The Role of Communications in International Power

In considering content of my first post, I really wanted to look at International Communications through a lens focusing on a central theme for this course. In the reading for the first week, both Thussu and Mattelart present a brief history of communications and how the field has advanced from the construction of Roman roads to the rise of television as the dominant form of communication of the 20^th century. In doing so, they both also highlighted how control of communications and information helped the formation and development of the major empires of the last two millennia.

History is rife with examples of how empires maintained control of their colonies through the successful use of the latest communications technologies: the Roman roads allowed for messengers to more quickly transfer news and information from across western Europe back to the capital; The British empire was founded on their superior navy and control of the oceans, which allowed them to control trade routes and with them the flow of trade information. The British Empire later flourished with their near monopoly of telegraph lines in the 19^th century, and the United States similarly used television and radio to project their power in the 20^th century.

While fascinating in of itself, the history of control of communications and political power has far reaching implications for the future also. The internet appears to have changed the dynamics of power with regard to both control of communications and the information flow.

While some states, such as China, attempt to censor the internet by blocking certain sites, and others, such as Egypt and Iran try to “turn it off” in times of unrest, people are still able to connect. During the “Green Revolution” in Iran we saw how twitter remained a forum for protesters to alert one another of upcoming demonstrations in spite of the fact that the government was supposedly blocking the site from use.

States using tools of communication to forward their own ends is nothing new, but the public rejection of it is. In Egypt, deposed President Mubarak attempted to shutdown internet access in his country and five days later the internet was back on and the protests were more vehement than ever. As Reporters Without Borders reporter Lucie Morillon argued according to Forbes Magazine, “keeping millions of people offline simply isn’t a sustainable approach to quelling dissent.”

States also have substantially less control of information flow. With worldwide access, instant news and leaks of classified material, it is impossible for governments to effectively control what general public reads, sees, hears or even shape the way that information is framed.

Unlike the telegraph, newsprint, radio, or even television, the internet creates at least the potential for a new political paradigm for communications and information. Whether or not states will ever be able to control communications the way they have done for centuries is now an open question, but more to the point, will people ever allow states to control information like that again? The future of control of communications is a question we will no doubt come back to often over the course of the semester.