Back | Programme Area: Technology and Society (2000 - 2009)
Global Media Governance: A Beginner's Guide
This book is a primer on media governance at a global level and the key influencing forces and organizations, such as ITU, WTO, UNESCO, WIPO and ICANN. Governance oversees regulation, and questions addressed here include: Why do we regulate the various media at all? What currently are the major forms of global regulation, and how do they work? Who participates in, and who benefits from, media regulatory and governance structures? And what are the trends?
Anyone interested in the media and its progressively rising influence over so many dimensions of society will sooner or later find themselves confronted with these questions. This book does not pretend to answer all the questions, but it raises key ones and points in directions where more complete answers can be found.
The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 explores the broad issues of governance and globalization in the context of media industry and media convergence. It sets the scene for the rest of the book in three areas: media regulation and the forms it takes at the national level; governance in general, and how it has emerged at the international level; and the main trends and dynamics driving the media themselves.
Part II provides an overview, in five successive chapters, of the key institutions of global media governance. It is primarily descriptive, reviewing their history, describing their functions and structures, and analysing their dynamics as they relate to media
Part III synthesises, summarizes, and looks to the future. It provides an overview of current global regulatory mechanisms that impact on the media; it looks at the governance of these instruments, focusing especially on their adequacy in terms of democratic principles; and it describes two realistic but contrasting scenarios for the future.
Contents:
- Introduction
- Introduction to National Media Regulation
- Global Governance Institutions
- Trends in Media
- The International Telecommunication Union
- The World Trade Organization and Trade in Media Products
- The UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
- The World Intellectual Property Organization and Intellectual Property Rights
- The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and Internet Governance
- Global Media Regulation
- Actors and Trends in Global Governance
- Scenarios for Media Governance
- Selected References for Further Reading
- Selected URLs