Changing Societies, Changing Media Systems: Challenges for Communication Theory, Research and Education

Abstract

The current era of economic crisis and political turmoil comes in the aftermath of 40 years of social and economic change, commonly lumped together under the heading ‘globalization’. Critics of this era typically refer to its guiding ethos as neo-liberalism, which broadly refers to an ideology of market deregulation that was typically sold politically with the promise that individuals would experience great freedom of choice in an enhanced consumer marketplace. The political marketing slogan for this broad transformation of public and private life is typically a variation on ‘free markets, free people’. The global trend to deregulate markets even touched many once protected public goods and services such as health care, education, public broadcasting funding and public utilities. As these policy reforms swept through various societies, they were accompanied by a number of secondary (and often unimagined) consequences, including the fragmentation of social institutions, the individuation or separation of people from those social institutions, and the gradual replacement of modern social structures based on groups, class, and common memberships and status with more fluid social relations, ushering in an era that has been described variously as ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman, 2000) and the ‘networked society’ (Castells, 2010). Noting that these networked forms of social, economic and political relations are often made stable and effective through innovative communication technologies, Bimber (2003) has termed the emerging era a ‘post bureaucratic society’.