A Reality Check 2003 - Softcover

Servaes, Jan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841501069 ISBN 13: 9781841501062

Verlag: Intellect Books - IPSUK, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

After explaining what is and is not the European Information Society, researchers in information, communications, and sociology from across the continent discuss discourses, politics, and findings about it; then look in detail as such aspects as business issues facing new media, the political internet, and new roles for users in online news media. Conclusions ponder human capital and digital citizenship. There is no index. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jan Servaes is the UNESCO Chair in Communication for Sustainable Social Change at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The European Information Society

A reality check

By Jan Servaes

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2003 Intellect
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84150-106-2

Contents

By way of introduction, 
Introducing the issue, 
1. Jan Servaes – The European Information Society: A wake-up call, 
Checking discourses, policies, and findings, 
2. Paschal Preston – European Union ICT Policies: Neglected Social and Cultural Dimensions, 
3. Caroline Pauwels & Jean-Claude Burgelman – Policy challenges to the creation of a European Information Society: A critical analysis, 
4. Francois Heinderyckx – Issues in measuring Information Society adoption in Europe, 
5. Nico Carpentier – Access and participation in the discourse of the digital divide: The European perspective at/on the WSIS, 
6. Cees J. Hamelink – Communication Rights and the European Information Society, 
Checking in more detail, 
7. Robert G. Picard – Business Issues facing New Media, 
8. Peter Johnston – Perspectives for Employment in the Transition to a Knowledge Society, 
9. Andrea Ricci – The Political Internet: Between dogma and reality, 
10. Brian Trench – New roles for users in online news media? Exploring the application of interactivity through European case studies, 
By way of conclusions, 
11. Luisella Pavan-Woolfe – Social and Human Capital in the Knowledge Society: Policy implications, 
12. Jan Servaes – Digital citizenship and information inequalities: Challenges for the future, 
List of acronyms, 
Note on contributors, 

CHAPTER 1

The European Information Society: A wake-up call

Jan Servaes

In many ways the European plans to build an Information Society (IS) emerged as a reaction to Japanese and American initiatives (Edelstein, Bowes & Harsel, 1978). As in many other previous technological projects, European policies on information and communication technologies (ICT) were lagging behind the policies of its main global competitors.

This situation has changed slightly since the beginning of the eighties, when it became clear that information and communication would be one of the main technological factors and markets for the future. From then onwards Europe has spend a growing amount of its R&D on ICTs.

This went hand in hand with a radical change in policy orientation. Starting from the Green Paper on Television Policy (Television without Frontiers) in 1984, the area of communications became gradually and more or less totally liberalized. From 1998 onwards, the whole ICT field became deregulated.

Though, in the eighties, the term information society as such wasn't used in the R&D and policy discourse of the EU, the idea underlying it was nevertheless captured in most R&D programs in terms of 'wired society', 'broad band networks' and so on. Thus the EU didn't start from scratch in this field. On the contrary, a very considerable research effort was made. Nevertheless, in terms of user acceptance, these first generations of large-scale R&D projects in integrated communications were not very successful.

This might explain why, when the idea of an 'information highway' was officially 'launched' by the Clinton-Gore administration, Europe almost immediately integrated it into its own discourse. First, under the label of trans-European networks, in the so-called Delors White Paper (1993), but much more prominently in the Bangemann report (1994) with an unconditional belief in the market as the driving force.

What resulted is the EU way to build the information society: pushing politically the wiring of Europe and the building of its highways, but leaving it up to the private sector to implement. Europe clearly wanted no lagging behind this time and, at the same time though not explicitly, got a brand new 'grand societal project' for its official policy. The information society indeed became a discourse in which it was possible to integrate many of the at first sight disparate European ambitions: from competition policy over competitiveness to maintaining cultural diversity and subsidiarity.

Two waves of IS-rhetoric ... and several contradictory discourses

The first initiative of the European Commission in its 'information society planning' of the nineties was the white paper 'Growth, Competitiveness and Employment' of 1993. The Commission under the chairmanship of the former French Socialist Minister of Finance, Jacques Delors, prepared this paper. It starts from a Social-Democratic concern for job creation and equal opportunity combined with a focus on Europe's competitiveness in an increasingly internationalizing world economy. This rather neo-Keynesian white paper was followed by the much more neo-liberal Bangemann report in 1994 on the basis of an initiative by the Council. This report, chaired by the former German FDP (liberal) Minister Martin Bangemann, focuses more on the issues of liberalization of telecommunications and the primacy of the private sector in the development of an information society.

Therefore, the information society policies of the European Union in the nineties can be presented as two waves, one in the first part of the decade with an emphasis on liberalization of telecommunications and information technology development, and the other in the second half of the 1990s with more focus on social aspects of information society developments. This understanding is, to a large extent, well founded especially if the first wave is seen as being represented by the Bangemann report and the 'Action Plan' of 1994. The development in the EU information society policy has thus been characterized by an oscillation between broader social concerns and a more technology and market-oriented focus. However, by doing so, it probably portrays the development in too rosy colors as a continuous development without the differences of opinion or emphases that have existed.

In 1995, for instance, a high-level expert group (HLEG) and an Information Society Forum were established to analyze "the social aspects of the information society" as the HLEG poses it in its final policy report 'Building the European Information Society for us all' (Soete, 1997). As a justification for this focus, HLEG wrote: "Until that time, the debate on the emerging information society had been dominated by issues relating to the technological and infrastructure challenges and the regulatory economic environment" (CEC, 1997a). There was, therefore, a perceived need for re-focusing on the social dimensions of the 'European model', in line with the white paper 'Growth, Competitiveness and Employment', as stated in the HLEG-report.

In yet another document, 'The Social and Labor Market Dimension of the Information Society – People First – the Next Steps' (CEC, 1997b), the Commission suggests that information society policies should have as basic aims to "improve access to information, enhance democracy and social justice, promote employability and lifelong learning, strengthen the capacity of the EU economy to achieve high and sustainable growth and employment, achieve and enhance equal opportunity between men and women, promote inclusion and support people with special needs and those lacking opportunities to improve their position, and improve quality and efficiency of public administration". In other words, the Information Society will solve all problems of humankind. Often, the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Intellect Books - IPSUK
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1841501069
• ISBN 13: 9781841501062
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 260
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland