Journalism

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Envisioning a New World Order Through Journalism: Lessons from

Recent History
Sujatha Sosale
Journalism 2003; 4; 377
DOI: 10.1177/14648849030043007

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 Journalism

Copyright 2003 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol. 4(3): 377392 [1464-8849(200308)4:3;377392;034042]

ARTICLE

Envisioning a new world order

through journalism
Lessons from recent history

j Sujatha Sosale
Georgia State University

ABSTRACT

Journalism and communicative democracy in general were debated intensely on a

world scale a quarter of a century ago, during the debates over a New World
Information and Communication Order. In this article, I demonstrate that during this
period, theory and reflexive practice in journalism were envisioned through radical ideas
freely deliberated in intergovernmental, professional and scholarly spaces. I analyze
related themes that appeared in statements issued by Third World journalists, and in
selected scholarly articles published at that time. Analysis reveals that these themes
articulated an alternate, more democratic world order. I conclude by discussing the
relevance and importance of these ideas and themes to the present global era.
KEY WORDS j alternate world order j global democracy j globalization
j journalistic practice j social theory

The state of journalism and its role in engendering global democracy were
debated on a world scale intensely a quarter of a century ago. They constituted
the core of the efforts to formulate a policy towards a New World Information
and Communication Order (NWICO). Tied as the debates were to UNESCO
action and superpowers membership in this organization, after the with-
drawal of the US and Britain from the organization in 1984 and 1985
respectively, the debate lost the momentum that it had achieved in the decade
of 197685. However, it would be incorrect to dismiss the debates as a failure.
Nor can we claim that a discursive closure has ended the reality of the need to
achieve global communicative democracy today. Some of the recommenda-
tions that emerged from the NWICO debate have been put into practice, such
as the creation of regional news agencies intended to ensure greater parity in
news flows and fair media representations, even if they struggle to survive
because of the lack of sufficient funds (Boyd-Barrett and Thussu, 1993).

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378 Journalism 4(3)

Another serious effort at resisting discursive closure of the NWICO idea is

apparent in the MacBride Round Tables held annually for the past decade or so
(198998). The MacBride Round Tables continue to keep the NWICO argu-
ments and ideas on the research, practice and policy agenda and also recom-
mend action for adapting to changing media and social conditions and
contexts (Vincent and Traber, 1999). What is worth examining, and relevant
and important now, are some of the radical suggestions that emerged in the
NWICO context that can serve to redefine an alternate world order today,
especially from the standpoint of a practice that continues to create, control
and reproduce a public symbolic domain in the global era journalism.
The analysis that follows takes contestations of the dominant professional
ideology and its structuring of the world order as its point of departure. In a
now classic essay, Golding (1977) has attributed the origins of this ideology to
western journalistic practices. Western journalists and their supporters op-
posed the NWICO ideas on some critical grounds. As journalist Righter (1978)
interpreted it, NWICO ideas and strategies were a rejection of the ideals of
individual opportunity and freedom of choice, coming mainly from author-
itarian governments. Remedies proposed to change the existing world order
were remedies of authoritarianism (Righter, 1978: 14). Journalistic circles in
the First World rejected many NWICO solutions on grounds that they would
violate the publics right to be informed because of state control of commu-
nication. NWICO remedies for an imbalanced world communication order
were seen as a radical alternative creating a reverse apartheid (Righter,
1978: 100). However, NWICO proponents held that the existing system had
caused the apartheid in global communication due to historical developments
and that corrections to the world order required redefinitions of professional
practices and ethical parameters.
Redefinitions often involve challenging enduring significations of terms
from alternate perspectives. In the context of this study, they are symbolic of
the aspirations of developing nations for certain material and social conditions
in their everyday realities. The communication context and social conditions
have changed with the advent of the post-industrial, information society.
Advocates of the information society view new information and communica-
tion technologies (ICTs) as a strong facilitator of democracy. A popular argu-
ment is that globalization, through ICTs, offers a completely new array of
commercial and cultural advantages to all, worldwide. This enthusiasm seems
to be directed more towards the potential contained in ICTs than their actual
material distribution in the current world order, which suggests a different
picture (the global digital divide). Some social theorists caution us against such
optimism. For example, Webster (1995) sees an exacerbation in the adverse
conditions of global capitalism (his dystopian view) with the advent of ICTs.

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 Sosale Envisioning a new world order through journalism 379

May (2002) argues that when stripped, the changes accompanying the
transformation into the global information society are superficial, and that the
underlying substance (capitalism) remains the same. Even allowing for the sea
changes wrought by globalization, in some fundamental ways, the context
within which the NWICO debates occurred has not changed radically. If
anything, the desire to improve material conditions and life opportunities has
intensified. As it has also been pointed out, global media power continues to
hold sway and journalism continues to engage with and be implicated in
media power. Thus the way in which a new world order was imagined 25 years
ago and the need for re-imagining one now become a critical area of inquiry in
the current conditions.
I approach this problematic on a conceptual level by using a combination
of the Wallersteinian world system and Giddens structuration theories as a
basis for demonstrating how journalism can re-orient images and perceptions
of world order through changes in journalistic approach and practice.1 These
changes suggest the potential to dissolve the hierarchy apparent in the centre
periphery arrangement (and its current variants in the era of globalization)
and, in a sense, return sociality (Appadurai, 1990) to the journalistic form of
communication. An alternate world order, imagined in the 1970s from a
journalistic standpoint, can be evoked in the present context. While the term
alternate is often used in relation to specific media, media forms and media
communities, the term applies to this project a little differently. Here, I apply
the term to a macro-social perspective and present an outline of mechanisms
articulated by journalists and professionals involved in the NWICO debates for
helping re-imagine an alternate (world) society. Thus, an alternate society
could be conceptualized in the public imaginary through changes in journal-
istic practices and related concepts (such as the notion of audience).
Working with an interpretive thematic analysis of a selection of seminar
and conference reports and journal articles generated between 197685, when
debates about distributive justice in world communications were at their
height during the NWICO debates, I demonstrate how theory and practice in
journalism were envisioned during an unusual period when radical ideas were
freely voiced in deliberations in intergovernmental, professional and scholarly
spaces. NWICO debates ended in an impasse of sorts between rejection of
government-intervention measures on the one side and opposition to oligopo-
listic control of world media communications on the other. While many
opponents to the new policy frequently let their opposition to the role of the
state overshadow the variety of suggestions offered by proponents of the
NWICO, the latter did not adequately account for the full implications of state
intervention in citizens right to be informed. However, arguments for
alternative journalisms that contained the potential to define a new global

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380 Journalism 4(3)

communication order detailed a far more nuanced, textured and negotiated

approach to changes than the impasse would suggest. This study attempts to
present some of the concrete suggestions that articulated the nuances and
negotiations in the course of the NWICO debate. Specific themes that emerged
during the debates included diffusing journalistic power from the centre,
power balances in gate-keeping practices and a redefinition of public opinion
in relation to the notion of civil society.
A theoretical discussion of the concept of world system and structuration
theories is provided by way of an introduction, followed by a note on the
method and mode of analysis. I then present the major themes that emerged
from the analysis diffusing the centre, changes in gate-keeping and the
achievement of attendant balances of power and the concept of public
opinion in relation to the notion of a civil society. I conclude with the
relevance and implications of this analysis for the 21st century.
A note on the vocabulary terms such as the Third World, the North and
the South will appear frequently in the analysis. This is partly because of their
usage in the period central to this study. It is also because these terms continue
to signify the global order today (excellent discussions on the historical origins
of these terms and their albeit uncomfortable currency are available in Escobar
[1995] and Melkote and Steeves [2001]).

The hermeneutic of the world order and its implications for

journalism

Over time, our perceptions of our larger social environments have been shaped
to register the world as a single world system. Robertson uses the term central
hermeneutic to articulate our mode of making sense of the world as a singular
construct (Robertson, 1990: 20). Originally a theory proposed by historian
Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), the idea of a world system is now a standard
descriptor of the international/global space. Two critical components contrib-
ute to the construction of this meaning. First, the world (geopolitical space)
converged into a single order as a consequence of a long history (the longue
duree). Second, the hierarchical nature of this arrangement is based on the
relative economic strengths of the member nations, moving radially from the
powerful core or the centre to the semi-peripheral nations (the Second World)
and finally the peripheral nations (the Third World) at the margins. Achieving
global communicative democracy in such an arena would entail changing this
hierarchical structure into a more horizontal one.
The theory of structuration, proposed and developed by sociologist An-
thony Giddens, also provides the foundations for understanding the world as

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 Sosale Envisioning a new world order through journalism 381

a whole. Structuration involves the interplay of both structure (the social

system and institutions) and agency (the individual, the subject) as simultane-
ously deriving from and constituting society. Political sense can be made of
structuration because
processes of structuration involve an interplay of meanings, norms and power.
These three concepts . . . are logically implicated in both the notion of inten-
tional action and that of structure. Every cognitive and moral order is at the same
time a system of power. (Giddens, 1993: 169)

Robertson offers an interpretive bridge between structuration and the idea of a

world order in his adaptation of the theory to help formulate a theory of
globalization. To make the concept of structuration directly relevant to the
world in which we live (Robertson, 1990: 20), he asserts that the current
globalizing world is structuration in action. The world as a singular space
fundamentally informed the idea of communicative democracy. Importantly,
this singular space is constantly under construction. Perceiving the world
system as a hierarchy politicizes the global society. The concept of the duality
of structure (Giddens, 1986), that is the dynamic relationship between struc-
ture and agency, speaks to the possibility for changing the world order. The
NWICO debates have to be located in this perception of the world order as
dynamic, constantly under construction. The duality of structure is thus
played out in a Cold War environment, where journalism in western demo-
cratic states was perceived to define in good part the global communication
order and, in turn, opponents to the existing world order were perceived to
ally their new policy suggestions with the ideology of state control attributed
to the Soviet Union, which wielded considerable influence over the polity and
policies of many Third World nations. A third set of actors needs to be
considered here NWICO supporters from the non-aligned countries (the NAM
or the Non-aligned Movement, where a large group of countries chose a third
way in their bid to separate themselves from a system defined and divided by
the Cold War) aggressively promoted a NWICO. On the whole, however, while
many NWICO proponents were interpellated by the world system, they, in turn,
attempted to construct new meanings of a world order defined by this system.
By extension, redefinitions occurred in the field of journalism as well. These
new meanings were drawn from the existing vocabulary of democracy in
other words, at this time, both professionals and pundits offered negotiated
readings of communicative democracy. Alternative views on journalism thus
sought to redress an imbalanced world communicative order by redefining
practices such as gate-keeping and creation of an appropriate climate of public
opinion among First World audiences. These concepts were extended to a
more shared and broader set of actions and outcomes than existing practices
that, though embedded in the desirable ideal of democracy, had through

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382 Journalism 4(3)

institutionalization and commercialization, corporatized these activities in the

interests of tight deadlines, readership/viewership and the market.
Featherstone has interpreted structuration as a concept where nation-
states are not seen to simply interact but to constitute a world (Featherstone,
1990: 5). Further, render[ing] the world into a singular place through
different historical trajectories (Featherstone, 1990: 6; emphasis added) also
finds a place in envisioning another world order. The existing world order
was a result of the historical experiences of conquest and colonization.
Proponents of a NWICO advocated a change that would emerge from the
collective modern communications experiences of countries with a shared
history of colonial occupation, varied though the trajectories and forms of
colonial occupation and experiences have been.
A demand for a new international economic order intended to change this
hierarchy was made in the early 1970s, followed by a demand for a new
international communication order in the mid-1970s. It was reasoned that a
change in the information and communication order was a co-requisite for
changing the existing world system and it is in this context that the NWICO
debates emerged. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) constituted the locus of the debates for a NWICO. As
an organization invested with officially recognizing the sovereignty of all
member nations (many of which were newly independent ex-colonies) to
legitimate their independent status in the international arena, UNESCO pro-
vided a forum in which a discourse of democracy and development was
constructed.
Both the critique of the existing world order and a new vision were
predicated upon the hermeneutic of a world order. Journalists suggested
certain professional practices and perspectives that contained the potential to
change images and impressions of the existing world order in the minds of the
public. While these suggestions and positions were not necessarily new in and
of themselves, they emerged in a specific context (the struggle for a new global
democracy) and, in this study, from specific sources such as journalists from
developing regions. Many non-Third World proponents of the NWICO also
contributed to the debates but in keeping with the scope and limits of this
study, I confine myself to articulations of alternate journalism and world order
from journalists of developing regions as a start. There is potential to expand
the study to include all pertinent attempts at restructuration within the
theoretical framework offered here in future work. But importantly, these
suggestions and positions become particularly noteworthy for the present
context where concerns that surfaced in the NWICO decade remain in-
adequately addressed.

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 Sosale Envisioning a new world order through journalism 383

Method and mode of analysis

This study is historical in nature and is situated in the context of the recent
NWICO debates, which can be mapped roughly between 197685. Texts were
selected from a bibliography of all materials dealing with the NWICO com-
piled by the Dag Hammarskjold Libraries, published in 1983, a year short of
the resignation of the United States from UNESCO. The bibliography contains
materials published approximately around this time period and lists UN as
well as non-UN material (published in scholarly and other forums). The texts
for this analysis were selected for their direct contribution to the topic at hand
journalisms role in defining an alternate (new) world order based on
distributive justice in communicative power. Most of the texts relating to the
NWICO, in general, call for an alternate world order. However, the texts
chosen for this analysis address specifically the ways in which journalism can
work to reconstitute a new world system.
A broad, interpretive analysis of the selected texts has been adopted for
the study. Interpretation is understood as the creative construction of possible
meaning (Thompson, 1990: 22). Though interpretive analysis contains the
potential to yield a variety of meanings (limited, of course, by the cultural
context), it does not preclude sharing the meanings with a community of
concerned scholars, professionals and activists. Moreover, multiple meanings
may point to more options for generating suitable action for social change.
Counter-imaginings of a world order challenged the power of existing
meanings of terms such as gate-keeping, public opinion, community journal-
ism and collective cultures and life worlds. An opening for social change
begins with a change in a social understanding of world order. As Hall
(1985: 36) reminds us:

The signification of events is part of what has to be struggled over, for it is the
means by which collective social understandings are created and thus the
means by which consent for particular outcomes can be effectively mobilized.

We can interpret such collective social understandings to be an articulation of

another world order as a historical possibility.
Three themes emerged from the analysis. Attempts to envision an alter-
nate world communication order that would change the centreperiphery
arrangement are apparent in the first theme. The vision of this new world
order retained the hermeneutic of the world system but diffused the centre by
articulating conceptual and practical avenues for the distribution of power in
the symbolic arena (domain of journalism). A second theme engaged in
changes to gate-keeping practices and their consequences for a new world
order. Emerging from the third theme is a way of conceptualizing audiences

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384 Journalism 4(3)

from a civil society perspective, as communities and publics that form civil
society. Such a conceptualization recognizes multiple publics within the
sphere of a media system and differs from the use of the concept of public
opinion for polling practices that gauge the mood of a larger and less defined
notion of the public. Together, these themes suggest a different or alternate
world order that would reflect distributive justice in communicative power.

Diffusing the journalistic centre

A statement issued by the participants of a Third World journalists seminar in

1976, the year when an official call for a NWICO was made in UNESCO,
argued for a reorganization in thinking about a world order. This statement
was reprinted in the journal, Development Dialogue (see Abtroun et al., 1982),
and I refer to this reprint in the analysis that follows. Unlike in other forums
where, typically, official representatives and academics debated the issue, this
seminar was organized for Third World journalists. The statement was issued
by journalists from Algeria, Senegal, Pakistan, Peru, Sri Lanka, India, Ven-
ezuela, Tanzania and one participant representing Chile and Mexico. In this
unusual forum, Third World practitioners voices were heard on journalistic,
historical and developmental issues. The statement called for collective self-
reliance . . . at regional and interregional levels (Development Dialogue, 1981:
116), referring to collectives needed in the non-core areas. They called for an
interlinking of national news agencies in the developing regions either directly
or through various bilateral and multilateral exchanges, some of which were
already in existence. The idea of linking national news agencies would contrib-
ute to the formation of regional journalistic collectives mostly with existing
resources (a few regional news agencies were established a little later, such as
the Non-aligned News Pool (NANAP), DepthNews in-depth reporting devel-
opment, economics and population themes and some others (see Boyd-
Barrett and Thussu [1993] and Savio [1982]). Besides regional cooperation for
content, suggestions were also made to reorganize communication channels
still dependent or which constitute a colonial inheritance and obstruct direct
and rapid communication among non-aligned countries (Abtroun et al.,
1981: 116). Here, the participants emphasized the leading role states were
required to play in this reorganization, a highly sensitive issue between
proponents and opponents of the NWICO.
The seminar participants also suggested specific steps to redirect the flow
of information carrying certain types of content. For example, exchang[ing]
and disseminat[ing] on mutual national achievements in the various news
media among states in the developing regions would ensure news content

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 Sosale Envisioning a new world order through journalism 385

informative of social conditions relevant to the periphery. Additionally, the

participants called for a Third World Information Centre to address Third
World needs specifically and also, to disseminate information to both in-
dustrialized and other regions. Taken together, disengagement from a colo-
nial communication system, re-orientation of a hitherto almost one-way news
flow among non-aligned and other Third World countries, and a significant
amount of news flow from the periphery to the other tiers of the world system
clearly indicate a re-structuration of the world from a Third World per-
spective.
In a UNESCO-commissioned work on development communication in
India, Verghese (1978) proposed a specialization model that could reorganize
the operation of existing news agencies at two levels is the Indian context.
This analysis pertains to the practice of news distribution. At the national
level, Verghese proposed that the four major national news agencies specialize
on the basis of region and language. They could then cater more adequately to
regional language news and information needs in rural areas, a service that is
critical for the language press in a multilingual country like India. At the
international level, these agencies could pool their operations to offer a
specialization in Asian and Indian Ocean coverage for the international news
community. These measures suggest a more geopolitically intuitive distribu-
tion of news power to peripheral regions that is missing in the new global
order.
Besides regional resource pooling and regional specialization, Savio, a
former Director of the Inter Press Service, conceptualized a world with multi-
ple voices, multiple flows and multiple actors where choices would be avail-
able for linking to various streams of information (Savio, 1982). Multiple flows
of information could become a reality only if third systems of information
were integrated into the world communication order. Third systems would
comprise various social groups which make up the texture of society trade
unions, academic institutions, cooperatives, religious movements and peoples
association, and would produce and disseminate information largely absent
in the mainstream media (Savio, 1982: 756). Far from being alternative,
third systems of media would join the mainstream media and render the latter
as one among multiple voices rather than allow it to be the dominant voice in
the world order. Savios vision pertains to alternate sources of information as
part of the multiple voices in a new world order.
We can conclude from this analysis that both conceptual and pragmatic
solutions were provided during the NWICO debates for diffusing journalistic
power concentrated in the centre of the world system. Establishing new
collectivities and self-reliance in the periphery, re-directing flow, outlining
multi-level models of specialization in news agency operation at the national

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386 Journalism 4(3)

and international levels, and adding third systems of information as non-

alternative, independent streams of information that ultimately contribute to
a multiplicity of sources and flows at the international level were some of the
means proposed to re-structurate the world order through the symbolic
domain of journalism among both practitioners and publics.

Gate-keeping and balances in symbolic power

It is conventional wisdom now that one of the loci of power wielding

considerable influence in the symbolic arena is the complex of gate-keeping
practices in media organizations. Gate-keeping controls both the type as well
as volume of social and cultural representations in the domain of what
Thompson (1990) has termed public visibility. It is possible, then, to effect
changes in the perceptions of a world order through the symbolic domain of
the media by modifying gate-keeping practices. For example, Savio (1982)
emphasized the need to educate gatekeepers of the North on the importance of
publicizing information not regularly available in their main national media.
If we carry this idea a little further, we can see that routinely including such
information or routinization of this practice of looking in other places for
news contains the potential to orient media images and public perceptions
towards a new world order. As Giddens (1986: 60) has observed, routinization
. . . is vital to the theory of structuration and, in this instance, can work to
represent a different world order.
In an evaluation of international communication following his case study
on the development of the press in Pakistan, Gauhar (1981) cited the (rare)
example of one of Britains leading newspapers, The Guardian, which began a
special section titled the Third World Review in 1978. This section represented
a conscious effort to provide a space for Third World voices in the First World
media. In an arrangement between the editors of The Guardian and editors of
newspapers in developing countries, the latter could contribute to the Review
about their respective countries from a participantobservers standpoint,
provided they subjected themselves to The Guardians editorial control. Gauhar
saw this move only as a beginning, albeit an encouraging one; he expected it
to serve as a model for editorial partnership between the North and the South
(Gauhar, 1981: 176). The term partnership implies shared decision-making
between the gate-keepers of the First and Third World media. Gauhar sug-
gested a similar arrangement for news agency collaboration, by region and
topic. Such partnerships, in a spirit of sharing public knowledge (Gauhar,
1981: 177) valorize the Other in the domain of gate-keeping and thus restore
some autonomy to news agency media operations in developing regions.

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 Sosale Envisioning a new world order through journalism 387

Shared decision-making at the stage of gate-keeping changes the journalistic

power balance between the developed and the developing countries and
demonstrates a reconfigured world order at the press/media power centres,
leading to a blurring of lines between the centre and the periphery in a critical
journalistic practice.
Gauhar also observed that training programmes in the Third World
required the leadership of professional instructors from the South, and that
bringing journalists from the South to training centres in the North was both
wasteful and in many ways injurious (Gauhar, 1981: 177). For example, an
attitude towards development news as a process rather than an event needs to
be encoded in the training for evaluating newsworthiness (also Verghese,
1978); and Gauhar believed this could be achieved because journalists from
the South tended to be more knowledgeable about governmental and non-
governmental development programmes for social change in their respective
countries.
In these texts, though there were frequent references to the core, it did not
possess the centre of gravity that it enjoys in the conventional world order.
The new gate-keeping practices also suggested a re-structuration of the world
order a hermeneutic of a complex and multiple whole rather than a linear
and hierarchical system.

Public opinion and civil society

Modernization debates highlighted the need for modern mass media in

developing regions in order to build public opinion for the successful func-
tioning of a democracy. Public opinion claimed roots in the notion of an
informed public whose pulse on various issues could be detected, particularly
for election purposes, as is the case in many core nations. Public opinion study
has had a history of being identified with election and voting behaviour.
Undisputedly, these two components are vital to the effective functioning of a
democracy. However, participants of the Third World Journalists Seminar
expanded the concept from informed electorates to informed publics. They
advocated a place in the western media for the aspirations of Third World
countries and recognition of . . . cultural, political, social and economic
diversity. According to them, the image of the Other would have to be
conveyed free of ethnocentric projections and interpretations in the media
(Development Dialogue, 1981: 116, 117). Development journalism, associated
with developing regions, then translates to public or civic journalism in the
western context, where the sense of community and social responsibility
intersect to produce informed publics (Gunaratne [1998] offers an excellent

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388 Journalism 4(3)

analysis of the parallels between development journalism and public journal-

ism). In this redefinition, the role of public opinion would expand con-
siderably to instil awareness and appreciation of global socioeconomic
conditions and contain the seeds to support and mobilize policy for social
change in the developing regions.
Schudsons positioning of news in modern societies is particularly helpful
in interpreting the demands of the seminar participants. The role of journal-
ism in building the modern public consciousness (Schudson, 1995: 2), of
which public opinion is a part, cannot be underestimated. News engenders a
public knowledge that, according to Schudson (1995: 3), is an omnipresent
brand of shared knowing. In fact, for him, news media should evoke empathy
and provide deep understanding so . . . citizens at large can appreciate the
situation . . . of non-elites and convey compassion that diplomats distrust . . .
as a basis for foreign policy (Schudson makes specific reference to the cases of
Sarajevo and Somalia here; p. 29). Thus, we can say that to an extent, the Third
World journalists in the seminar attempted to re-theorize the concept of
public opinion that is so intimately connected to journalism.
To re-define the term information keeping in mind the needs of commu-
nities rather than corporations and governments requires the close involve-
ment of third systems of communication (see previous discussion of Savios
idea). At the community level, these systems interpret the term information
very differently from the discussions on balanced information flow between
the developed and developing regions. According to Savio (1982), third
systems of information are in the best position to articulate and circulate
information suited to their communities needs. He accepted the existing
world communication order as a consequence of history and as an institution-
alized system of information that would continue to fulfil certain needs. But in
conceptualizing a civil society approach to information, Savio did not con-
sider a new information order to be necessarily international. Instead, he
advocated the creation of other flows and institutions based on community
communication that were not alternate information systems but existed side-
by-side with the mainstream, as part of a plural mainstream.
This final theme on the notion of public opinion and the importance of
civil society addressed audiences in the First World as a vital component in
global journalism. When media gatekeepers approach audiences as members
of a civil society rather than an index of ratings and when vital social
institutions take on the role of the media in certain instances, the symbolic
domain will reflect a new (and different) communication order. Re-imagining
a new world order based on communication thus requires going beyond
institutions and professionals and into the perceptions and opinions of the
average citizen in everyday life.

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 Sosale Envisioning a new world order through journalism 389

Conclusions and implications for the 21st century

This article examined some lesser-known yet seminal texts generated at a

particular point in history, during the debates about instituting a new world
communication order. It has been demonstrated that a re-imagination of a
new communication order was predicated upon the hermeneutic of a world
system or a single world order. That is, the perception and understanding of
the complex of nation-states and their arrangement in the global space
manifests itself as a single world system or order. World system and structura-
tion theories provide the conceptual explanation for both the perception and
the actual shaping of this macro social structure. As Layder (1994: 1278)
explains:
People and the products of their social activities cannot be treated [independ-
ently]. People are intrinsically involved with society and actively enter into its
constitution; they construct, support and change it because it is the nature of
human beings to be affected by, and to affect, their social environment.

To the extent that the world order was constructed as a consequence of certain
events in history, supporters of a new information order could express the felt
need for different ways of conceptualizing the world order, communication,
directionality of communication flow and so on, within the legible metaphors
of the existing world order. As Huesca and Dervin (1994: 61) explain: A
communication practice can be judged as alternative, within this framework, to
the extent that it encompasses and assumes the complex process of popular
social practices (emphasis added).
We are now left with the following questions. What are the implications
of this analysis for the 21st century? Are the issues raised in recent history
relevant now in the global era? And if so, how exactly might they be applicable
as lessons for practicing journalism and envisioning a new order today? While
definitive answers to these complex questions are not possible, we can use the
analysis of the current era of globalization as a starting point to attempt some
responses. If the information flow questions were critical for the news media
in the 1970s, they continue to be so for the present. An analysis by Boyd-
Barrett and Thussu (1993) indicates that Third World news agencies contribute
marginally to the news needs of developing regions primarily due to lack of
sufficient capital. West-based news agencies continue to operate with large
capital outlays from the centre of the world information/communication
system. One can reasonably assume then that the general tenor of information
available to mainstream media audiences in developed regions is similar to the
content in the 1970s. Gatekeepers of big media continue to respond to
relatively narrow definitions of news since the constraints within which they
operate are similar to those 25 years ago. At the same time, new media have

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390 Journalism 4(3)

created new outlets for expression and new opportunities for access and
participation. In this sense, numerous instances of diffusing the centre have
manifested themselves in two ways: as alternate media in multiple locations,
and as alternate global circuits of activities and activisms connected by media
(see for example Atton, 2001 and Dowmunt, 1998). To what extent they are
successful in countering the continued hegemony of the large media systems is
difficult to conclude. Recent extended analyses of globalization (for example,
Hardt and Negri, [2000] and Harvey [2000]) point to the persistent hegemony of
global capital in the information economy. Scholars such as McChesney et al.
(1998) emphasize the continued dominance of big (now even bigger) media,
although the very recent problems with conglomerates like Vivendi Universal
hint at the beginnings of a loss of faith in big media mergers within the
transnational business community (Lohr, 2002). Barring this last new develop-
ment, the notion of diffusing the centre continues to be critical.
The composition of the audiences in the centre has changed considerably
in the last decade or so. Besides refugee populations, increasingly, analysis is
now available about the changing patterns of migratory labour, temporary
workers in the fringe economies of global metropolises and the disconnection
(and divide) between the highly paid professionals of the new knowledge
economy and their support staff hired for minimum wages (Sassen, 1998).
These observations paint a picture of a metropolitan society composed not
only of more numbers of disenfranchized groups from a class standpoint but
also diverse ethnic groups from a cultural standpoint. Factored into this
complex are significant increases in women as low-wage workers, conse-
quently gendering society in new ways. As Sassen has encapsulated this
diversity in relation to power neatly, many in the global cities with highly
concentrated populations lack the power but now have presence (p. xxi).
Besides the global metropolises, there are also rural and semi-urban popula-
tions to consider. It is all the more important in such a climate to redefine and
re-theorize the concept of public opinion as envisioned by the participants of
the Third World Journalists Seminar and re-inscribe the notion of community
into journalistic practices. Hence, changes in the present global system not-
withstanding, some lessons can be culled from the debates for re-imagining a
new (alternate?) world order.

Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual conference of the
International Association for Media and Communication Research, Barcelona,
Spain, 2002. The author thanks Chris Atton and the anonymous reviewers of
this manuscript for their productive feedback.

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 Sosale Envisioning a new world order through journalism 391

Note

1 Structuration, in a sense, is a critique of the world system theory. My thanks to

Terhi Rantanen for alerting me to the need for clarification here. World system
theory explains the international structure as derivative of economic forces,
whereas structuration, broader and more sociological in scope, incorporates the
dynamic of social change, thus giving the global structure a less determined and
a more contestatory and constitutive character. I treat world system theory as an
explanation of the existing global communication hierarchy in concrete and
tangible terms, and draw from structuration to suggest the historical possibility
of an alternative world order.

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Biographical notes

Sujatha Sosale teaches in the Department of Communication, Georgia State

University. She will soon be joining the Journalism faculty at the University of
Iowa.
Address: Department of Communication, Georgia State University, One Park Place
South, Suite 1040, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA. [email: ssosale@gsu.edu]

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