Singapore and the New World Information and Communication Order
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GLOBAL VILLAGE OR GLOBAL GHETTO? SINGAPORE AND THE NEW WORLD INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION ORDER. THEEN LIANG KHENG THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT FOR THE HONOURS DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN SOCIOLOGY, THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. May 1992 1 Certificate Of Originality I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgment is made in the text. (Signed) ........ ii CONTENTS Acknowledgments Page IV 1 . Introducing communication as a cultural artefact 1 2 . The 'imagined' community through comm un ica tion 7 3 . The rise of media imperialism 1 8 4. New World Information and Communication Order 42 Introduction 42 The evolution of the free flow information doctrine 1945-1970 44 The establishment of a NWICO 1970-1980 46 The US position on the NWICO 1976-1980 54 The US Confronts UNESCO 1980-1985 59 5 The Case of Singapore 64 Historical background 64 The rise of nationalism and the formation of the 'imagined' community in Singapore 66 The role of the mass media in the creation of the 'imagined' community 76 Singapore as a developed nation 79 The mass media's role remains consistent despite technological advancement 87 111 Singapore as a business and information hub 99 6 . Conclusion 105 The contradiction between news as a commodity and a social good 1 0 5 The. paradox of Singapore's information and communication policy 1 0 8 The relevance of the NWICO 110 The new world era 1 1 3 A freer flow of information for a unified global culture based on diversity 117 Conclusion for Singapore 121 Bibliography 124 IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to my supervisor, Associate Professor Grant McCall for his valuable comments and for having ensured the successful completion of this thesis. I also wish to thank Dr. Paul Jones for having supervised the initial stages of the research. Part of the data encompassed in the empirical study has been collected through the assistance of the librarians· from the Central Library of the National University of Singapore and the Asian Mass Communication Research and· Information Centre (also located in Singapore). Appreciation is extended to Elsie Cole for her assistance during the preparation of this thesis and to Ian Walker for his technical advice. My mother Wong Lien Hiong, my sister Monica Theen, and friends, Chu Said Thong, Br.Valens, Fr.David Wilson, Patricia Lee, Joanna and Maria have, by their support and encouragement, contributed to the completion of this thesis. Lastly, I thank the examiners for having kindly consented to examine my work. Page. 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCING COMMUNICATION AS A CULTURAL ARTEFACT Communication forms the basis of society. It is through communication that knowledge, ideas and information are transmitted and disseminated. Through common knowledge, mores, values and ways of life, culture is formed. There are two conceptions of communication. The transmission concept views communication as ". .. a process whereby messages are transmitted and distributed m space for the control of distance and people". 1 This is evidenced m the spread of religion when Christian missions were sent overseas from Europe to the America~ and Asia. "This movement in space was an attempt to establish and extend e the kingdom of God, to create the conditions under which godly understanding might be realised, to produce a heavenly though still terrestrial city " 2 Beyond transportation by land or sea, the forces of communication technology such as the telegraph have allowed transmission uninhibited by physical distances. Other than communication for the purpose of controlling space and people, there is another conception of communication: In a ritual definition, communication is linked to terms such as 'sharing', 'participation', 'association', 'fellowship' and 'the possession of a common faith'. This definition exploits the ancient identity and common roots of the terms 'commonness', 'communion', 'community' and Carey, J.W., Communication as Culture - Essays on Media and Society, Unwin Hyman, 1989, P.15. 2 Ibid., P.16. Page. 2 'communication'. A ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messag,'!s in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs. 3 Communication m the ritual sense brings people together in common fellowship within a sense of community, not by control alone. Hence, the type of society and community desired will determine its communication model. It is the society which shapes communication to fulfil its goals of cultural formation. "Society substitutes for the world revealed to our senses a different world that is a projection of the ideals created by the community" .4 The world IS revealed through the mass media rn newspapers, news broadcasts, films, music, magazines, posters and others. The media content and the medium are determined by the society in pursuit of its cultural ideals. Hence, communication is constitutive and is constituted by society. One illustration IS the development of communications to bring people all over a country and later, all over the world together which also resulted in the sharing of a common time frame. Although very precise clocks existed right up to the nineteenth century, they only told local time specific to each town or city. Every respectable town would have a clock tower erected at its city centre. It did not matter to any town what the time was at another town since there was minimum interaction and limited 3 lbid.,P. 18. 4 lbid.,P.19. Page. 3 travel, probably by foot. Once travel across hundreds of miles became possible with transport technology other than horse or another other type of animal power (cart driven), a common temporal reference at a supralocal ievel became indispensable for communication to take place between different towns. It was the revolution in communication that the need for temporal coordination at a supralocal level arose. The indispensability of a uniform standard of time... was a direct product of the establishment of a national communication network... [which was]... first felt around the introduction of the British mail-coach service during the 1780s. This was the first service ever to connect different communities within one and the same communication network ... With the development of a fast railway network throughout Britain, communities which had previously led a rather autonomous existence gradually became interrelated parts of single systemic whole. Increasing interdependence among communities necessarily involves a need to achieve further temporal coordination... If there was a need for an entire railway system, there was also a need for a single, uniform standard of time.5 With railways, the feasibility of travelling across territorial boundaries broke down local parochialism. A schedule to run an inter-town train service would not be possible without a common temporal reference. Otherwise, the time at the point of embarkation would be one local time different from the time during disembarkation at another town. A single, uniform standard time was needed to constitute the coordination of the 5 Zerubavel.,E.(1982), " The Standardisation of Time: A Sociohistorical Perspective", American Journal of Sociology, 1982, 88(1), P. 5-7. Page. 4 entire railway network. Punctuality and precise timekeeping within the same time reference would not only provide a standard schedule for all passengers of every town, it was also crucial for the safe operation of trains at intersecting rail tracks. Since the Royal Observatory in Greenwich was the most reliable observatory in Britain, every mail-coach guard was required to carry a timepiece indicating Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), so that all clocks in the various post offices on the coach's route could be adjusted in accordance with it. This was the first attempt in history to synchronise different communities with one another.6 From the interconnection of communities by rail to instantaneous communication across long distances provided by more sophisticated development in communication technology - the telegraph and electric wires began to link people together and to overcome physical barriers of communication. The possibility of immediate communication across distances necessarily brought people within a common time frame. Greenwich Mean Time was proposed as the prime meridian as it was most extensively used by railroad transportations in the world - the American and Canadian railway network had adopted a standard time-reckoning system derivative of GMT. The Greenwich meridian as the world's prime meridian would involve the least number of necessary alterations of the system already in use, and that choosing any other meridian would only add unnecessary confusion, expense and inconvenience. 7 6 Ibid., P.6. 7 Ibid., P.13-14. Page. 5 The discussion of how communication has brought different communities together in a common time reference leads to the focus of this thesis which is on communication a:; a constituent of a community. This is in line with John Dewey's emphasis on the ritual view of communication: There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication. Men live in a community in virtue of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in common... aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge - a common understanding like-mindedness as sociologists say. Such things cannot be passed physically from one to another like bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie by dividing it into physical pieces... Consensus demands communication.8 Chapter Two exammes the growth of a community - the nation through communication in the form of print languages and print capitalism.