[News] Can the Global South Build a New World Information and Communication Order?: The Twentieth Newsletter (2023)
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Sun May 21 15:35:58 EDT 2023
Can the Global South Build a New World Information and Communication
Order?: The Twentieth Newsletter (2023)
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*Can the Global South Build a New World Information and Communication
Order?: The Twentieth Newsletter (2023)*
Meas Sokhorn (Cambodia), /Inverted Sewer/, 2014.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
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It is remarkable how the media in a select few countries is able to set
the record on matters around the world. The European and North American
countries enjoy a near-global monopoly over information, their media
houses vested with a credibility and authority inherited from their
status during colonial times (BBC, for instance) as well as their
command of the neocolonial structure of our times (CNN, for instance).
In the 1950s, the post-colonial nations identified the West’s monopoly
over media and information and sought to ‘promote the free flow of ideas
by word and by image’, as the 1945 Constitution
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of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO) put it.
As part of the Non-Aligned Movement, the countries and regions of
Africa, Asia, and Latin America developed their own national and
regional news institutions: in 1958, a UNESCO seminar held in Quito
(Ecuador) led to the establishment of a regional school to train
journalists and communications professionals in 1960 known as the
International Centre of Advanced Communication Studies for Latin America
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(CIESPAL); in 1961, a meeting held in Bangkok created the Organisation
of Asia
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Agencies
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(OANA); and in 1963, a conference held in Tunis created the Union of
African News Agencies
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(UANA). These agencies tried to amplify the voices of the Third World
through their own media, but also – unsuccessfully – within the media
houses of the West. Alongside these efforts, at the UNESCO General
Conference of 1972, Soviet Union and UNESCO experts from more than a
dozen countries put forward a resolution
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entitled the ‘Declaration of Guiding Principles for the Use of Satellite
Broadcasting for the Free Flow of Information, the Spread of Education,
and Greater Cultural Exchange’, which called for nations and peoples to
have the right to determine what information is broadcasted in their
countries. Like other such efforts, it was opposed by Western states,
with the United States at its helm. Although conference after
conference, from Bangkok to Santiago, took the issue of the
democratisation of the press seriously, this opposition meant that
little advancement was possible.
Dominique Bwalya Mwando (Democratic Republic of the Congo), /Lumumba’s
Speech/, 2005.
In the 1970s and 1980s, these efforts came together in the movement to
build the New World Information and Communication Order to address the
global imbalances in this sphere between developed and developing
countries. This idea was influential on UNESCO’s International
Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, or MacBride
Commission, established in 1977 and chaired by the Irish politician and
Nobel laureate Seán MacBride, which produced an important, but
little-read, report
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on the topic (/Many Voices, One World/, 1980). In 1984, the United
States withdrew from UNESCO in response to these initiatives. The
privatisation of the media in the 1980s ultimately killed off any
attempt by the Third World to create sovereign media networks – even
where these networks were anti-communist (as with the Asia-Pacific News
Network, established in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1981).
However, in recent years, this dream of the free flow of information has
been revived by movements of the Global South, which have been
frustrated by the near-total absence of their views in international
debates and by the imposition of a narrow, foreign worldview on their
countries about the dilemmas that they face (war and hunger, for
instance). As part of this revival, hundreds of editors and journalists
from the Global South gathered in Shanghai (China) in early May for the
Global South International Communication Forum. At the close of two days
of intense debate, the participants drafted and voted on a Shanghai
Consensus, which can be read in full below.
Opening cultural performance of the Global South International
Communication Forum, 4 May 2023. Credit: International Communication
Research Institute of East China Normal University
*Promoting the Construction of a Twenty-First-Century New World
Information and Communication Order*
**In the 1970s, as part of the process by the Non-Aligned Movement to
establish the New International Economic Order, the states of the Global
South along with UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO) attempted to establish the New World Information and
Communication Order. This attempt was destroyed by the rise of
neoliberal hegemony during the 1980s. The wave of neoliberal
globalisation accelerated due to the Third World debt crisis and the
demise of the Soviet Union. The West established a ‘rules-based
international order
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to mask its neocolonial structures and imperialist actions. Samir Amin
argued that the neocolonial structure is built on ‘five controls’: over
finance, natural resources, science and technology, weapons of mass
destruction, and information.
Today, although some of these monopolies have loosened, the unequal
structure of information and communication has not only remained
unchanged but has also become more severe. The dominant theoretical
paradigm on information production and communication worldwide remains
Western-centric, and the Global South’s academia and media lack
mechanisms to generate ideas and a framework that goes beyond the
Western-centric perspective.
Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research, gives the keynote address, entitled ‘History Has Not Ended:
The Three Battles of Our Time’, 4 May 2023. Credit: International
Communication Research Institute of East China Normal University
We note the prevalence of neocolonial structures, in particular in the
media, which are controlled by the West. This media is unable to
articulate the challenges faced by the world’s people or effectively
communicate and discuss feasible development strategies, in particular
for the Global South.
US imperialists and their allies weaponise the media, launching
information wars
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against countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. If the Global
South tries to put peace and development on the agenda, the West answers
with war and debt. In the hands of Western media monopolies, the
communications order is not used to promote world peace, but to
exacerbate human division and the risk of war.
US imperialists and their allies use media hegemony to distort the
beautiful concepts of democracy, freedom, and human rights. They attack
other countries under the pretext of democracy, freedom, and human
rights while remaining silent about their own trampling of democracy,
deprivation of freedom, and human rights.
Professor Lyu Xingyu, dean of the International Communication Research
Institute of East China Normal University, gives the closing remarks of
the Global South International Communication Forum, 5 May 2023. Credit:
International Communication Research Institute of East China Normal
University
Digital technologies such as the internet, big data, and artificial
intelligence, which should serve human welfare, are used by a few
Western media giants and monopoly platforms to dominate the production
and dissemination of information and to block voices that differ from
their claims. Given these circumstances, we believe that it is essential
for intellectuals and communications professionals from and sympathetic
to the Global South to revive the spirit of the 1955 Bandung Conference
and the Non-Aligned Movement (established in 1961), respond to the
Global Civilisation Initiative (2023), and establish international
solidarity through communications theory and practice.
We believe that it is essential for intellectuals from and sympathetic
to the Global South to promote the theoretical syntheses and academic
production of the Global South (especially in the arenas of history and
development), actively engage in academic exchanges and collaboration,
and form a communications theory from the perspective of the Global South.
Tings Chak, Dongsheng co-founder and director of art at Tricontinental:
Institute for Social Research, delivers a speech entitled ‘Third World
Culture, Communication, and Solidarity’, 4 May 2023.
We believe that it is essential for progressive media from and
sympathetic to the Global South to form a distributed and diversified
content production and dissemination network, share content and media
experiences, and establish a united international communications front
against imperialism and neocolonialism to advocate for peace and
development.
We believe that it is essential for the Global South International
Communication Forum to be held annually in order to build a diverse and
multilateral network and platform for dialogue and exchange among
intellectuals and communications professionals. This network and
platform will serve as a basis for various forms of collaboration with
governments, universities, think tanks, media, and other institutions.
The historical mission of the New World Information and Communication
Order has not been fulfilled, nor has the spirit behind it been
eradicated. Anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism are still the
consensus of the new Non-Aligned Movement. Let us work together, based
on this foundation, to promote the construction of a
twenty-first-century New World Information and Communication Order to
benefit humanity.
Nor Tijan Firdaus (Malaysia), /Just Scan It /(2021).
We, at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, are in broad
agreement with the need to further the New World Information and
Communication Order and revive the dream of the free flow of ideas. This
endeavour is built upon efforts of the past, such as the Non-Aligned
News Agencies Pool, formed by the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug on 20
January 1975, which brought together eleven news agencies. In its first
year of operation, the agencies shared 3,500 stories; a decade later,
there were sixty-eight news agencies in the network. Though the
Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool is now extinct, the idea behind it
remains vital. The recent conference in Shanghai is part of the new
conversation to build new pools, new networks, and new media, anchored
organisations such as /Peoples Dispatch/
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and like-minded media projects.
Warmly,
Vijay
Website <www.eltricontinental.org>
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