the early 1970s, traditional mass media had already entered a crisis to the extent
In which radio, press, and television overlooked minorities and local issues.

In this context, technological changes favored the development of collective communication projects. In the
In the 60s and 70s, projects for videos and radio stations began to develop in all regions of the world.
local and community actions against hegemony and the limitations of traditional media. These actions were seen
benefited by the revolution brought about by the appearance of transistors, FM transmitters, video.
this stage includes pirate radios in the United Kingdom, free radios in France, community televisions,
the radios and video clubs involved in communication for development, social movements that use the
appropriate technologies to carry out projects against the crisis of representativeness of political systems
existing and that constitute a resistance against the large media outlets. These are processes of
counter-information and communication processes in social interactivity carried out by communities based on
example of community radios in rural areas.

These new actors multiply media spaces and form national, regional, and international networks that
Sooner or later they will appear on the world political stage, intervening in different political instances.

The arrival of the Internet not only had a significant impact on traditional media, as has already been noted,
but also in strengthening alternative and community media such as radio, television, and the press
community favoring processes of interactive communication and exchanges in multimedia resulting from the
digitization of messages and the integration of 'telecenters'. The internet opened up the possibility of an unprecedented space
to exchange information outside the circuits of media conglomerates, which helped to provide a
real dimension to the global social movement of civil society on global issues. Some events in which the
free circulation of information on the Internet was relevant such as: the Zapatista Rebellion in 1995 in Chiapas; the creation
in the network of the French movement ATTAC, in late 1998; the development of freenets on the Internet, of media centers
independent like Indymedia that demonstrated their effectiveness in 1999 in Seattle for the WTO summit. Among the
Recent movements highlight the use of the Internet to channel alternative information and citizen organization.
in reaction to the manipulation of information by the Aznar government in Spain, after the attacks
from the Atocha station in Madrid in 2004. In the same trend of using ICT for the promotion of networks and media
alternative channels for information circulation and monitoring include the French Media Observatory
Communication, theCMAQ in Quebec, Pulsar in Latin America and Simbani in Africa.

On the other hand, the development of iPods and blogs, among other technological advances, combined with the use of the Internet
favored the creation of new media and new experiences of citizen journalism that have
had great success not only in the United States and in developed countries but also in the fight for freedom of
expression in the Southern countries.

Among the new alternative media, the unprecedented development of virtual communities stands out in a
perspective of greater individual appropriation, both local and international. It is worth mentioning within the movements
social and citizen networks on the Internet with this perspective to: Globalcn, Mistica, Vecam, the Web Community of movements
social. It is, as Manuel Castells points out, the emergence of networks as a new social morphology based on
in the interconnection and flexibility of the new topology that allows a circulation of statements that generate
new meanings and effects for social and civic action; which allows for the existence of networks of movements
social networks, citizen networks, and cyber-communities on global issues such as environmental protection,
the promotion of women's rights in the organization of the fourth World Conference on Women of the UN and
from the World March of Women.

This development of alternative media online and through the use of new technologies is not without its challenges.
enormous challenges, among which stands out the problem of excessive circulation of information on the Internet.
Some studies indicate that if there were barely any media in each locality before, now there are millions of sites.
accessible, which means that 50% of the traffic on the network visits 0.5% of the websites. In this way, the wealth of
the information translates into a decrease in attention and the issue of the credibility of the information transforms
on a fundamental issue.

Functions and responsibilities of the media. Regulation, a central theme.

of the debate:

How will the international community intervene to facilitate a democratization process of communications?
in the complex relationship between the media and the information society?

With the advent of globalization, due to a variety and combination of reasons - some technical,
other policies, economic or ideological - national politicians are less willing and less able
to intervene in the sphere of media activity. At the same time, powerful
formal and informal mechanisms (such as international trade agreements) on an international scale, that
they limit the capacity of national governments to influence this sector. The international media environment of
communication in the neoliberal era is a new frontier where the rules are being established on the go;
As in any border situation, the more powerful establishes the rules to satisfy their particular needs.
while the less powerful tries to survive in a situation that he did not create.

On the other hand, if we set aside international agencies like the ITU, which have a purely more
that are not technical and that are subsidized and controlled by large media companies, there are no places left
neither instances where one can debate nor taking decisions regarding the information and the media of
communication as UNESCO was.

In this context, the WSIS would have been a unique opportunity to discuss the media.
in the information society. However, the clear absence of major media outlets throughout
The preparatory process and the summits of Geneva and Tunis have not made such a debate possible, which predicts
negative results. However, the WSIS will have at least allowed the different social actors to
those who participated in this fundamental event position themselves.

For some -including several governments and major international agencies such as the International Union
Telecommunications and the World Trade Organization - the media are nothing more than
an empty mold through which information travels. From this point of view, it makes no sense, for example,
debate on human rights or freedom of expression at the World Summit on the Information Society.
For those for whom the term "media" first refers to content and then to
Packaging, a statement like the one mentioned above is like valuing a wine by the shape of its bottle.

Another aspect of this debate revolves around regulation. Advocates for the deregulation of the media argue
that television, as we have seen before, is nothing more than 'a toaster with images'. On the other hand, those who
Those who defend the self-regulation of the industry or the shared regulation between the industry and the government are more sensitive.
to the importance of the content, but they attribute a predominant role to the corporate entities that constitute the
large media organizations.

The people-centered media perspective focuses on their role in society.

as facilitators and intermediaries of public debate and individual and collective empowerment. From this point
In view of this, the media must enjoy freedom of expression subject to certain obligations - for example, the
the need to respect human dignity. In this sense, access and accessibility are also key issues.
the ability to use communication media to send and receive messages. This view also recognizes the
the ambivalent nature of contemporary mass media as agents of the social status quo and
as potential agents of change. Emphasizing the social role of the media justifies the limitations
that society imposes on them - for example, the restrictions on media ownership concentration
communication, the rules for cable and satellite distributors, the obligation to transmit service messages
public, the right to respond, etcetera.

The new forms of communication and the creation of interactive and cooperative communication platforms imply
also the recognition of new common goods of information, a redefinition of what is understood
for "public service" of information and communication and a review of intellectual property regimes. By
Consequently, debates about the media are increasingly involved in the international debate.
broader on communication rights.