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The Dilemma of Social Demand

The new media environment is seamless, global and, apparently, boundless in possibilities. Popular misconceptions and dominant discourses about the end of regulation notwithstanding, however, activity within this environment is still based on rules and likely to remain so. The rules are changing, of course, but more significantly, the way the rules are made is changing. New global institutions like the WTO are the site of monumental battles between stakeholders. National governments are looking for new ways to continue tweaking the influence of the media on their territories. Corporate strategies are redefining the shape and substance of media institutions. Users, the networks they create and the choices they make constitute a perpetual wildcard that makes it impossible to predict how the media are likely to evolve. What does all this frenetic activity mean for media governance? By closely examining recent events and placing these in historical perspective, we can imagine a number of possible models. Unquestionably, a global framework for media policy is emerging. Its contours are not yet clear. But the stakes are so great that any social actor who ignores this framework does so at its peril. Corporate players have long recognized this unfolding process, and have organized themselves in various ways to influence media policy in their interests. The situation is far more complicated for actors associated with social movements, cultural communities and the ordinary exercise of citizenship. In order to try to think through this problem with respect to both academic understanding and support for an activist agenda, we began some time ago to develop the concept of ‘social demand’. We use the term to refer to the range of expectations with respect to media that exceed economic or market considerations – that is to say, expectations as they can be extrapolated from what people say about their media use, as well as the efforts of organized social and cultural groups to influence the direction of media policy. The theoretical and epistemological basis for this idea has been developed in two published papers, first in the International Journal of Cultural Policy (Raboy and Abramson, 1998) and then in Television and New Media (Raboy et al., 2001). Now, in this special theme issue of Gazette, we present some of the empirical findings of researchers associated with this project. GAZETTE: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR COMMUNICATION STUDIES