INTRODUCTION

There is no denying the fact that no country can independently stand on its own, and international
communication, through the various mass media, is a vital agent in this regard. Hence, there comes the
need look into the various critical issues in international communication, with a view to recommend
lasting solutions that will minimally eradicate the effects.

Basically, international communication occurs across international borders, and has been traditionally
concerned with government-to-government information exchanges in which a few powerful states
dictate the communication agenda.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

 What is International Communication?

 What makes an issue critical?

International Communication (Defined)

International communication can be described as a process of disseminating information, messages,

values and attitudes for the promotion of new behavioural patterns between two or more countries
with a view of influencing attitudinal changes that are germane for creating a conducive environment
in the area of politics, culture, and socio-economy.

Furthermore, international communication may be defined as an ongoing process of either

transmitting messages or expressing one’s group’s, communities’, and nations’ feelings and values
through both conventional and non-conventional channels to another country for the purpose of
establishing mutual understanding and for peaceful co-existence in a social system.

The international media can be a tool in conflict resolution. Through the media, nations create mutual
understanding with other nations.

What makes an issue critical?

According to the Advanced Oxford Learners Dictionary, an issue can be described as an important topic
for discussion or argument, while ‘critical’ implies giving judgement, opinion, and comments that
analyze something, especially in a detailed way.

In other words, an issue becomes critical when several analysis, comments and judgements are being
given to a vital discussion.

Moreover, since International communication is a globally discussed discourse, hence the need to
point out and explain in details the critical issues that abound in it.
What then are the critical issues in international communication?

There are various issues that thrive in International Communication. The following are the most
evident and generally discussed ones:

 Democracy
 Media and Cultural Imperialism
 Globalization
 Racism
 Capitalism
 Practitioners Welfarism
 Global Economic Meltdown
 Language Barriers

DEMOCRACY

Democracy is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, by
consensus (consensus democracy), direct referendum (direct democracy), or by means of elected
representatives of the people (representative democracy). The term comes from the Greek
‘’dēmokratía " during the 5th-4th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in some
Greek city-states, notably Athens, following a popular uprising in 508 BC. Even though there is no
specific, universally accepted definition of democracy, equality and freedom have been identified as
important characteristics of democracy since ancient times. These principles are reflected in all citizens
being equal before the law and having equal access to power. For example, in a representative
democracy, every vote has equal weight, no restrictions can apply to anyone wanting to become a
representative, and the freedom of its citizens is secured by legitimized rights and liberties which are
generally protected by a constitution.

However, the developed countries of the South, through their various media of communication, have
overtime made the Democracy appear to be the most universally acceptable form of government.

For instance, the United States had overtime waded into political crisis all over the world, especially in
Africa. They have always made their disapproval shown on the undemocratic longetivity of President
Hosni Mubarak and Robert Mugabe of Egypt and Democratic Republic of Congo respectively.

The latest Ivory Coast election upheaval is another major illustration of how democracy has become a
critical issue in International communication. The Westerners, through their media, have tagged
opposition, Alassane Quatarra the ‘’Widely Recognised’’ president of the country due to the insistence
of incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo not to hand over after the elections late last year which the Quatarra
was alleged to have won.

Furthermore, the emergence of a such a highly concentrated media system in the hands of huge
private concerns violates in a fundamental manner any notion of a free press in democratic
theory. The problems of having wealthy private owners dominate the journalism and media in a
society have been well understood all along: journalism, in particular, which is the oxygen
necessary for self-government to be viable, will be controlled by those who benefit by existing
inequality and the preservation of the status quo.

RACISM

Racism is the belief that characteristics and abilities can be attributed to people simply on the basis of
their race and that some racial groups are superior to others. Racism and discrimination have been
used as powerful weapons encouraging fear or hatred of others in times of conflict and war, and even
during economic downturns.

Racism is also a very touchy subject for some people, as issues concerning free speech and Article 19 of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights come into play. Some people argue that talking about
supporting racial discrimination and prejudice is just words and that free speech should allow such
views to be aired without restriction.

Racism has always been both an instrument of discrimination and a tool of exploitation. But it
manifests itself as a cultural phenomenon, susceptible to cultural solutions, such as multicultural
education and the promotion of ethnic identities.

Consequently, the Northern hemispheres have always used their media to further propagate
discrimination over the Northerners. It is quite sad that despite setting up and accepting several
reports to see in to this, such of which is the McBride Commission Report of 1977, the Northern media
are still unrepentant in their use of stereotypes and pejorative adjectives in the presentation of a
Southern country.

For instance, the recent British Broadcasting Service’s report on the slums of Lagos tagged ‘’Welcome
to Lagos’’ is another classic case of use of stereotypes in presenting the Third World countries by the
dominating Westerners.

Furthermore, when an African soccer player for instance, suffers a racial abuse from the European
spectators during a match, lesser media coverage is usually given to it. After been reported as straight
news in some selected media, no further interpretation will be giving to such.

Another case could be cited in Italy in 2010, when a wave of violence against African farm workers in
the southern part of the country left some 70 people injured. This resulted in police having to evacuate
over 300 workers from the region. The workers were easy targets being exploited as fruit pickers living
in difficult conditions. They earn “starvation wages” according to a BBC reporter, doing “backbreaking
work which Italians do not want” in a labor market controlled by the local mafia.

MEDIA AND CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

The relationship of the global media system to the question of imperialism is complex. In the
1970s, much of the Third World countries mobilized through UNESCO to battle the cultural
imperialism of the Western powers. The Third World nations developed plans for a New World
Information and Communication Order (NWICO) to address their concerns that Western
domination over journalism and culture made it virtually impossible for newly independent
nations to escape colonial status. Similar concerns about U.S. media domination were heard
across Europe. The NWICO campaign was part of a broader struggle at that time by Third World
nations to address formally the global economic inequality that was seen as a legacy of
imperialism. Both of these movements were impaled on the sword of neoliberalism wielded by
the United States and Britain. Neo-liberalism is the political view, arising in the 1960s, that
emphasizes the importance of economic growth and asserts that social justice is best
maintained by minimal government interference and free market forces. Neoliberalism is more
than an economic theory, however. It is also a political theory. It posits that business
domination of society proceeds most effectively when there is a representative democracy

One of the major drivers of media imperialism is Technology. The Northern countries have
more technological devices than the Southerners. Even when the latter gets the devices, it is
those from the North that helps in the installation because they have the technical know-how.
The new world communication and information technologies that are mostly invented, owned,
controlled and monopolized by the industrialized North have made the world more
interdependent than ever. But unfortunately, it has become an interdependence of unequal
partners, with the Westerners dominating.

From Marconi to Microsoft, a continuity can be detected in how mainly Western technology
has set the agenda of international communication, whether it was cabling the world,
broadcasting to an international audience or creating a virtual globe through the Internet.

Even among the developed nations, the issue of “Hollywood juggernaut” and the specter of
U.S. cultural domination remain a central concern in many countries, for obvious reasons.
Exports of U.S. films and TV shows increased by 22 percent in 1999, and the list of the top 125
grossing films for 1999 is made up almost entirely of Hollywood fare. When one goes nation by
nation, even a “cultural nationalist” country like France had nine of its top ten grossing films in
1999 produced by the Hollywood giants. “Many leftist intellectuals in Paris are decrying
American films, but the French people are eating them up,” a Hollywood producer noted.
Likewise, in Italy, the replacement of single-screen theaters by “multiplexes” has contributed to
a dramatic decline in local film box office. The moral of the story for many European filmmakers
is that you have to work in English and employ Hollywood moviemaking conventions to
succeed.

LANGUAGE BARRIER

Language is the principal means used by human beings to communicate with one another. It is

primarily spoken, although it can be transferred to other media, such as writing. If the spoken
means of communication is unavailable, as may be the case among the deaf, visual means such
as sign language can be used.
Language barrier is one of the issues confronting International Communication. This includes
idiom (which generally speaking are not able to be translated accurately) and cultural
references, such as pop culture or historical references.

Most of the world’s illiterate people live in nations in which hundreds of languages are spoken.
The developing countries contain most of the world’s 6,170 living languages. More than 60
percent of these languages are spoken in Africa and Asia. With this massive segment of the
people, the essence of effective communication will usually be lost. Little wonder Virginia Woolf
said that ‘’ Humour is the first gift to perish in a foreign language’’.

CAPITALISM

This is the economic system in which private individuals and business firms carry on the
production and exchange of goods and services through a complex network of prices and
markets. Although rooted in antiquity, capitalism is primarily European in its origins; it evolved
through a number of stages, reaching its zenith in the 19th century. From Europe, and
especially from England, capitalism spread throughout the world, largely unchallenged as the
dominant economic and social system until World War I (1914-1918) ushered in modern
communism (or Marxism) as a vigorous and hostile competing system.

The rest of the world, by and large, has followed the dominant ideology promoted by major powers
through their control of international channels of communication – telegraph, radio, television and the
Internet. The expansion of European capitalism in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries could
not have been possible without the creation of a global communication infrastructure.

The post-Second World War US hegemony was built on the use of its ‘soft power’ to supplement its
military supremacy. Much of the Cold War was fought over the airwaves, though in the South it was
more often hot, claiming over 20 million lives in conflicts related to superpower rivalry for global
domination. In the post-Cold War era, the international media, especially television, have become a
conduit for legitimizing the free market ideology, dominated by corporate capitalism. What
distinguishes the new form of capitalism from its colonial predecessor is its emphasis on the almost
mythical powers of the market and its use of mediated entertainment rather than coercion to
propagate this message. It would appear that a ‘global feel good factor’ is being promoted through the
myriad of television channels in partnership with the international entertainment industry, which
though a fast-growing business, is still in an ‘entrepreneurial stage of development’.

In 1998, for example, Time Warner, then the world’s biggest media conglomerate, had a market
capitalization of $52 billion, compared with $180 billion for oil giant Exxon. The total global
entertainment market stood at $500 billion, with the USA accounting for half of that market, followed
by Europe at about 26 percent. As corporations strengthen their control over the portals of global
power while a majority of the world’s population is excluded from the benefits of the emerging
electronic economy, the potential for social unrest is enormous. If global peace and prosperity for all
have to go beyond merely being platitudes, international communication will have to be harnessed to
promote people-centre capitalism to check the corporate colonization of the planet.
Globalization

Globalization has been one of the most discussed topics for the past few decades. It can be referred to
as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local
happenings are shaped by events occurring miles away and vice versa.
However, globalization is nothing new. It is just another name for good, old fashioned colonialism. Resistance to
globalization is also not new, China has been resisting globalization since the Opium War in which Britain arm-
twisted the Middle Kingdom for the right to sell Indian opium in the mainland. The British saw India as a source
of raw materials for the empire, and a market for cotton. Today India is a source of cheap labor in the
sweatshops of the information technology industry, and a huge market for consumer goods.

Globalization is just imperialism in disguise, it has the same motive: control over resources and the right of
might.The only thing different about this worldwide integration of free markets, trade and financial flows is that
it has coincided with dramatic advances in transportation and information.

Infact, fewer and fewer people today control the information we get, and they are setting the agenda for the
rest of the world: how we should behave, what we should buy, which movies we should watch, what we should
think. So, the message we get is: that Iran is bad, Saudi Arabia is good, it is OK to spy on a country you are not at
war with but it is not OK that the country you are spying on doesn't want you to spy on them. The message is:
free trade is great; the poor are poor because they are lazy, and it is OK for 20 percent of the world's population
to consume 85 percent of its resources. Reportage of this kind perpetuates racial stereotypes, breeds
intolerance and xenophobia.

As an illustration, it is quite obvious today that most Media houses in the Southern hemisphere tend to fashion
there mode of reporting in line with their Northern counterparts. The way in which they construct their
organisation’s philosophy, the way their presenters pronounce words, the studio outlook, amongs several others
are usually an imitation of the Westerners.

Because the media itself is a tool of economic globalization, we see very little of these issues covered. For the
multimedia supranationals, this is just another business. Entertainment, news and current affairs are products
that have to be manufactured as cheaply as possible, and distributed as widely as possible for maximized profits.
Responsibility and accountability towards society, respect for diversity, tolerance, global interdependence,
underdevelopment are not really important. It is much more profitable to repeat the same four or five items of
news on the hour every hour 24 hours a day than to provide in-depth, investigative reports on vital issues.

However, globalization is nothing new. It is just another name for good, old fashioned colonialism. Resistance to
globalization is also not new, China has been resisting globalization since the Opium War in which Britain arm-
twisted the Middle Kingdom for the right to sell Indian opium in the mainland. The British saw India as a source
of raw materials for the empire, and a market for cotton. Today India is a source of cheap labor in the
sweatshops of the information technology industry, and a huge market for consumer goods.

GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

The financial crisis of 2007-2011 is considered by many Economist to be the worst financial crisis since the great
depression of the 1930s. it was triggered by a liquidity short fall in the United state banking system and has
resulted in the collapse of large financial institution. The bail-out of banks by national governments and
downturns in stock market around the world. In many areas the housing market has also suffered resulting I
numerous evictions for closures and prolonged vacancies. It contributed to the failure if key business, decline in
customers wealth estimated in the trillions of US Dollars, substantial financial commitments incurred by
government, and a significant decline in economy activity.

Many causes for the financial crisis has been suggested with varying weight assigned by experts. Both market
based and regulatory solutions have been implemented or are under consideration, while significant risk remain
for the world economy over the 2010-2011 period.

The effect of this global meltdown was felt more on most third world counties, although the activities of some
Western countries caused the problem. For example, the value of the Zimbabwean became so low that most
companies were forced to shut down, forcing families who don’t even know the origin of the crisis suffer the
consequences.

As a result of this, the global meltdown has been a critical issue of discourse in the global media. People tend to
turn to the media in order to make life-changing economic decisions since they believe the media helps provide
meaningful interpretation to the crisis.