Governments, States and their relation to media and Media, technology and culture Karlstad University – Spring term 2010 Paola Sartoretto

Information Society  Concept created by the economist Fritz Machlup in 1950  Sector of the economy associated with ”the production and distribution of knowledge”.  Education, research and development, information machines, information services (finance, insurance, real state)

Mass communication  Multiple-rotary printing and mass mailing by rail  Broadcasted media  Communication structures serve to control economy an polity  Mass communication, persuasion and market research are used by governments.

Industrial Revolution ”…control of government and markets had depended on personal relationships and face-to-face interactions; now control came to be restablished by means of bureaucratic organizations, the new infrastructures of transportation and telecommunications, and system- wide communication via the new mass media.” James Beniger

Convergence  Information technologies – mass media, telecommunications and computing – converge into a single structure of control at the most macro level  Digitalization

Castell’s questions  Does the internet have a purely instrumental role?  Is there a transformation of the rules of the socio-political game in cyberspace?

Surveillance  Internet started as an anonimous arena  Internet undermined national sovereignity and state control  It is now used by governments as a surveillance tool

Surveillance technologies  ”Control of information has been the essence of state power throughout history”. Castells 2001:169  Monitor machine activity  Identify servers and the origin of the message  Governments can obtain such data in order to carry-out different activities

End of privacy  Surveillance at the workplace  Surveillance by government authorities

The Panopticon

Sovereignty  Shared information systems as a measure against cybercrime  Extended government power on wiretapping and interception of data power  It is not Big Brother but a multitude of little sisters (Castells)

The higher the development of information technologies the higher the ability of control in a society. Ex.: voting processes, population registering, communication of information to larger audiences etc.

”The U.S. government spends about 150 million dollars a year on advertising, which places it among the top thirty advertisers in the country” James Beniger, 2007 What do new communication technologies represent for political communication?

Who can regulate the use of internet?  Governments (Castells)  Corporations ”…the European Union’s regulation of data gathered by dot.com companies from their users protects privacy to a much greater extent than the laissez-faire environment in the United States.” (Castells)

Information, communication and citizenship  ”Instead of the government watching people, people could be watching their govenment” Castells 2002:155.  Internet is an electronic billboard, no communication

Internet and democracy  Democratic governments can use internet as a communication channel.  People watch their elected representatives instead of being watched  Restore the trust between governments and citizens.