Political Economy of Communication Syllabi

Teaching the Political Economy of Communication

By Schiller and Yeo

In a stroke of good luck, IO has been able to obtain syllabi for North American courses in the political economy of communication offered by historical and contemporary leaders in this field:  Dallas Smythe, Herbert Schiller, Vincent Mosco, and Janet Wasko. Smythe’s and Herbert Schiller’s syllabi were each given to Dan Schiller nearly fifty years ago; while Professors Mosco and Wasko kindly sent us theirs for this special posting.  All apart from Herbert Schiller’s are graduate course syllabi. The syllabi reflect thinking and pedagogy in the political economy of communication over a period of sixty years.  They offer a glimpse of both the diverse range of perspectives enfolded in this tradition, and some of the changes and continuities that have marked it. 

China Executive Order 14105 Geopolitics

New US Attempt to Contain China: President Biden’s Executive Order on US Investment

By Schiller and Yeo

On August 9, President Joe Biden signed a long-anticipated Executive Order to restrict US outbound financial investments in a “narrow set of technologies” in “countries of concern” – China including the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong and the Special Administrative Region of Macau.[1] The Order covers three industries: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. This idea of limiting outbound investment came up during the Trump Administration as part of The Foreign Investment Review Risk Modernization Act of 2018,[2] but was removed from the bill due to pressure from the business sector.[3] There followed a series of measures against China focused on the tightening of export controls. With its embrace of restrictions on outbound investment, the new Executive Order constitutes a stunning reversal of US policy, which for decades has pressed coercively for open cross-border investment. Thus, it offers another sign that the US is turning away from freedom of investment and trade and toward digital protectionism.

The new rules mostly target US venture capital, private equity and joint venture investment, the key drivers of the US/China integration that nurtured the expansion of the Chinese internet sector even as they also enriched US investors. With the current geopolitical tension, US venture capital investment into China has already dropped to a 10-year low at $1.3 billion, down from a high of $14.4 billion in 2018.[4] Private equity plummeted to $ 1.4 billion in the first half of 2023 from a peak $48.48 billion in 2021.[5] It is an open question whether the Executive Order will be sufficient to choke off China’s tech power and Chinese tech start-ups from US capital;however, this move is sure to intensify the existing geopolitical competition and further divide the two largest global economies.

The Biden administration has stated that “national security risk” is the reason behind the measures, emphasizing that these are “narrowly targeted actions to protect our national security.”[6] It is clear, however, that the rationale is economic as well as military. It is intended to further contain and retard China’s tech power in advanced technology and, reciprocally, to make more room for the US’s own market and strategic interests in this key field.

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Free Flow of Information Geopolitics New World Information and Communication Order

Freedom of Information and the Rise and Decline of American Power (Part IV)

By Dan Schiller

In the world’s number-two economy, China, the party-state retained control over its national internet from the outset (the 1990s).  During recent years, China’s Data Security Law, alongside its Personal Information Protection Law and its high-level regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, have constructed an evolving framework for close supervision of China’s internet – and for data flows out of and into China.  Other nations, notably in southeast and west Asia, are adopting elements of the Chinese model of internet governance.[1]  Additional countries, including Russia, have strengthened state controls over their national internets.  Meanwhile, citing a variety of factors, at least sixty states have staged internet shutdowns.[2]  Thus, obstacles to unrestricted commercial data flows from and to the US have proliferated. 

In addition, alongside a growing number of other states China and Russia also have been trying to win governmental authority to regulate the global internet – as previous telecommunications networks have been regulated – through multilateral organizations, especially the International Telecommunication Union.  Thus far, they have not succeeded: the US model of “multi-stakeholderism,” which signifies loose control by big corporate capital and the US government – retains its hold.  But the US approach of multi-stakeholderism has been placed on the defensive.  The world economic crisis of 2008 and the historic process of geopolitical-economic redivision that followed it are strengthening divergent nation-state interests.

Evident as well are structural changes, of varied kinds.  During the 1990s – the second highpoint of US global power – the infrastructure of the cross-border internet was based largely in the United States, and most international internet data was transported through the US no matter its origin or destination. However, by the late 2010s the morphology of this worldwide distribution system no longer looked as it had a quarter-century before. The internet’s infrastructure had been expanded and reconfigured.  The network of subsea cables and internet exchanges was extended and thickened. US social media companies had set up data centers outside the United States, to attain faster and cheaper access to foreign markets.  Some powerful new internet companies became established in China. National regulations had mandated that data collected within a country be stored within that country’s jurisdiction; by 2023, 75% of all nations had implemented some kind of data localization rules.[3] Economic policies and antitrust protections, privacy strictures, and national security measures crisscrossed and combined in complex ways to engender these assertions of jurisdictional sovereignty.

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Free Flow of Information New World Information and Communication Order

Freedom of Information and the Rise and Decline of American Power (Part III)

By Dan Schiller

Before turning to the stresses that threaten the free flow of contemporary international communications, it is vital to conduct a brief review of today’s cross-border cultural services and data flows.  As we saw, the US derived great ideological and market advantages during the postwar decades from free flowing press and media exports. Yet these pale in comparison to the immensity of today’s flows. Thus the US dependence on the free flow of information is greater than ever before. The domains that fall under the doctrine’s purview have in fact not only expanded, but also diversified.

Today there exist substantial and vigorous media businesses headquartered beyond US borders.  Between 2003 and 2012, Brazil’s exports of cultural services leapt from $195 million to $1 billion; India’s from $108 million to $487 million.  Between 2007 and 2012, South Korea’s cultural services exports jumped from $1.5 billion to $3.2 billion; between 2006 and 2012, Turkey’s increased from $1 billion to $1.2 billion. Throughout Western Europe national commercial media constitute strong conglomerate enterprises; the largest exporter, France, saw its exports rise from $1.5 billion in 2003 to $9.9 billion in 2012.[1] Increasingly significant and multifarious flows of cultural services have accompanied this growth.  Yet two striking structural continuities also are evident.

First, unbroken US supremacy. Between 2003 and 2012, US exports of cultural services increased from $36 billion to $69 billion. No other country came close to this total. And this still understates the extent of US dominance, in that there exists considerable US foreign direct investment in the cultural industries of other exporting nations.

Second, although exports of cultural goods and services doubled between 2005/6 and 2019, according to another UNESCO report, “the participation of developing countries in global flows of cultural goods has stagnated.” Meanwhile, “developed countries continue to dominate the trade in cultural services – accounting for an average of 95% of total exports. More specifically, the Least Developed Countries represent less than 0.5% of the global cultural goods trade, while in the international trade of cultural services, they are invisible. Foreign Direct Investment also remains disproportionately in favour of developed countries.” For this reason, the author concludes, the global flow of cultural goods and services remains “a one-way street.”[2]  Although today the US is joined by a scattering of other wealthy nations in the export of culture, the Global South possesses virtually no presence in this domain.

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