Global Communication: Book Report

Book Report Global Communication (By: Yahya R. Kamalipour) Publisher: Thomson Wadsworth Year of Publication: 2007 Book Report Written By: Husain Ebrahim / Department of Mass Communication at Grambling State University. The author of the Global Communication book is Yahya Kamalipour a professor of mass communication and head of the department of communication and creative arts at Purdue University. His research interests are about topics related to global communications such as, international communications, globalization, new communication technologies, and media impact.In this book, the author collected researches that are related to the global communication topic from 14 different researcher, and developed this Global Communication book. According to Kamalipour that the international communications were there since the nations were funded and connection between people started. However, communication styles and tools are changing and improving. In addition, international communicati on did not cause any conflict between nations until it starts to influence cultures, change believes, and opinions.Furthermore, the writer discusses the global communication as a component of the term globalization that predicted by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s. Although, there are several components for globalization: economic, politics, culture, social, and communication, but communication is the most notable aspect. Moreover, Kamalipour claims that global communication is still a growing field that fits under most of the humanity sciences as, mass communication, international relations, politics, economics, social science, managements, and public administrations.Further, the area of global communication is growing rapidly and needs to be investigated more because the significant role it plays in solving conflicts between nations. The book theme started discussing the definition of the globalization term to reach an agreement on the role of communication. After the author produce a historical view of global communication, and how it developed, added to the theories that supported the global communication.Next, the book emphasis the role that the economy played in changing the way of communicating, and the governmental regulations on the global communications. In addition, Kamalipour explained the changes that came with the emerge of new communication technologies, specifically the internet. Then the author moved to clarify the impact and the way that the communications changes others cultures through the information flow. Finally, the book addresses the impact and influence of the media on changing cultures specially politics by using propaganda or advertisement.Chapter 1: Following the Historical Path of Global Communication: Allen Plamer who mentioned the background of the global communication studies, and explained the different stages of improving the networks of global communication conducted this chapter. The author started this chapter by explaining the role of the geographical space on communication and how it used to be a barrier. Additionally, global communication started since the pharaonic civilization expanded its rule to reach south Europe, North and South Africa, and a part of Asia; hence, the geographical space was the reason of the need of global communication.Moreover, preaching and religious activities also increased need of communicating with other cultures. Later, the printing press and knowledge explosion era has solved an enormous problem that was facing the intercultural communicators, added to the new communication scientists who developed the international network in the 19th century. Chapter 2: Drawing a Bead on Global Communication Theories: Kamalipour has used the research that John Downing conducted in collecting the mass communication theories that contributed in explaining the global communication.Downing has just used the normative theories as an only example of theories for the global communication. A fter, the author briefly explains the differences between the authoritarian, libertarian theories and comparing the way that the soviets used to communicate globally as an example. Chapter 3: Global Economy and Global Telecommunications Networks: In this chapter, Harmeet Sawheny wrote the history of the relation between the global economy and global communication starting from the 13th century, or what he named as the pre-modern world when people used to trade spices and silk.In addition, in that era, there were imperialism, and many powerful nations in Asia and Europe were created in the same time. Hence, those nations used to communicate to influence and change cultures or to trade goods. According to Sawheny later in the 19th century, the modern world occurred, and it was known as the electronic imperialism era. To this end, the global media flow to through over the nations and issued several networks of telecommunications to find new markets.Chapter 4: The Transnational Media Co rporation and the Economics: Kamalipour adopted this chapter from a research was conducted by Richard Gershon a professor in the information management and telecommunications. Gershon in his research illuminates the reason of globalizing the media corporations, which he claims that the main reason is finding new market with a larger volume of audiences. Moreover, the new idea of free market trade also encouraged the media corporations to expand its distribution and go globally.For example, the transitional media corporations, which means one company, expand its production to different media content such as, magazine, press, cable T. V. , websites, books, and entertainments rather than just producing one media. Afterward, the writer suggests some elements that can help media corporations to develop strategies that would make the steps globalize their products easier and faster. Chapter 5: Global Communication Law: After discussing the economic role and its global trend, Kamalipour ad ded this chapter to explain the regulations of global communications.This part of the book was a part of a research that was accomplished by John Huffman, Denise Trauth, and Jan Samoriski. The researchers illustrated the differences between cultures, which would be a reason of a conflict between cultures. Therefore, laws and regulations were created to reduce the conflict between cultures, and to increase the level of respect to other cultures in the media content. Furthermore, authors’ argument was that because of the cultural differences it is hard to accept a law that all global media would accept.Additionally, they studied the new history of global media laws such as, the role of freedom of expression, the right of silence, and the way of censorships and limitations. In fact, they wrote about examples of media censorships and limitations in the United States and other parts of the world. Finally, the chapter ended with mentioning the role of new communication technologies in changing the global communication laws, and the internet was their example.Chapter 6: Global News and Information Flow in the Internet Age: The author of this chapter was Kuldip Rampal who started the chapter by citing the history of media agencies and the role it played in the global information flow. After, Rampal mentioned the current role of those major news agencies in the information age that we are living in today. Further, Rampal named explained how do major news agencies such as, France Press, Associated Press, ITAR-TASS and Interfax, Reuters, and United Press serve all media in the globe. Chapter 7: International Broadcasting:Afterward Kamalipour presented Joseph Straubhaar and Douglas Boyd research about international broadcasting. This chapter studied the reason that encouraged the media to broadcast and distribute in the global market. In addition, authors lighted some main events that raised the need of global communications such as, wars between nations, economics , politics, propaganda, and religious. As an example of international broadcasting, the authors named: Voice of America, BBC, Arab-American Oil Company, U. S. Military, CNN, Orbit, and Sky News.Finally the authors studied the history of propaganda, and they argument was that propaganda was the main factor of international broadcasting. Chapter 8: The Global Implication of the Internet: Challenges and Prospects: George Barnett and Devan Rosen in this chapter studied the internet and its role in human civilization. First, chapter starts by claiming that the reason of the great success of the internet is the two-way of communication that it features. Second, the social network was given as an example of the internet success.Lastly, authors illustrated internet through showing the structure of its networks, and the technical idea of building networks. Chapter 9: Milestone in Communication and National Development: In this chapter, Vibert Cambridge discusses the idea and the need of deve loping communications abilities for all societies, his argument is the gap of media power between cultures could cause a conflict. Moreover, he started explaining his point of view through using the example of using the media as a powerful weapon in World War II.Further, Cambridge stated some examples of efforts that have been made to develop communication abilities in number of countries: USA, Turkmenistan, Eritrea, and the Caribbean Community. Additionally, he encourages the UNICEF efforts of helping some countries to develop their communication abilities. Finally, to develop communication abilities, the author suggested some strategies: public awareness campaigns, social marketing, entertainment education, and advocacy. Chapter 10: The Politics of Global Communication:The politics of global communication was adopted from a research was done by Cees Hamelink, who wrote the history politic global communication that started in the 19th century. Next, the author addresses the current practices of politics in global communications by giving some examples of financial issues, property rights, and mass media ownership. Chapter 11: Global Communication and Propaganda: Kamalipour retrieved the relationship between propaganda and the global communication from Richard Vincent research, who marked the origins of propaganda in the 17th century.After, the author discussed the propaganda definition and its connections with public relations and public diplomacy. Moreover, the chapter provides readers with some example of propaganda in war times. In addition, the Vincent mentioned the strategies of propaganda campaigns, which are labeling the idea, associating the issue or image with a noble term, image transfer, persuading the audience that their idea should be the same as others, and using facts to convince others. Lastly, the author discussed the use of propaganda in terrorism as an example.Chapter 12: Global Advertising and Public Relations: Later Kamalipour, used Dean Kruckeberg and Marina Vujnovic article as a source for this chapter of his book. Researchers start point in this chapter was their agreement of the role of public relations in reducing the gap between the organization and its public. Hence, they briefly discussed the history of public relations and its western origins. Moreover, authors discussed the culture differences that influence the public relations practices and advertisements.For instance, dealing with democratic culture societies is easier than authoritarian societies. In addition, the chapter covers the part culture features that cause changes in the global advertising and public relations such as, environmental challenges, population growth, poverty and hunger, and wars. Further, authors briefly discussed those differences and the role of information gap between among the first, second, and third worlds. Chapter 13: Communication and Culture: Christine Ogan in this chapter define the culture as a group of people who share the same understanding of life.However, culture used to change slowly, but in the recent global communication era, it is much easier to make significant cultural changes in a society. In fact, the author blames the western culture to be the most influential culture in the world because the strength of their media. Additionally, there are some cultures that adopt the change easily, and others resist the change. Moreover, global communication contributed in finding the term of stereotype; for example, the world view of America as a pop culture.Chapter 14: Patterns in Global Communication: Prospects and Concerns: Finally, Kamalipour conclude his Global Communication book with a chapter that was written by Leo Gher. This chapter includes examples of current global communication industry that are used around the world such as, the global satellite system, and global internet services. Additionally, Gher points that some of the concerns of global communications are the privacy and inform ation conflict, and trend of having one large culture in the world with vanishing other cultures.Global Communication is the second edition of the book; therefore, it has been enhanced and added some updates about some significant events such as, the role of 9/11 terrorist attacks on international communication, internet and its global impact on communications, and suggested readings in that area. Even though, the book was loaded with a broad contents and issues of global communications that were written in about 355 pages, it was well organized under 14 chapters.Moreover, reader can touch the high skill writing abilities that Kamalipour has, from the way that the book content flows between the topics, and the basic English that he used to help all readers to understand and enjoy the content. Further, chapters were divided separately so the reader can easily reach the information that he is looking for without the need of looking in the exact orders of chapters. According to Kamalip our, the intended audiences of this book are researchers, journalists, international agencies, enterprises, and students.However, my criticism about the book is that it has so many repeated parts of chapters; for example, propaganda that was discussed in two different chapters added, to the repetition of same ideas about the cultural impact and change in many chapters. Therefore, I think the book serves the audiences who are looking for a part of the content, but not for students who will read and study all over the book. References Kamalipour, Y. (2007). Global communication. (2nd ed. ). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.