Chapter 5: Communication and Cultural Contents

GEC8-2MM2_Finalterm. Bartolome, Stefanie A.

Chapter five of the UNESCO world report entitled, “Investing in Cultural Diversity
and Intercultural Dialogue” that was published in 2009 by the United Nations
Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization talks about Communication and
Cultural Contents. But what are they pertaining to exactly?
Communication refers to the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as
by speech, signals, writing, or behavior. While culture refers the customs, arts, social
institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group,
cultural contents refer to the symbolic meaning, artistic dimension and cultural values
that originate from or express cultural identities. But what is their significance to the
contemporary world?
The word, “contemporary” refers to the things occuring in the present. Therefore,
“contemporary world” refers to the circumstances and ideas of the present age.
A lot have changed since the time where communication was done only in the
traditional manner which first started through the use of facial expressions and bodily
movements. The time have passed and written communication, starting with figures
produced letters which formed into words and oral communication or through word of
mouth. Since those times, we relied on face to face communication. But now, thanks to
the use of media and the invention of the internet, we could communicate digitally.
Thanks to these technological advancements, disseminating information from one
place to another became easier and less time consuming. This is also the thing with
respect to the cultures. As we all know, cultures has a lot of variations caused mainly by
their geographical location and is affected by the colonizers, time and mode of
adaptation among others. These cultural shifts are recorded, exported and passed on
through different countries all around the globe by the use of media. And some
countries dominate more than others.

As an example, on page 131, for recorded media (primarily music, sound

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recordings and related software), the top five exporters accounted for more than
62 percent of the world’s exports: Ireland (14.2 percent), Germany (13.9 percent), the
US (12.4 percent), the Netherlands (11.5 percent) and the UK (10.6 percent). Europe
also dominated this sector (71 percent), followed by North America (15 percent), East
Asia (6.7 percent), Central and South Asia (3.6 percent), Latin America and the
Caribbean (2.2 percent), the Pacifi c (0.83 percent), sub-Saharan Africa (0.41 percent)
and the Arab States (0.02 percent). In 2006, the top five importers of recorded media
were Italy, Germany, the UK, France and Belgium.
Moreover, in terms of origin of content production, radio, television and film
broadcasting show similar global trends, although important disparities can be observed
according to the media concerned. Indeed, radio programming, for linguistic and
localization reasons, does not lend itself to internationalization in the same way as do
cinema, television or music. Television and music, while frequently influenced by
international models and formats, are to some extent more adaptable to local realities.
As for cinema, national productions are generally struggling to compete with the
blockbusters produced by large motion picture conglomerates. This is compounded by
the fact that 88 countries out of 185 have never produced their own films (pp. 132-133).
Although the internet provided a lot of advancements, we cannot ignore its
disadvantages specially with respect to print media and broadcast media,. For example,
the stagnation of the print publishing sector in Western countries (including newspapers
and magazines) is directly related to the emergence of online distribution systems (e.g.
Amazon, news websites) and e-book formats (digital libraries, the Internet Archive,
Google Books, etc.). The rise in home viewing of cultural products thanks to the
flourishing of DVD production and distribution is inversely related to the decrease in
cinema attendance (p. 135).
Having said that however, it seems that the emergence of the new technologies are
unstoppable because of its advantages. As a reference, new practices and content —
linked to the development of some of the newer cultural, informational and
communication products accessible via the Internet, mobile phones or similar tools —
are appearing. These permit the emergence of small production structures targeting
micro-markets and new models of content creation and delivery. New technologies are

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having a major impact on the dissemination of media content, especially in the field of
publishing, where the reduction of fi xed costs associated with production and storage,
the possibility of doing small print runs (print on demand) and selling online have
favoured the emergence of small, artisanal publishing houses catering for niche
markets (p. 134).
Sure enough, new technologies made its way into our lives, including our culture.
One of its noticable impacts is audience fragmentation and cultural prescription which
refers to the significant intergenerational gap between viewers that is caused by the
increased availability of media content. Confronted by an excess of choice, some
consumers prefer to confine themselves to a small number of familiar titles rather than
explore unknown or diff erent content (Benhamou, 2004). Cultural preferences are
usually fed by interactions with others (e.g. talking about a puppet performance,
borrowing or lending content, sharing activities like watching television, listening to
radio with fellow workers), a phenomenon known as ‘cultural prescription’ (p. 138).
Another notable impact is stereotypes and representations of cultural diversity. As
is obvious from the limited range of representations in circulation, the media participate
in the creation of stereotypes through what is often called the process of ‘othering’,
namely the determination of what separates me from other individuals, groups and
communities by cataloguing them as ‘others’. Since tekevision news broadcasting plays
an important role in national integration and has often led to ‘othering’ anyone outside
national borders and to the suppression of regional, local and minority audience
interests, many attempts have been made to combat stereotypes, distorted images and
false perceptions such as counter-stereotyping, trans-coding and promoting information
literacy (pp. 141-143).
To sum it all up, without the new media and technologies such as the internet,
mobile phones, laptops, computers and others, the world will never be the same again.
The internet became a platform for world unity and stratification. People might take for
granted the information that disseminates online but as far as I know, it helped me
understand other cultures better. The contemporary world opened up the reality that the
world is a lot bigger than what we assume it to be. We have a lot to find out, to learn
and to educate others. It is in our hands that we will establish a safe space for different

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cultures to be preserved and for our culture to flourish at the same time. The media
feeds us a huge amount of information therefore we must separate these information
from false to facts, but we can only do it if we are equipped with the right knowledge.

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