Media monopolies, digital democracy, cultural clashes - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 224

Table 9.1. Criticism of the Global Billboard Society (after
Hamelink, 2004 : 75)

Global Billboard Society International Human Rights

Imperative

Maximising corporate profit Optimising public welfare

Treating people as consumers Treating people as citizens

Private appropriation of public
space

Safeguarding public space

Priority for trade-law principles Priority for human rights

Culture as commodity Culture as public good

Ignoring inequality in market
transactions

Aspiring equality in human
interactions

this privatisation tendency is less strongly witnessed, although public
states are also here losing media ground. Or, in Stevenson's ( 2001 : 63)
words, “The rapidly emerging information highways, the multiplica-
tion of television channels, the increasing power of communication
conglomerates and the development of media technology are all driven
by the instrumental logics of science and profit.” Hamelink ( 2004 )
has coined this Global Billboard Society, and identified its character-
istics vis- a-vis his preferred International Human Rights Imperative
(see Table 9.1 ). In parts of Asia (such as the Middle East, China and
Vietnam; cf. Chapter 10 ), the national media are still strongly in the
hands of the state, limiting not only the commercialisation and profit-
drivenness of information and news, but also the diversity and democ-
racy of news and information.
The third development that changes the role of media and infor-
mation gateways is the emergence of the Internet and cyberspace.
Although many scholars are rather critical or even negative on the
former developments of global spreading and concentration of comm-
ercial media conglomerates, most are much more positive of the devel-
opments of the new electronic communications (cf. Paehlke, 2003 ;
Tumber, 2001 ). The new media that run via cyberspace and the Inter-
net often are seen as contradictory to and counterbalancing some
of the problematic tendencies that characterize the 'old' media of
television and newspapers. Whereas the old media often are inter-
preted to be linked to, and structured and determined by, transnational