Australian Studies in Journalism, 10/11 (2001/02), 223-226

Book review

McPhail, Thomas L. (2002). Global communication: Theories, stakeholders, and trends. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. xvi+272pp.

McPhail says this book provides "the most powerful explanation of the contemporary phenomenon of global communication" (p. 245) through "the dual theoretical prisms of electronic colonialism and world-system perspectives" (p. 243). He contends that the theories of modernization, dependency, and cultural imperialism have fallen by the wayside because of their failure to match reality. McPhail, a professor of communication at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, was also the author of the 1986 book Electronic Colonialism. Thus, his desire to tie his pet concept with the more established world-system approach is understandable.

McPhail defines electronic colonialism as the peripheral countries’ dependence on the core countries for the software, engineers, technicians, and related information protocols that to varying degrees help "alter domestic cultures, habits, values, and the socialization process itself" (p. 14). In the context of this definition, however, his choice of the word colonialism is misleading. For Said (1993) makes a distinction between imperialism and colonialism. Imperialism is "the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory" (Said, p. 9). Colonialism "is the implanting of settlements on distant territory," a consequence of imperialism (Said, p. 9).

Wallerstein developed a Eurocentric world system theory in 1974. Although other scholars—Frank and Chase-Dunn, among others—have produced different versions of this theory, McPhail appears to have chosen the original model that saw the world in terms of a core-semiperiphery-periphery structure. The core comprised the few winners of the competition for ceaseless capital accumulation in the world economy. However, because McPhail has merely used the bare bones of the theory with hardly any attention to its "flesh" (essential concepts such as primary and secondary exploitation inherent in the world capitalist economy, world order and world polity associated with the interstate system, as well as global trends and cycles), his claim to have done "the most powerful explanation of the contemporary phenomenon of global communication" rings hollow.

Neither McPhail nor the seven reviewers of his manuscript have detected obvious errors that will deter teachers from adopting it as a textbook. In the first chapter (p.17), McPhail says 30+ countries constitute the core zone: the United States, Canada, Japan, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. Then, he goes on to say that 20+ countries constitute the semiperiphery: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, Malta, Egypt, China, Singapore, South Korea, India, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, and others. The error is in listing the first four countries, which are EU members, in the semiperiphery as well. Other questions: Why is Switzerland in the semiperiphery and Israel in the core? What criteria did McPhail use to categorize these two hierarchies? Because the three structural hierarchies are central to McPhail’s analysis, he should have researched the available literature on the three hierarchies (e.g., Boswell & Chase-Dunn, 2000; Gunaratne, 2001) more thoroughly.

McPhail makes no distinction between international communication (the title of the first chapter) and global communication (the title of the book). He makes no mention of the book on the same subject area that immediately preceded his, viz., Thussu (2000). Even though he refers to the work of Smythe and Frederick (p. 38), his bibliography has no place for them or for international communication luminary Merrill and world-system- theory revisionist Frank. He misidentifies Peter Golding as Golden (p. 159, note 2). He claims that the Nonaligned Movement planned to set up "a wire service, Inter Press Services, which would begin as a pool of contributing government information services" (p. 180) thereby confusing IPS with the Nonaligned News Agencies Pool. He makes no technical distinction among countries, nations, and territories when he refers to "over 200 nations" (p. 118) or "some 210 countries" (p. 126) whereas the United Nations comprises 189 member countries excluding Switzerland, Taiwan, and the Holy See. He takes liberties with geography when he refers to "Asia, India, and the Middle East" (p. 85) as if these are mutually exclusive. He also takes liberties with language with the indiscriminate use of "spokespersons" and "spokespeople" (p. 129).

The book gives the impression of a work written in a hurry. The author has inserted last minute revisions without necessarily altering the text of the original manuscript. The result is confusion. Example 1: Figure 3.1 ranks the global media leaders differently from the revised text that appears immediately below the figure (p. 48). Thus, the reader has to guess the second-rank holder (Viacom or Disney?) and the fourth-rank holder (News Corp. or Bertelsmann?). The subsequent discussion sticks to the ranks in the figure (pp. 56, 58). Example 2: In an updated paragraph at the end of the discussion on CNN (p. 131), McPhail points out CNN’s loss of market share to FOX News and other cable news services following the merger with AOL/Time Warner. An earlier paragraph, on the contrary, asserts, "Even with rivals such as MSNBC and FOX News, CNN has managed to maintain its solid first-place position" (p. 124). Example 3: Writing about the International Telecommunication Union, McPhail asserts that ITU "appears to be a potential big loser if large organizations such as Comsat and Intelsat are privatized" (p. 214). The ‘if" becomes a fact in a sentence, which mentions that Lockheed Martin acquired Comsat in 2000 and Intelsat itself was privatized in 2001, inserted after the next paragraph. Why wasn’t the "if" sentence edited to fit the fact? Example 4: McPhail draws attention to Western media’s opposition to Article 12 of the draft mass media declaration that UNESCO took up at its 1976 General Assembly in Nairobi (pp. 181-182). Article 12 required that national governments take responsibility for all media systems. Then, he jumps into the future—the British control of the national press during the Falkland invasion of 1982—to explain the past, viz., the Western media’s opposition to the declaration.

McPhail does not use the world-system approach to its fullest potential to analyze systematically the global, regional, and national media. His is more a journalistic approach that uses the WST framework in a superficial manner. For example, the chapter on the role of global advertising provides a plethora of details pertaining to the top 10 global agencies with little attention to unfolding their operation through the applications of the powerful concepts associated with the world system approach. Thus, his work pales in contrast to that of Anderson (1984) who used Galtung’s structural theory of imperialism to analyze the role of advertising in Asia. Anderson’s book fails to get into McPhail’s bibliography.

McPhail’s chapter on the Internet has much to be desired. He claims that since 1995, when the National Science Foundation gave up control of the Internet, "no one organization, government, or corporation owns the Internet" (p. 222). He fails to document the evolution of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and the subsequent institutionalization of the Internet. Mueller (2002) has documented the taming of the Internet through a name-space regime agreed upon by ICANN, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the U.S. Commerce Department.

I am reluctant to recommend Global Communication as a suitable textbook until the author and the publisher produce an intellectually stimulating, better-edited, error-free edition.

References

Shelton A. Gunaratne, professor

Minnesota State University Moorhead