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Selections from Kezia Awadzi, Kathleen Ragsdale, Jeneen Szajkowski  and Orlando Sanchez. 
Cliking on a name above will take you to the corresponding essay in this page. 
Clicking on each name below will take you to the writer's personal profile. 

Awadzi,  Kezia 
 
 I have been trying to figure out the differences between authoritarian and developmental media.  It seems like Nigeria falls into both categories.  In Stevenson’s chapter on authoritarian media, he focuses mainly on Brazil, Singapore and Mexico. While I was unable to get hold of empirical studies on this chapter, I decided to share some thoughts that came to mind as a result of this chapter.   I find myself wondering if authoritarianism is not a function of the culture of a nation.  Are nations that belong to high-context societies more prone to be authoritarian? 

My theory is that it may play a factor.  Perhaps, as societies become more individualistic, nations are likely to advocate for “democracy.”  Another important factor I picked up from reading Stevenson’s “Authoritarian Media” is the low economic status of the nations, although Singapore did not fall into this category (Stevenson, 1994, p.  224).  Has an authoritarian media only negative results on the nation? With Third-World countries, I think that in a way, that might be the best solution for them. The reason is that, without economic stability, freedom really does not count.  What use is freedom when one is hungry? What is the use of having a “free press” that points out problems in the nation that are not backed by change? 

Olantunjii (1996) compares the structure of the media in the different parts of Nigeria.  The Western media in Nigeria was mainly privately owned and “liberal.”  The Northern press is conservative, consisting of government-funded publications, while the eastern press was a mixture of the first two.  Religion and ethnicity are also significant factors in press outlook, with all trying to advance the interest of their ethnic groups (p.1).   Appiah (1997) attributes Nigeria’s political problems to the lack of common political vocabulary, and shared set of traditions for thinking about what were the legitimate functions of the states (Appiah, 1997, p.1). 

The press does not speak with a common voice on issues that threaten its existence (Olantunjii, 1996, p1).  In 1993, when the federal government set up a Newspaper Registration Board to license newspapers and regulate operations the press could not unite to challenge it.  In addition, the rising costs of newspaper and magazine production are another factor. To make it, newspapers and magazines have had to devise new strategies, such as focusing of advertisements instead of news (Olantunjii, 1996, p2).  Thus, news is no longer what an editor considers significant, but what a sponsor can pay for.  Thirdly, about 80% of Nigeria’s population who are not literate in English are poorly served by the print media (Olantunjii, 1996, p2).   The government in the past 25 years has tried to silence criticism in the media.  Under the military government, a decree gave a head of state the power to close down any newspaper if he was believed it was working against “the national interest.” The writer also gives possible solutions to these problems: 1) the public will have to be educated to recognize that freedom of the press belongs to the public.  2) The press will have to be more enterprising, with less emphasis on political reporting and more social life.  More training needs to be given to journalists.  3) Resources put into producing national newspapers can be redirected into local and regional papers. 4) The indigenous language press needs to be strengthened through training of journalists. 5) Production schedules can be coordinated in publishing firms so that a central distribution system would be created that would reduce costs significantly and 6) New technologies may help reduce costs. 

Taking the problems of some Third-World countries into consideration, an authoritarian media might work best if they have selfless and dedicate leaders, who are not bent on “lining their pockets,” and who are interested in devising ways to improve the economic status.  Then gradually, as the “national sense” is built among people in the nation, more journalists would learn to report objectively, and as the economic aspects improve, more voices in the media will be heard and a “free press” more useful.  Now, allowing a few voices to publish issues that promote certain ethnic groups, or focus mainly on problems without constructive solutions, may cause more harm than good in the end. 

References: 

Appiah, K. A. (1996). “Nigeria: democracy and a free press (The African Media)  Neiman Reports v50, n1 p54(3). 

Dare, O. (1996). “Nigeria: the polarized press (The African Media) Neiman Reports v50, n1 p50(4). 

Stevenson, R. L. (1994). “Authoritarian Media.”  Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century.  NY: Longman.  p 209 (19). 

Kathleen Ragsdale 

 In Chapter 9 of Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century  (1994:209-230), Stevenson discusses the authoritarian media and its presence in society. While sharing similarities with the communist media, authoritarianistic media practices are found in governmental systems that run the gamut from dictatorships to democracies and are found throughout the world, though most common in developed or developing countries in Latin America and the emerging ‘Asian tigers’ such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand. 

According to Stevenson, “Authoritarian media are usually privately owned and have commercial interests as well as political” (211). This is an importance difference from communist media, and is perhaps, a more honest recognition of the links between a country’s economic stability and the willingness of its populace to tolerate a certain level of political repression, since economic hardship and political unrest often go hand-in-hand. Another difference between authoritarian media and communist media is that in the first form, the power of the government is a less obvious and direct form of domination over the media than that usually exercised in communist systems, though it is not uncommon for those who published without authority’s permission to face punitive legal measures (211). 

Stevenson places his argument in a historical framework when he claims that, “The authoritarian concept of mass media was all-powerful government’s response to the second communication revolution, the invention of printing with moveable type” (209). Yet he gives little attention to forms of resistance to dominance that do not fit within the context of standard journalist endeavor, despite their powerful influence on the political order. For example, Hunt has found that “It hardly seems coincidental that the rise in pornographic publications in the 1740s also marked the beginning of the high period of the Enlightenment as well as a period of general crisis in European society and politics” (1996:33). As a form of social commentary, political pornography was instrumental in displacing the corrupt clergy and aristocratic control of monarchist governments throughout Europe. Politically subversive works of pornography from this period are difficult for contemporary scholars to fully decode, yet that “the machinery for the suppression of books was well-oiled by 1655” (DeJean 1996:118) points to the need for the state to silence works that challenged the absolute authority of the church and imperial court. Therefore, many of the targets for legal sanctions by governmental agencies were the producers and suppliers of political pornography, which were often anti-clerical as well as anti-aristocratic in tone, text, and illustration. 

In the contemporary world of media, the power of political pornography as a tool to challenge absolutist governments seems to have been co-opted by the sex entertainment industry. Yet the emergence of electronic access to mass consumers holds hope for media that supports democratic resistance to state oppression (Jones 1994). 
Jones states that, “During the democratic uprising of 1989–90 in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia, the personal computer and the modern became indispensable tools for activists providing access to global information-exchange networks that state officials found impossible to police” (145). 

It is exciting to read that media is not only be tool for Western cultural imperialism or, conversely, the suppression of individual rights by authoritarian state authorities, but a powerful agent for cultural diversity and a catalyst for progressive social change. In “Wired World: Communications Technology, Governance and the Democratic Uprising,” Jones describes many cases, including: 
1) The political galvanizing of crowds of Czech citizens standing outside of department store windows to watch footage of soldiers beating peaceful demonstrators (147), 
2) How outside TV and radio transmissions become “bulletin boards of revolution” by broadcasting media footage and messages that totalitarian and authoritarian systems would have formerly repressed (147), and 3) The establishment of the computer information network, the Walker Centre’s China Information Centre, in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 to circumvent governmental controls and link activists together (151). 
Jones make a powerful argument that communications technology may render control over media increasingly untenable and obsolete in developed and developing nations, regardless of their traditional system of media control. 

References

DeJean, Joan.  1996 “The Politics of Pornography: L’Ecole des Filles,” in The Invention of    Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800, L. Hunt,   (ed.) NY: Zone Books. (109-123). 

Hunt, Lynn. 1996 “Introduction: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity,” in The Invention of   Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800, L. Hunt,   (ed.) NY: Zone Books. (9-45). 

Jones, Adam. 1994  “Wired World: Communications Technology, Governance and the Democratic   Uprising,” in The Global Political Economy of Communications, E. A. Comor,   (ed.) NY: St. Martin’s Press. (p145-164). 

Stevenson, Robert L. 1994  Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century,  NY: Longman    Publishing Group. (p.209-230). 
 

Stevenson's Chapter 9:  Authoritarian Media 
        Stevenson's chapter on authoritarian media was an interesting read in that it provided excellent background information on the concept of authoritarian media and used somewhat indepth case studies - Brazil, Mexico, and Singapore - to show different manifestations of authoritarian media in action.  Authoritarian media is the most prevalent media system in the world, as well as the oldest (Stevenson, 1994:  209).  This media system has as its guiding principle journalism that does nothing to, in any way, with dismantling or threatening government.  Because "government influence can take the form of denying mass media the power to threaten government or of mobilizing mass media as an instrument of change... critical journalism is difficult at best and often impossible" (Stevenson, 1994:  210). 
        In the chapter, Stevenson explores the history of the authoritarian philosophy in politics as well as in media systems, looks at the methods by which the mass media are controlled, and discusses the present situation of authoritarianism today and the prospect of authoritarian media as a possible bridge between communist and democratic systems.  In this debate, he argues that authoritarian media may very well be the intermediate step and concept "likely to gain strength as countries move from communist and development media systems;"  Stevenson, thus, sees media systems as undergoing evolutionary processes, inevitably evolving toward Western standards, practices, and ideologies (1994:  227). 
        As an excellent complement to the material presented in Stevenson's work is the research of Lars Willnat, Zhou He, and Hao Xiaoming in which they examine whether foreign (Western) media exposure in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Singapore has an impact on the stereotypes and stereotypical feelings toward Americans.  The study is among a number of studies that try to assess the impact of Western media and Western images on many Asian countries, which receive a disportionate amount of cultural and business products and media, with all of its associated values and meanings, because of a large and growing middle class, booming economies, and excellent availabilities of new communication technologies.  The concern is mounting quickly among Asian leaders who fear the consequences - cultural imperialism, the breeding of Western habits, values and desires, and Western media domination -  and many governments have reacted.  Examples range from vigorously dismantling satellite dishes and Singapore officials' attempts to control the Internet (Willnat, He, and Xiaoming, 1997: 738).  The authors take a focused look at the effects of American media exposure and how such media construct or deconstruct stereotypes, an issue they argue as critical given the limited personal contact with Americans that Asians have access to, thus leading to a greater molding of stereotypes based on the images as seen via American media.  The correlation they expected between exposure to media and positive stereotyping of Americans was a direct, or positive, one (Willnat, He, Xiaoming, 1997: 741). 
        The hypotheses they set out to test were as follows: 
                H1:  Subjects with higher levels of Western media exposure will have more positive stereotypical perceptions of 
                       Americans than those with lower levels of Western media exposure. 
                H2:  Subjects with greater exposure to Western media will have more positive feelings toward Americans than 
                       subjects with lower levels of Western media exposure. 
                H3:  While the relationship between Western TV exposure and stereotypical perceptions and feelings will be the 
                        strongest, other types of Western media will have similar but weaker relationships. 
                H4:  Subjects in Shenzhen will be more influenced by Western media exposure than subjects in Hong Kong and 
                       Singapore because "the potential impact of Western media in Shenzhen does not have to compete with 
                       intervening factors such as direct experiences with Americans."  (Willnat, He, Xiaoming, 1997:  743). 
As such, the authors depict people in Hong Kong and Singapore as more worldly. 
        What were the results?  It was surprising to find that more exposure to Western TV is correlated to more negative stereotypical perceptions of and attitudes toward Americans, especially among the respondents from Shenzhen and Hong Kong.  However, among the respondents, who were university students, positive stereotypes were more prevalent than negative ones.  The negativitiy of stereotypical perceptions arising from TV exposure, the authors contend, is perhaps  a result of the "mean world" that is depicted in American television, such as seen in the high content of crime and violence.  They found much greater occurrences of positive stereotyping associated with other forms of media such as newspapers, radio, and movies, which relay a much more balanced picture of life in America and the way Americans act (Willnat, He, Xiaoming, 1997:  751).  Or so the authors speculate. 
        In fact, the effects of media forms are varied and distinct in their relationship to either positive or negative stereotyping.  The authors go further to conclude that not only is the actual medium and content of communication important but so too are the impact of local media, the amount of contact that cultures have with Western society, and the cultural composition of various nations (Willnat, He, Xiaoming, 1997: 752).  Singapore, which they identified as having the greatest amount of outside knowledge of America and with its population having the greatest contact with Americans in their own nation and from their own travels in Western nations, is the least affected by foreign media and by the images they present (Willnat, He, Xiaoming, 1997:  753). 
 

References 

Stevenson, Robert L. (1994).  "Chapter 9:  Authoritarian Media."  In Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century.  London:  Longman Publishing Group. 

Willnat, Lars, Zhou He, and Hao Xiaoming. (1997).  "Foreign Media Exposure and Perceptions of Americans in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Singapore." In Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.  Winter 1997. Vol. 74, No. 4. pp. 738-756.