To what extent is there a 'global' communications industry - Essay Example

ication, should help to produce a society that does not interact with each other only for manipulative economic and commercial gains, rather help in preserving some vestige of traditional social structure. The traditional telecommunications model, wherein the domestic business houses provide services to domestic customers, has now taken a global perspective whereby systems and organizations are providing services on an international scale. These systems target the global sector bringing in a greater number of customers from centralized communication and data facilities irrespective of the location of the customers served or national boundaries.

The transnational nature of such venture poses substantial legal, technical and practical challenges. This paper has two sections where the first section deals with an analytical study of the political economy of communication based on the conceptual tools of Vincent Mosco, a renowned communications researcher. The second section focuses on Internet as a tool for shaping and commercialization of the corporate world together with some inter-related issues highlighting the more pressing concerns.

Vincent Mosco’s book on “The Political Economy of Communication” (1996) provides vital insights into the forces shaping the communication system. His theoretical analysis is based on three social processes: commodification, spatialization and structuration. Mosco defines commodification (1996: 143 – 144) as the process transforming the utility factor of a product into its market value, which is the primary means of converting social values into economic relations. Schiller (1996 a: 18) has reiterated Mosco’s view by applying this idea of exchange of information.

He has stated that the innovative ways of producing, organizing and spreading information has a radical impact on industrial, political and cultural processes and practices. The generation of information and its sale has now become sites of profit making which has