(Summary version of the address given by Ignacio Ramonet in the Workshop on Communication and Citizenship at the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, January 27-28, 2001)

As a consequence of the digital revolution, today it is extremely difficult for us, intellectually and practically, to establish distinctions between the world of the media, the world of communication, the world we might call mass culture and the world of advertising. Until some years ago, in the general universe of communication, we were able to distinguish three autonomous and practically independent spheres. For one part, what we call the sphere of information, the press, the radio newscasts, the news agencies, the television news broadcasts, the continuous chains of information, this universe, the realm of the journalists, is a separate realm, a separate sphere.

Another sphere is the sphere that we will call institutional communication, advertising, propaganda. Advertising forms part of the realm of communication, it is the ideological apparatus of the system, advertising is to communication what propaganda is to politics.

The third sphere is what we generally refer to as mass culture, in the broadest sense, soap operas, comics, the literary publications of the masses, the books of the masses, the cinema of the masses, sports, etc.

Ten years ago we would have been able to speak of the media as a closed universe, with its own logic, with its own dynamic, autonomous with respect to the rest of the universe of communication, and today this is not possible.

And why is it not possible? Because of the digital revolution, which is essentially the mix of text, sound and image. Before there was the textual universe, the universe of sound, and the universe of the image, and today these are completely mixed.

In the same way, within the framework of communication, what we see is that machines of communication are fusing together: the telephone, the television, the computer, every one of these machines allows us, more so each day, to do what each one allows us to do. This is the Internet universe. The Internet cannot distinguish between text, image, and sound. On the Internet there is the sphere of information, the sphere of advertising, and the sphere of mass culture.

The Mega-mergers

With the unification of these three cultures, companies are emerging whose job it is to negotiate the entire content of these different spheres. It is significant that in the year 2000 we have seen the rise of communication mega-corporations, like the merger of the first global communication group, Time Warner, with the first Internet company, America On Line.

We need to reflect upon the significance of this, for example, in terms of diffusion, how many hundreds of millions of people throughout the world are concerned, be it with the Time group, Time magazine, Warner cinema, Warner television or cable, or with CNN, which forms part of the group, and, now, with AOL, which provides Internet access to tens of millions of people throughout the world.

Most recently we have been witness to the appearance of a second Euro-American, or Franco-American, group, Vivendi Universal. It is a group that, a bit like the Murdoch group, has no specialty in the field of communication. They do everything: musical publications, cinematic publications, films, they evidently have publishing houses, advertising agencies, they have all kinds of recreational services, vacation complexes, and evidently they are also in sports.

In this context, what we have in front of us is not the information world but rather a complex universe, where the principal players in globalization, the large companies, play an important role in the field of communication. This what I have tried to distinguish in today's world when I refer to the first power and the second power, and neither of these powers is political.

The first power is economic and financial power. And the second power is the power of the media. Because the media system, in the way that I have just defined, is the ideological apparatus of globalization. This ideological system, this ideological apparatus of globalization, is the apparatus of the media in its entirety.

Information Today

In the information universe specifically, this characteristic is also found. What has appeared as an important characteristic, first, is that today information is essentially considered merchandise. Therefore, that information no longer functions according to the rules of information, that would make truth, for example, the supreme reference, but rather according to the demands of business, whose supreme benefit is profit.

The second characteristic of information, as is obvious, is that it has accelerated to the absolute limits of acceleration. Today we have passed from the world of journalism to a world of "immedialism", of instantaneity, where there is no time to study information. Information is increasingly becoming impressions, sensations.

What is the third characteristic of information today? Essentially, and more so each day, that it tends to be free. In reality, the great media firms give away information. What pays for information is advertising.

In this way, above all with the mega-corporations that have now appeared, we enter a universe in which the circulation of mass information is made with these criteria. Today a media company sells consumers to its advertisers.

Infantilizing Discourse

What does all this that I'm saying actually mean? It means that the struggle against these groups has become extremely difficult. For example, a militant response to this pressure from the media might consist in giving away the information for free while they sell it; but in reality they are already giving it away for free.

Secondly, they are reaching planetary masses, while we sometimes continue thinking of a counter-discourse in too local or too circumstantial a manner. There is also a difference between enlightening those who already know and directing oneself towards the general public.

Well then, what characterizes the discourse of the great media enterprises? Rhetoric. First, it is a rapid discourse, it does not produce long-term effects. It's second characteristic is simplicity. It is a vocabulary that the whole world possesses. The third is the constant use of what we could call elements of "spectacularization", dramatization, humor.

When you consider this discourse, which is massive, it makes you think of a similar discourse that has these characteristics - that which is generally directed towards children.

But what is the problem in that? The difficulty consists in constructing a discourse of counter-information that is also seductive, that is to say, that is not only directed towards a small minority but that can also be directed towards the masses.

We Want the Truth

Which is the least pessimistic perspective? In the majority of our societies we can observe that there is an ever-growing contradiction between two parameters; the first, which I have just mentioned, is that the level of the media is every day more vulgar, more mediocre, more unsatisfactory.

And the second parameter is that in our societies there are more and more educated people, more people who have completed secondary studies, more people with higher education. While the level of education rises, the level of the media lowers, and there comes a moment when these cross, and in our societies there appear more and more groups, more social categories, that find themselves unsatisfied with this infantilizing discourse, and demand to be treated like adults who are capable of knowing the truth. And we realize that those little-known media that present serious, not ideological, information, have a growing audience.

When we reflect, be it in terms of dominant communication or alternative communication, what the two have in common is that they are communication, and that one cannot communicate well just anyhow. A series of skills is needed in order to communicate well. To possess the truth is not sufficient. The belief that one has the truth, that the truth imposes itself, is an arrogant and contemptuous attitude toward the population, whose price is non-communication.

Ignacio Ramonet is Director of "Le Monde Diplomatique".

The complete address (in Spanish) can be found on the web:
http://www.movimientos.org/foro_comunicacion/ (sección Documentos)