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Actors and Interactions in Global Communication Governance: The Heuristic Potential of a Network Approach
Introduction1
Contemporary developments in the areas of media, communication, information, and culture present multifaceted policy challenges. We can think of the extraordinary pace of technological evolution, the transnational outreach of economic interests and financial investments, the complexity of issues to be dealt with, and the tension between the democratic potential of ubiquitous technologies and the risk of broadening divides. All of these aspects pose problematic questions concerning the role and relevance of arrangements that contribute to and define the normative foundations and the governance structures of knowledge societies and of media and communication as a policy domain.
There are several reasons to investigate how media and communication governance is being structured. In the first place, “information policy creates the communicative space within which all public and decision making discourses take place” (Braman 2006: 78). We therefore need to appreciate the relevance of this field to other policy domains as well as decision-making processes, outputs, and outcomes. Some authors have also outlined how information and communication are increasingly recognized as gaining relevance in the broader context of global governance, thus becoming “one of the newest and most internationalized areas of public policy and institutional ...
