Media and Democracy in the Age of Globalization

Agents of participatory democracy or purveyors of consumer capitalism? Guardians of the public sphere or lap dogs of the power elite? Much of the debate about media’s role in the “democratization” of various societies around the world demands an examination of the implications of such questions. For starters we might consider if mass media engender, as Marshall McLuhan once envisioned, a “global village” where democracy is encouraged along with universal understanding and the cultivation of a cosmic consciousness. Or is media transformation within new democracies nothing more than a tool of global economic powers to colonize previously “untapped” social domains via information, entertainment, and new technology? While perhaps seeming to be artificially oppositional in the face of today’s complex political and cultural landscapes across the globe, these questions are nevertheless useful points of departure in that they suggest how media might serve to alter, enable, or disrupt the cultural sovereignty of nations and political potency of communities. Indeed, variations of these themes have been at the heart of controversies regarding the scope and legitimacy of regional trade agreements (Galperin, 1999a, 1999b), and within them resides the core issue of in whose interest and benefit are media and new communication technologies being used to reshape nations and “democratize” the flow of information and capital. In short, what “kind” of democratic reform is taking place, and how are media involved?