1 Why Media Researchers Don't Care About Teletext
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1 Why Media Researchers Don’t Care About Teletext Hilde Van den Bulck & Hallvard Moe Abstract This chapter tackles the paradoxical observation that teletext in Europe can look back on a long and successful history but has attracted very little academic interest. The chapter suggests and discusses reasons why media and commu- nications researchers have paid so little attention to teletext and argue why we should not ignore it. To this end, it dissects the features of teletext, its history, and contextualizes these in a discussion of media research as a field. It first discusses institutional (sender) aspects of teletext, focusing on the perceived lack of attention to teletext from a political economic and policy analysis perspective. Next, the chapter looks at the characteristics of teletext content (message) and reasons why this failed to attract the attention of scholars from a journalism studies and a methodological perspective. Finally, it discusses issues relating to the uses of teletext (receivers), reflecting on the discrepancy between the large numbers of teletext users and the lack of scholarly attention from traditions such as effect research and audience studies. Throughout, the chapter points to instances in the development of teletext that constitute so- called pre-echoes of debates that are considered pressing today. These issues are illustrated throughout with the case of the first (est.1974) and, for a long time, leading teletext service Ceefax of the BBC and the wider development of teletext in the UK. Keywords: teletext, communication studies, research gaps, media history, Ceefax, BBC Introduction When we first started thinking about a book on teletext, a medium that has been very much part of people’s everyday lives across Europe for over forty years, we were surprised by the lack of scholarly attention or even interest. We could find very few studies or even general reflections on the medium, and asking colleagues about their knowledge of work on teletext not only confirmed the lack of interest but created disbelief (and even laughter) at our interest in 15 News in a Globalized Society Edited by Stig Hjarvard News in a Globalized Society NORDICOM News in a Globalized Society Edited by Stig Hjarvard ISBN 91-89471-05-9 © 2001 the authors and NORDICOM, Göteborg University Cover: Torben Lundsted Printed in Sweden by Livréna, Kungälv 2001 NORDICOM Göteborg university Box 713 SE-405 30 Göteborg http://www.nordicom.gu.se phone +46 31-773 10 00, fax +46 31-773 46 55 Contents Stig Hjarvard Introduction 7 Globalization and the Role of News Media Stig Hjarvard News Media and the Globalization of the Public Sphere 17 Daniel Biltereyst Global News Research and Complex Citizenship. Towards an Agenda for Research on Foreign/International News and Audiences 41 New Media, Global News, and Democracy Ingrid Volkmer International Communication Theory in Transition. Parameters of the New Global Sphere of Mediation 65 Chris A. Paterson Media Imperialism Revisited. The Global Public Sphere and the News Agency Agenda 77 Klaus Bruhn Jensen Why Virtuality Can Be Good for Democracy 93 Regionalization and Domestication of Global News Hans-Henrik Holm The Effect of Globalization on Media Structures and Norms. Globalization and the Choice of Foreign News 113 Tore Slaatta Transnational Politics and News Production. Norwegian Correspondents on the Brussels Beat 129 Norbert Wildermuth Striving for Credibility. News and Current Affairs on Star TV India 149 Claes de Vreese Frames in Television News. British, Danish, and Dutch Television News Coverage of the Introduction of the Euro 179 War News in Global Media Stig A. Nohrstedt & Rune Ottosen Globalisation of War News. Challenges for Media Research 197 Daya Kishan Thussu An ‘Insight’ into CNN’s Coverage of NATO’s First War 221 About the Authors 235 Introduction Stig Hjarvard Since the late 1980s a new agenda for research on the relationship between media and society has gradually emerged. The revolutionary changes in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the Gulf War were the first and very prominent indicators of major changes in media as well as in society. Apart from being significant in their own right, the way these events unfolded also related a strong feeling that developments in national and international politics were somehow connected to – perhaps interdependent with – changes within the media sector. The media – and the news media in particular – not only reported on these major social changes, but were somehow implicated in them and perhaps partly constitutive of them, at least to the extent that media influenced certain key decisions and events and favored certain paths of development over others. It was not without reasons that phrases like “television revolution” and “media war” were used to describe the breakdown of communism and the war between Irak and the multilateral alliance. Not least in the broadcast news industry these events had a very strong impact. Broadcasters acquired a new sense of the media’s potential during such events and they came under pressure for renewing the kind of news services they traditionally provided. The head of the news working party of the European Broadcasting Union, Jacques Vandersichel, stated in a EBU publication from 1991 with the telling title Actors or Spectators? that after the orgy of the Gulf coverage, television newsrooms will be faced with a new challenge, whether they want it or not. [...] our audience will expect more than ever from now on. They will expect television news to be there, and show them all that is happening, as it is happening. (EBU, 1991: 4-5) And news media did change. Broadcast news proliferated during the 1990s. News bulletins expanded to the entire day providing continuous updates on both local and global events from early morning to late in the night. Several satellite news services gained access to every major satellite platform and cable distributor around the globe. News diversified into many subgenres like business news, entertainment news, sports news, medical news etc., and the rise of the 7 Stig Hjarvard Internet media provided a new platform for an even greater expansion in the geographical reach and volume of news output. Newspapers, broadcasters, news agencies, and other media actors began to distribute news on the Internet. News increasingly became available in real-time and across national boundaries. The role of media in the historical events and social changes from the late 1980s and onwards gradually began to be reflected in theoretical thinking in the social and political sciences. The German social theorist Jürgen Habermas, who in the 1960s announced the demise of the public sphere not least as a consequence of the spread of popular media, began in 1990 to talk about the formation of a world public sphere. He labeled the changes in eastern and central Europe and the Gulf War “the first world-political events in a strict sense” (Habermas, 1996: 514, Habermas’ emphasis): Through the electronic media, these events were brought instantaneously before a ubiquitous public sphere. In the context of the French Revolution, Kant made reference to the reactions of a participatory public. At that time, he identified the phenomenon of a world public sphere, which today is becoming political reality for the first time in a cosmopolitan matrix of communication (Habermas, 1996: 514). Globalization became the key concept by which social changes during the post- communist era were analyzed and interpreted in the 1990s. Although globalization has frequently been criticized and even rejected as a proper concept because of its at once all-embracing character and vague contours, it nevertheless established a new agenda in disciplines like social theory, international politics, cultural studies etc. (e.g., Bauman, 1998; Giddens, 1999; Held, 1995; Held et al., 1999; Tomlinson, 1999). Media studies were also influenced by the new agenda of globalization. Media studies have had a long tradition for research on media flows between nations, including the impact of foreign media flows on national cultures etc. but such studies were previously confined to sub-disciplines like international communication or development communication. The implicit, yet crucial, assumption behind these disciplines was the notion that the nation state is the key unit of analysis. Thus, media flows were studied as flows between nations, media development was very often measured by comparing levels of national development, and international media were understood as something foreign that penetrated into the national environment. Dependency theory as well as media and cultural imperialism constituted the critical framework that guided this nation-centered understanding of an international media system. For media researchers and the general public alike, foreign media were something that only became visible, of social importance – and possible to study – when they crossed the national border, or you would have to travel a long way – preferably to US – in order to experience or study them. The globalization agenda challenged this nation-centeredness. Today, the nation is still an important unit of analysis, but it is increasingly one among several other social entities defined by cultural, economic or political characteristics, 8 Introduction ethnicity, class, religion, age etc., all of which transcend national borders. Glo- balization entails a new social geography with several interconnected and over- lapping social spaces of which