Media and Communication in the New Global Economy: A Conference in Honor of Herbert I. Schiller
organized by Ellen Seiter and Yuezhi Zhao
October 2-3, 1999
REGISTRATION FORM HOTEL INFORMATION This conference (free and open to the public) features leading senior scholars for one weekend (October 2-3, 1999) at UCSD to discuss, in dialogue with UCSD faculty, alumni and graduate students, the complex issues involved in the contemporary political economy of communications media. How has the New Economy affected workers and consumers, determined what forms of media content are available, and linked telecommunications technologies to transnational business? Each speaker will be invited to speak for 30-40 minutes on a topic related to the conference theme; a UCSD faculty member will respond and lead discussion for 10 minutes. Speakers will be encouraged to present position papers, research case studies, or screen alternative media work that addresses these issues.
The lectures and discussions will be held at the UCSD Institute of the Americas' Copley Auditorium and will be free and open to the public. The Department will make every effort to encourage local specialists in these fields to attend and the event will provide students with the opportunity to hear some of the most prominent communication scholars in the world. The conference organizers are Professors Ellen Seiter and Yuezhi Zhao. The papers will be collected in an anthology on the topic to be edited by Professors Seiter and Zhao -- a contract is being sought with a major university press.
At the heart of the economic restructuring of the last two decades is the transformation of the world's electronic information infrastructure into a network capable of flinging signals -- including voices, images, videos, and data to the far ends of the earth. These changes have affected those fortunate enough to own a computer and have access to the Internet in dramatic ways and profoundly changed the forms and structures of media production. Somewhat less widely reported by the press, however, are the ways that these changes in communication infrastructures have affected everything from production scheduling and product engineering to accounting, advertising, banking, and training. The drive behind these changes has produced a worldwide shift in communication policy from public service policies to market driven tenets. Speakers addressing these topics will be encouraged to present policy position papers, present research on the social impacts of new media technologies, or analyze the political economics of the converging entertainment, computer, telecommunications industries.
One of the ironies of the contemporary situation, is that despite dramatic growth in the globalized and restructured economy (and in the profits of property owners), the overwhelming majority of workers are putting in longer hours for smaller paychecks from less secure jobs. A recent report on the San Diego region described it as an hourglass economy in which those with the skills and social networks to make it in growing high tech (often communications) industries are prospering and those filling the ranks of fast growing low-wage service industries are sliding backwards. Since the 1980s, the globalization of capitalism has shifted many manufacturing operations to Asia and Latin America and has reorganized a mode of production that at one time employed a predominantly male, US labor force. In search of cheaper more flexible labor, this reorganized economy now recruits new immigrants, especially Asian and Latina women, to fill the insecure assembly and service sector jobs within the United States that has emerged largely as a result of restructuring and re-engineering. Ironically, this has taken place in conjunction with the rise of anti-immigrant legislation and the refortified policing of boundaries, as symbolized by California Propositions 187 and 209. Speakers addressing these topics might address the widening gap between the so-called information rich and information poor, the circumstances of the production of computer and electronics manufacturing, and their racialized and gendered workforces.
Today television channels and phone lines proliferate, while new technologies pervade the middle class home and the workplace and blur the boundaries between them. Mergers among media conglomerates and the producers of both media hardware and software shrink creative alternatives and reduce the diversity of media content, while aggressively expanding the distribution of US-produced media internationally. While changes in media distribution often appear at first glance to be broadening local, parochial horizons, but they also mean a homogenization of outlooks and limitation of alternatives. Television deregulation has all but killed off public access television and outlets for alternative media distribution. For media professionals, the changes mean fewer opportunities and greater compulsions to present life in salable packages. Creative artists, scientists and humanists can still explore and enlighten and occasionally even challenge, but, increasingly their stories must fit marketing strategies and priorities. Speakers and artists addressing this topic might discuss the changing means of media distribution, the state of funding for independent media artists, and the possibilities and restrictions to access to new media and the Internet.
The conference is being funded by a grant from the UCSD Chancellor's Associates.
- Saturday, October 2
- 9:00 a.m. Introduction / Welcome
- 9:30 a.m. Video celebration: DeeDee Halleck
- 10:00 a.m. Stuart Ewen
"Pictures In Our Heads: Public Relations and the Cult of the Image"
- 11:00 a.m. Oscar Gandy
- 12:00 p.m. Lunch
- 1:00 p.m. Eileen Meehan
- 2:00 p.m. Vincent Mosco
- 3:00 p.m. Janet Wasko
- 4:00pm Bram Djikstra
- 6:00 p.m. Dinner -- The Lodge at Torrey Pines
- Sunday, October 3
- 9:00 a.m. Kaarle Nordenstreng
- 10:00 a.m. George Gerbner
- 11:00 a.m. Closing remarks: Tributes to Herbert I. Schiller
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