How to Study Global Communication

• Question: How can we study global communication?

• Theorizing: The issue of theorizing must be addressed.

• Obstacles: Identify the most important obstacles that hamper the study of global communication.

• Analytical Perspectives: Propose two analytical perspectives and one normative perspective to guide the study of global communication.

Academic Interest

• The study of global communication has two parent disciplines:

  • Mass communication.

  • International relations.

• Mass Communication:

  • Empirical and normative interest in media contents.

  • Effects of media.

  • Practices of production and distribution.

  • Position and role of audiences.

• International Relations:

  • Power politics (hard and soft) of empire.

  • Ideals of world peace.

  • Inequality of North-South relations.

• Distinction: Global communication requires analysis of the wider context of global realities, unlike local or national communication.

Theoretical Approaches

• The study of global communication has gone through various theoretical approaches:

  • Propaganda.

  • Modernization.

  • Cultural imperialism.

  • Information society.

  • Globalization.

• These approaches were never combined into one comprehensive grand theory.

• Limited empirical testing of the hypotheses implied by these studies.

Propaganda Studies

• Inspired by propaganda activities during the two World Wars.

• Harold D. Lasswell (1927): Wrote Theory of Political Propaganda inspired by Allied propaganda during World War I.

• Studies about short-wave radio:

  • Propaganda by Short Wave by Harwood Childs and John B. Whitton (1942).

  • German Radio Propaganda by Hans Speier (1944).

Rise of Global Communication Research

• Paul Lazarsfeld (1952): Noted an upsurge of interest in global communication research in Public Opinion Quarterly.

• Focus:

  • Role of media in national development.

  • Inequality of global information flows.

  • Relationship between mass communication and power.

  • Normative questions about mass media practices.

• Observation: Much international media content was produced in the North (specifically the United States) and disseminated across the globe unevenly.

• More information traffic among countries of the North than between the North and South.

Imperialist Conceptual Framework

• Theoretical explanation applied to empirical reality.

• Core Message: Contents were "imposed" by stronger actors on weaker actors.

Diffusion

• Competing theoretical explanation based on the notion of "diffusion."

• Everett Rogers (1983): Elaborated that transfers of content were largely related to "cultural proximity."

• More diffusion of cultural products (news, TV entertainment) among actors that shared similar values.

Four Theories of the Press

• Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm (1956): Analyzed normative positions on mass media in a global context in Four Theories of the Press.

• Divided the media into four categories:

  • Authoritarian.

  • Liberal.

  • Soviet.

  • Social responsibility.

• Conclusion: The social responsibility model was their preference.

• Denis McQuail (1983): Added later the development model and the participatory-democratic model to the normative approaches.

• Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng, and White (2009): Took the Four Theories of the Press as the starting point for an exploration of the role of journalism in democratic societies.

Dependencia and Cultural Imperialism

• 1960s: Concepts such as "dependencia" (Frank, 1969; Amin, 1976) and cultural imperialism (Schiller, 1976) emerged.

• Global communication was conceived as a process that contributed to the economic, political, and cultural dependence of receiving nations (mainly poor, "under-developed", Third World countries) upon sending nations (mainly rich, "developed", Western countries) under the guise of a "free flow of information" doctrine.

• Imperialism and dependency theorists proposed relationships between centre countries and peripheral countries, between which communication was characterized by the one-directionality of informational and cultural flows.

• Imperialism: Politics of states to expand their empire and sphere of power and influence.

• Cultural Imperialism: Historical fact that cultural forces have always played a significant role in imperial expansion.

  • Examples: Christian missionary activities, Western-style school systems, colonial administration, modern conceptions of professionalism, and European languages in overseas colonies.

• Essence of Cultural Imperialism: Cultural sources of power and influence are of key importance in achieving the domination of one nation over other nations.

Political Economy Approach

• Emerged from the 1960s.

• Important Representatives: Nicholas Garnham, Peter Golding, Graham Murdock, Vincent Mosco, Robert McChesney, Herbert I. Schiller, Dallas Smythe, and Janet Wasko.

• Focus: Relations between communication and the structures of economic and political power, rooted in the Marxist tradition.

• Inspired by Harold Innis (1972) and his study of communication and empire.

• Harold Innis (1972): Demonstrated that communication was an essential organizational tool in imperial projects to expand power beyond territorial borders.

  • Purposes: To protect imperial positions of power, compensate for deficiencies in natural resources, or achieve more wealth and standing (respect, influence, glamour).

• Time-Biased Media: Store messages for a very long time (e.g., stone tablets and parchment).

• Space-Biased Media: Less durability but more flexibility for transportation (e.g., papyrus).

• Space-biased technologies favored the monopolization of knowledge (e.g., by Egyptian priest-scribes) and the expansion of political power (imperialism) but lost against time-biased technologies that could more easily distribute access to knowledge.

Cultural Studies Approach

• Birmingham School (Stuart Hall): Focused upon popular and mass culture and their role in shaping societal relations.

• Key Questions:

  • How the media create globally shared values and meanings.

  • How cultural resistance was developed through processes of hybridity or hybridization (Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Arjun Appadurai) with the spread of migration flows and diaspora communities.

Globalization

• 1990s: "Globalization" became a key concept in studies on international developments and trends in communication.

• Authors: Daya K. Thussu (2007), Joseph Straubhaar (2007), Ole Mjos (2010), and Alexandra Robertson (2010).

Information Society

• Inspired by Marshall McLuhan (1964), Daniel Bell (1973), and Alvin Toffler (1980).

• Studied global communication from the perspective of the information society (Frank Webster and Manuel Castells).

Information Society

• Common practice to describe modern societies with the concept "information society."

• Refers to:

  • Increases in available volumes of information.

  • Significance of information processing in ever more societal domains.

  • Information technology providing a basic infrastructure upon which societies become increasingly dependent.

• Questionable whether one can adequately describe societies with a single encompassing variable only.

• Even if possible, it can be questioned whether information is a more precise category than money, crime, or aggression.

• Societies pursue very different paths of development, and the plural notion of "information societies" should be used.

• No accepted definition of what the information society is.

• Meaning of the notion has been seriously challenged.

• Reference to "society" raises sociological questions of power, profit, and participation.

• The Information Society means different things to different people: more telephones, more money, more regulation, or more empowerment.

• There is a feeling that important social and technical developments confront us with difficult questions and that our societies are struggling to find adequate answers.

• There are undoubtedly "informational developments" in modern societies, and through interaction with other social developments, these will have an impact on how the future of such societies shape up in different ways, dependent upon different historical contexts.

• Utopian scenarios suggest positive effects, whereas dystopian scenarios highlight negative effects.

• Analysts are driven by a deterministic perspective on social development: technological innovations have a direct impact on social processes.

• No space for reflection on the myriad complex ways in which technology and society are dialectically interlinked.

• Informational developments often take place in the context of an uninhibited technological euphoria, propose political claims that are difficult to empirically substantiate, and ignore in their singular emphasis on information the more important social process of communication.

Dimensions of Interactions between Societies and Informational Developments

• Technological Dimension: Technology plays a vital role in informational developments; the scope, volume, and impact of these developments is, to a large extent, shaped by technological innovations and the opportunities they create; social forces and interests contribute to the shaping of technological innovations; issues are posed about the control over technology, the access to and benefit from technology, and the social risks that innovations and their applications entail.

• Cultural Dimension: The ways in which societies deal with the provision and processing of information are determined by cultural perspectives; information contents are cultural products; information is part of a society's cultural fabric; among the important issues of this dimension are the sharing of knowledge and protection of cultural identity.

• Socio-Political Dimension: Information and communication technologies have an impact on society's development, progress, and political system; among the important issues are freedom of political speech, protection against abusive speech, and information needs of societies.

• Economic Dimension: Worldwide information markets have emerged; economic interests are at stake in the protection of ownership claims to content; there are issues of corporate social responsibility and self-determination in economic development.

Expectations in Information Society Debates

• Better responses to poverty reduction, equity, and social justice can be found through harnessing the potential of information and communication technology.

• Knowledge and information constitute one of the fundamental sources of well-being and progress.

• There is a great untapped potential of ICT to improve productivity and quality of life.

• The benefits of the information society should extend to all and should be development-oriented.

• In building an information society, it should be ensured that women can equally benefit from the increased use of ICTs for empowerment and fully participate in shaping political, economic, and social development.

• The information society should be oriented towards eliminating existing socio-economic differences in our societies.

• All the buzzwords from past decades are used in the current debate and literature: democracy, diversity, capacity, participation, gender, bridging the gap.

• The nagging question is why such aspirations have so far not been taken seriously by the international community.

• The socio-economic and political conditions under which these claims should become reality are not at all encouraging.

• Before embarking on a new promising statement about the potential of the information society, it would be wise to analyze why at present the world is not an inclusive community, why there is no sustainable development, why there is no global transparent and accountable governance, and why citizens cannot participate on an equal footing in their societies.

Governance of the Information Society

• Rhetoric uses notions such as multi-stakeholder participation, democratic decision-making, transparency, and accountability.

• Question: Why would global governance of the information society have all the characteristics that other domains of such governance do not have?

• Question: Why would governments be trusted to want people-centered governance?

• Question: Why would major global corporations strive towards greater transparency to the public and more accountability?

• "Information" is essential to the notion of the information society.

• Much thinking about the future of information societies is based upon a series of popular myths.

Myths about Information

• More information is better than less information.

• More information creates more knowledge and understanding.

• Open information flows contribute to the prevention of conflicts.

• More information means less uncertainty and more adequate choices.

• If people are properly informed, they act accordingly.

• More information equals more power.

• Once people are better informed about each other, they will understand each other and be less inclined to conflict.

• Information becomes a source of power only if the necessary infrastructure for its production, processing, storage, retrieval, and transportation is accessible, and when people have the skills to apply information to social practice and to participate in social networks through which information can be used to further one's interests.

• People may know precisely what was wrong and unjust, and they were very well informed about the misconduct of their rulers, yet they did not act because they lacked the material and strategic means for revolt.

• Deadly conflicts are usually not caused by a lack of information but may be based upon very adequate information that adversaries have about each other.

• Social harmony is largely due to the degree of ignorance that actors have with regard to each other.

• There are situations in which more information is not better than less information.

• Most assumptions about the role and effects of information and knowledge are based upon seriously flawed cause-effect models. Information and knowledge are conceived as linear inputs from which certain social effects will occur.

• Information and knowledge-sharing do not occur in the linear mode of simple stimulus-response models that propose linear, causal relations between information/knowledge inputs and social outputs.

• These processes are more complex, involve feedback mechanisms, and somewhere between the message and the receiver there are intervening black box variables that may create both predictable, expected and desirable as well as unpredictable, unexpected and undesirable effects.

• Even the best of peace-building information is no guarantee that people will behave peacefully.

• Conflicts will be resolved once adversaries have the correct information about each other, which is difficult to find empirical evidence for.

• Many societies maintain levels of stability because they employ rituals, customs, and conventions that enable their members to engage in social interactions without having detailed information about who they really are.

• The expectations about the power of information neglect the fact that conflicts often address very real points of contention and may be based upon the antagonistic interests of fundamentally divergent political and economic systems.

• If disputes are about competing claims to scarce resources (as often is the case), it is unlikely that distorted communication is the crucial variable or that correction of this distortion would resolve the conflict.

• The problem is often the abundance of information rather than the dearth of it. The overload of messages may seriously impede rational decision-making since the means through which humans cope with information (selective filtering, stereotyping, and simplistic structuring) results in misperceptions and incorrect interpretations.

• In current public debate, policy, and practice there is a strong emphasis on the importance of information and information technology, but in much of this debate "communication" has practically disappeared.

• For the resolution of the world's most pressing problems we do not need more information processing but the capacity to communicate.

• As our capacity to process and distribute information and knowledge expands and improves, our capacity to communicate and converse diminishes.

• More and more people worldwide are interconnected through high-speed, broadband digital networks, but connecting is not the same as communicating.

• The real core question for research in the coming years may be how to shape "communication societies".

• The globalization of localized networks through network media such as YouTube promises new potential for global communication.

• With the emergence of global, digital social networks, consumer-generated content, and a host of new actors, researchers are challenged to explore new theoretical approaches that explain these new realities.

• A conceptual framework is needed that encompasses notions such as two-way and interactive flows, empowerment, localization, and hybridization.

• A phenomenon like Web 2.0 can no longer be adequately described in terms of one-way flows, imposition, domination, and homogenization.

Is There a Theory of Global Communication?

• Scientists look in systematic ways at selected phenomena, collect information about the behavior of these phenomena, and seek to develop theories on the phenomena they study in order to better understand and explain them.

• What we would like to understand and explain about global communication is:

  • How it evolved over time and expanded in volume and actors.

  • How it is organized (in what institutional forms) and how these are owned and managed.

  • How discursive power is exercised by and through global communication.

  • What (economic, political, or cultural) impact global communication may have and what specific functions it fulfills.

  • How worldwide audiences respond to and deal with global communication.

On Theorizing

• The basic ingredients of all scientific study are observation and interpretation.

• The main purpose of science is to understand phenomena in the social and natural world around us.

• Marcel Proust wrote that "the act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes".

• The core business of all scientific work is observation.

• Theories are needed to interpret, understand, and explain the phenomena we study.

• Etymologically, the word "theory" comes from the Greek theoria, which means "vision".

• Science needs visions that put natural and social phenomena into a perspective so they become manageable and controllable.

• Theories can be:

  • Explanatory (why does this happen?).

  • Predictive (what will happen next?).

  • Heuristic (what are the right questions?).

  • Normative (what should happen?).

• Theories are tools that may lead us to achieve validated knowledge.

• They consist of a set of concepts that enable us to formulate testable hypotheses.

• There is a multitude of theoretical approaches to assist the understanding of mass communication, ranging from theories about agenda setting, framing, and priming to theories from structural, behaviorist, or culturalist traditions (McQuail, 2000: 12).

• According to McQuail (2000), four kinds of theory relevant to mass communication can be distinguished:

  • Social science theory, which is a set of ideas about the nature, working, and effects of mass communication.

  • Normative theory, which is a set of ideas about how media ought to operate if certain social values are to be attained.

  • Operational theory, which is a set of ideas assembled and applied by media practitioners in the conduct of their work.

  • Common-sense theory, which is a set of ideas that we all have from our personal experience with the media.

• For the study of global mass communication, McQuail (2000: 215-240) suggests the following domains:

  • The new driving forces of technology and money.

  • Ownership and control of international media.

  • Cultural imperialism.

  • Dependency.

  • National and cultural identity.

  • Transnationalization of media.

  • International news flows.

  • The global trade in media.

• McQuail's very useful overview convincingly demonstrates that the mass media are a valid object of scientific theorizing.

• However, media theorizing is "still very fragmentary and also variable in quality. It often amounts to little more than a posing of many questions plus some empirical generalizations based on a disparate set of observations that are not fully representative of the enormous range of situations where the media are at work" (McQuail, 2000: 479).

Communication Theory and Communication Policy

• Prominent among communication policy issues are:

  • The concentration of media ownership versus pluralism and access for multiple voices in the media.

  • The protection of the constitutional value of free speech versus the possible damage of hate speech.

  • The control of harmful media content (for example, in connection with children) and the risks of censorship.

  • The professional responsibilities of journalists versus their professional autonomy.

  • The cultural significance of media in relation to cultural diversity, the protection of cultural identity, societal integration, and the role of minorities.

  • The protection of citizens against commercial advertising and political propaganda.

  • The protection of intellectual property in relations to the knowledge society aspiration.

  • The question of how to finance public media.

  • The confrontation between openness and secrecy in democratic societies.

• Theory and policy belong to different fields.

• The theory-policy relation can be seen as a knowledge-political action gap.

• Conflicting sets of values, different organizational formats, and a clash of knowledge versus power characterize this gap, according to policy analysis literature.

• Science and politics are often seen as worlds apart with their own organizing principles.

• Luhmann (1971) has suggested that science is driven by the principle of "truth" and politics is steered by the principle of "power".

• In the political world, as in science, there is a competitive struggle for resources, credits, and public attention which certainly involves discursive (communicative, symbolic, and cognitive) modalities of power.

• Knowledge is power and power is knowledge.

• The relationship is often a producer-client interaction.

• Harold Lasswell (1971) wanted, through his media research, to make better information available to policymakers.

• Political decision-makers are not necessarily interested in a rational approach to decision-making.

• Policy processes are not characterized by rationality but rather by emotional and subjective factors.

• Media policymaking is an activity with a (general or specific) purpose in mind or a problem to be resolved.

• Policymakers have an agenda that is inspired by certain values and therefore seeks information that suits political decision-making.

• Research may produce usable or non-usable information.

• For the information to be usable the researcher needs to operate within the frame defined by the political system.

• It is arguably a naive expectation to want policymakers to be seriously concerned about the theoretical underpinnings of their proposals.

• Policies are made to achieve certain objectives and in case theory provides support for the means applied to reach these objectives it will be accepted as useful. The theory that does not fulfill this "alibi" function will be discarded.

• More important, however, is that implied in the expected use of theory by policymakers is the assumption that they want to be fully informed.

• In the practice of political decision-making, for example, the preference is often for a playing field with not too much information as this leaves the space for flexibility in maneuvering conveniently open.

• Where policymakers may want conclusive answers, they demand too much of the field of science.

• On many essential questions science is speechless and must admit to an ignorance and uncertainty that the policymakers are likely to experience as useless.

• Where policymakers may want strong theoretical and empirical evidence of the manipulative power of the media, academics may want to offer a set of qualifying footnotes that - at best - will lead practitioners and politicians to wonder whether any media policy is needed at all.

• Policymaking in the field of the media is very controversial.

• Media are typically a domain where professional autonomy is considered to need no external rules or controls.

• The mass media - certainly in Western countries - fall under the protection of liberal claims to less state (policy) and more (uncontrolled) market.

• Communication plans and policies have always been more popular in so-called Third World countries.

• In the 1970s, particularly in the United Nations agency UNESCO, there was a strong movement for the planning of national communication policies but relevant theoretical instruments were not available.

• Immediately after the Second World War there was considerable interest in media-related policy research.

• Media research developed in what came to be called the administrative, bureaucratic applied tradition that largely served dominant political and commercial interests.

• Its critical counterpart also emerged but this was not seen by power holders as useful to their interests.

• It should be questioned whether available research can provide the best evidence because the conclusions are usually incomplete, inconclusive, contestable, and they change in the course of time.

• By and large, these studies fail to address such essential issues as what type of political institutions and practices we need to meet the challenges of the future.

• They provide little if any meaningful guidance to the choices we face and therefore they do not seriously assist the task of public policymaking in the field of global communication.

• Part of the blame for the unproductive theory-policy encounter can also be addressed to the policymaking field for its opportunism, lack of analytical rigor, and often anti-intellectualist hostility.

• Most studies undertaken on the impact of social research on public policy are rather discouraging.

  • A constant finding is that a good 50 per cent of civil servants totally ignore research and some 40 per cent, even if hard pressed, find it difficult to point to research they would consider useful.

  • Social scientific research, if used at all, mainly serves the improvement of bureaucratic efficiency, the delay of action, the avoidance of responsibility, or functions to discredit opponents, to maintain prestige, or to ask for more research.

Problems with Theory

• Social science theories are underdetermined.

• Theories about human behavior are influenced by theological notions.

• Theories about human societies have a European/American bias.

Underdetermined

• Most theories are "underdetermined", meaning that the empirical data are no definite arbiters on the validity of theory A versus theory B.

• We can never collect the data comprehensively.

• Empirical realities change over time.

• All social concepts are essentially contestable.

• Can we ever establish that a theory explains reality in a reliable and valid manner?

• We may do well to follow the advice of Thomas Kuhn (1996: 147), who proposed that theories should be compared (he calls this paradigm testing) through a "joint verification-falsification process".

• We should always try to identify competing explanations and find arguments for the best match with reality.

• We do not have definitive standards to judge the superiority of one theory over another: the theory that all swans are white appears to be confirmed by our daily observation of white swans but is valid only until a black swan is found (Popper, 1959: 27).

• There is no one single grand theory to comprehend global communication.

• The phenomenon "global communication" is extensive, complex, and fast-moving.

• Its study needs all the help it can get from ethnography, content and discourse analysis, audience studies, economic analysis, political science, (social) psychology, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies.

• We have to rely on multiple sources of understanding and use them in eclectic ways.

Secular Theology

• Harry van den Bounhulisen (2010) argues that theory in human and social sciences is in fact secular theology.

• The portrayal of the human being on which these sciences are based is derived from a tradition of monotheistic Christian thinking.

• Western social science searches for motivations and intentions of human behavior, assuming that human beings can know themselves.

• This assumption is not universally shared.

• In the Christian tradition, the Other is seen as ultimately not different from the self. There is a strong drive towards discarding differences, and focusing on unity, universality, and the conversion of those who think they are different.

• This secular theology, which is also dominant in communication studies, hampers a real, global understanding of communicating with "others" across the world.

• In studies on intercultural communication, for example, there is a general tendency to propose models ("tricks") that enable "us" to communicate with "them".

• The concept of the Other as an exotic or deviant variant of the Self poses a deep obstacle to intercultural communication.

• Most studies in this field are based upon Western social science concepts that are taken to be universal, although they may not exist somewhere else.

Euro-American Centrism

• Across the world there has been a Euro-American dominance in media and communication research.

• In a rather uncritical way, models and theories with a British/American origin were accepted by students of communication in other parts of the world.

• The growing recognition of Eurocentrism in communication theories has fueled discontent among some Asian researchers (Wang, 2011: 2).

• The growing discontent and critical self-examination did lead to the emergence of an Asian communication paradigm and to a discussion about the need to "de-Westernize".

Perspectivism

• The study of global communication can be guided by:

  • The evolutionary perspective.

  • The complexity perspective.

  • The egalitarian perspective.

• Perspectivism is the philosophical position that accepts that knowledge of any phenomenon is inevitably partial and limited by the perspective from which it is viewed.

• Social phenomena such as global communication can be described from various perspectives.

• These perspectives do reflect different conceptions of social reality, different ideas of what science is, different notions of what constitute valid interpretations, and even different responses to the question as to what it is that we should understand.

• There is no universal principle that tells us which perspective is preferable.

• We have therefore to take a position, and make a choice for a specific viewpoint. Without a viewpoint there is nothing to see.

• Perspectivism is thus value-laden. Science is possible only from specific valuations that are essentially contestable.

• The core of science is the challenge to conduct a permanent open and critical dialogue in which the assumptions from where we study phenomena are articulated and thus exposed to contestability.

• Science is observation and human perception is always guided by subjective preferences, experiences, and values. This biased position is only a problem as long as it is obscured and denied.

• The two analytical perspectives that I have selected for the study of global communication are inspired by evolutionary psychology and complexity theory.

• * The selected normative perspective is the democratic-egalitarian ideal.

• The analytical perspectives help us to understand global communication - its processes, flows, actors, governing institutions, and impacts.

• The normative perspective helps us to find a yardstick for judging the role/significance of global communication in human development and to seek guidance for its future direction(s).

The Evolutionary Perspective

• The most general observation in Darwinian biology is that species (and their behaviors) evolve over time through the successful adaptation to their environment.

• The key to biological evolution is the finding of solutions to adaptive problems.

• A similar process occurs in forms of non-biological evolution, such as cultural and psychological evolution.

• One such adaptation is human communication: an evolutionary response to problems in our environment.

• As primates, Neanderthals, and Homo Sapiens began to live in large and complex social groups where they discovered the need for interaction and reciprocity.

• To meet this critical need, the human species developed adaptations, such as language.

• According to Pinker (1994), the evolution of language (some 200,000 years ago) represents an exemplary and universal human adaptation.

• Like other living species, human beings communicate largely in non-verbal ways. They use the language of signs, sounds, and gestures.

• However, in contrast with other species, humans use the tool of spoken and written language. This allows for immense differentiated communicative capacity.

• Through language, human beings were able to develop philosophical reflection, scientific and technological innovation but also to incite fellow humans to commit genocide.

• Verbal language systems made abstract thought possible. Human beings discovered the possibility to think about things they had never seen or experienced.

• The evolutionary perspective attempts to understand the human mind in terms of the Darwinian evolution proposition. It perceives the mind as an information processing system.

• Neural circuits in our brain determine how we process information. Our brain's neural circuits generate behavior that is appropriate to our living circumstances. They help us to adapt to our environment.

• Just like we have physiological adaptations, so we have psychological adaptations.

• Adaptations mean that we learn from what worked in the past and from what did not work and in this way they help us to survive and to reproduce. They change over time as our environment changes in time.

• The basic Darwinian algorithm for successful adaptation is based upon variation, selection, and replication.

• Communicative behavior evolves through variation.

• A great variety of modalities of communication evolve because of the need to adapt to different and changing environments. This evolution is both non-intentional and intentional, and limited by both genotypical and historical factors.

• In the evolutionary process the best adaptive solutions are kept. Communication forms that optimally serve human survival and reproduction will be retained.

• Inadequate communicative solutions will disappear.

• The most adequate adaptations will be transmitted to future generations.

• The primates have learned that the complexity of living in social groups requires them to share the cake. Humans institutionalized the acceptance that some have the cake, eat it, want more, and take more.

• The human animal also managed to replace the innate need to cooperate with lethal competition. Most animals know that their survival is determined not by killing each other or by demanding all of the cake for oneself, but by cooperating and sharing (de Waal, 2010: 16).

• Since humans are the most destructive animals on the planet, both towards other beings and towards themselves, the question emerges whether this is the first species that destroys itself before nature deems this necessary.

• New adaptive problems come up and it takes time before we find new solutions. The evolutionary process is slow.

• The human mind has not substantially evolved since our hunter ancestors. Our modern skulls house stone-age minds.

• Changes in our neural circuits can take thousands of years. For the past 10 million years we were hunters and gatherers. We needed the neural circuits for finding mates, hunting raising kids, finding good living places, and defending against outside aggression.

• Global communication has been with us for 100 years: can our neural circuits meet its challenges?

• Evolution is about survival.

• Human survival requires a form of global communication that is based upon cooperation, trust, diversity, and mobility.

Obstacles to Global Communication

• Cooperation: Not easy in a fiercely competitive environment.

• Altruism: We are genetically disposed to selfish behavior (Dawkins).

• Diversity: Differences can be seen as permanent provocations (Foucault).

• Creativity: The world seems intent on killing creativity and curiosity.

The Good News

• We can learn altruistic behavior.

• (As Charles Darwin proposed) we can rise above our origins and can extend positive feelings to all human beings.

• Entirely selfish behavior does not serve the survival of species; bullies don't survive long in nature.

The Complexity Perspective

• Global flows of stories equal the complexity of a tropical rainforest in which everything is related to everything else (interdependence), where small events may have big and unpredictable effects (non-linearity), and where one cannot make reliable forecasts as flows of ideas and opinion may unexpectedly and rapidly change (uncertainty).

• A complex system is a collection (universe) of interacting agents that compete for a scarcity of essential resources (like space in traffic or oxygen + glucose in cancer cells).

• A characteristic of such systems is a mixture of order and disorder.

• Without a central controller, the emerging disorder (the traffic jam) may resolve as if nothing had happened and without external interference. The traffic jam appears for no reason and then disappears again (Johnson, 2010: 19).

• Global communication is both orderly and chaotic. The conduct of its agents is dynamic.

• To understand this complexity the prevailing scientific preference is for determinism and reductionism as they are not helpful to understand non-linear processes in which unpredictable and surprising phenomena emerge without a central controller.

• Global communication is a complex system and its student has to accept that such systems can never provide comprehensive information about all its states.

• Reductionism proposes that by analyzing and understanding parts of a system (as parts of a clock) we understand the whole system. However, this does not work with complex systems where we have to accept that a great part of our reality is fundamentally unpredictable.

• Determinism proposes that it is possible to establish linear causal relations between phenomena in our physical and non-physical environments. Causality assumes a simple