UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER
Global Society

Global Civil Society

VITA Distribution Service 20 Sep 92


                        Computer Networks and the
                   Emergence of Global Civil Society:
    The Case of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
 
             Paper Presented at the Annual Conference of the
                        Peace Studies Association
                     Boulder, CO  February 28, 1992
 Workshop on "How to Utilize Communications Networks for Peace Studies"
 
                             Copyright 1992
                     by Howard H. Frederick, Ph.D.(1)
                        

To be published in Globalizing Networks: Computers and International Communication, eds. Linda Harasim and Jan Walls (Oxford, forthcoming)

ABSTRACT

The growth of such global interdependent communication relations has been greatly accelerated by the advent of decentralizing communication technologies such as computer networking. Global civil society as represented by the "NGO Movement" (nongovernmental organizations) now represents a force in international relations, one that circumvents hegemony of markets and of governments. This article outlines the concepts of global civil society and the NGO Movement, describes the obstacles that they face from governments and transnational corporations, and sketches the emergence of the Association for Progressive Communications network as an illustration of this worldwide phenomenon.

* * *

WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS it becomes possible to dissolve the communication frontiers that have divided peoples one from another and to assume among the Powers of the Earth the interdependent and balanced communication relations to which the Development of Technology has entitled them,

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, that all human communicators are created equally, endowed with certain Unalienable Rights, among them the right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. The Right to Communicate includes the right to be informed and well as to inform, the right to reply as well as to listen, the right to be addressed as well as to speak and the right for communication resources to satisfy human social, economic and cultural needs.

THAT TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS, a global computer communications network has now arisen benefiting the Common Good of Humankind by loosing the bonds of the marketplace and the strictures of government on the media of communications and allowing that part of human endeavor known as global civil society to communicate outside the barriers imposed by commercial or governmental interests.

***

These are possible opening lines of what might be called a Charter of Communication Interdependence of the global nongovernmental movements for peace, human rights and environmental preservation. The growth of such global interdependent communication relations has been greatly accelerated by the advent of decentralizing communication technologies such as computer networking. Global civil society as represented by the "NGO Movement" (nongovernmental organizations) now represents a force in international relations, one that circumvents hegemony of markets and of governments. This paper outlines the concept of global civil society and the NGO Movement, describes the obstacles that they face from governments and transnational corporations, and sketches the emergence of the Association for Progressive Communications network as an illustration of this worldwide phenomenon.

***

What we call "community" used to be limited to face-to-face dialogue among people in the same physical space, a dialogue that reflected mutual concerns and a common culture. For thousands of years, people had little need for long-distance communication because they lived very close to one another. The medieval peasant's entire life was spent within a radius of no more twenty-five miles from the place of birth. Even at the beginning of our century, the average person still lived in the countryside and knew of the world only through travelers' tales.

Today, of course, communications technologies have woven parts of the world together into an electronic web. No longer is community or dialogue restricted to a geographical place. With the advent of the fax machine, telephones, international publications, and computers, personal and professional relationships can be maintained irrespective of time and place. Communication relationships are no longer restricted to place, but are distributed through space. Today we are all members of many global "non-place" communities.

In the last decade there has emerged a new kind of global community, one that has increasingly become a force in international relations. We speak of the emergence of a global civil society, that part of our collective lives that is neither market nor government but is so often inundated by them. Still somewhat inarticulate and flexing its muscles, global civil society is best represented in the global "NGO Movement," nongovernmental organizations and citizens advocacy groups uniting to fight planetary problems whose scale confound local or even national solutions. Previously isolated from one another, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are flexing their muscles at the United Nations and other world forums as their power and capacity to communicate increase.

The concept of civil society arose with John Locke, the English philosopher and political theorist. It implied a defense of human society at the national level against the power of the state and the inequalities of the marketplace. For Locke, civil society was that part of civilization--from the family and the church to cultural life and education--that was outside of the control of government or market but was increasingly marginalized by them. Locke saw the importance of social movements to protect the public sphere from these commercial and governmental interests.

From the industrial age to the present, mercantilist and power- political interests pushed civil society to the edge. In most countries, civil society even lacked its own channels of media communication. It was speechless and powerless, isolated behind the artifice of national boundaries, rarely able to reach out and gain strength in contact with counterparts around the world. What we now call the "NGO Movement" began in the middle of the last century with a trickle of organizations and has now become a flood of activity. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) today encompass private citizens and national interest groups from all spheres of human endeavor. Their huge increase in number and power is due in no small measure to the development of globe-girdling communications technologies.(2)

As Dutch social theorist Cees J. Hamelink has written, we are seeing a new phenomenon emerging on the world scene--global civil society, best articulated by the NGO movement.(3) New communications technologies now facilitate communication among and between the world's national civil societies, especially within the fields of human rights, consumer protection, peace, gender equality, racial justice, and environmental protection. From Earth Summit to GATT, from the United Nations General Assembly to the Commission on Human Rights, NGOs have become the most important embodiment of this new force in international relations.

The development of communications technologies has vastly transformed the capacity of global civil society to build coalitions and networks. In times past, communication transaction clusters formed among nation-states, colonial empires, regional economies and alliances- -for example, medieval Europe, the Arab world, China and Japan, West African kingdoms, the Caribbean slave and sugar economies. Today new and equally powerful forces have emerged on the world stage--the rain forest protection movement, the human rights movement, the campaign against the arms trade, alternative news agencies, and planetary computer networks.

***

The continued growth and influence of global civil society face two fundamental problems: increasing monopolization of global information and communication by transnational corporations; and the increasing disparities between the world's info-rich and info-poor populations. Global computer networking makes an electronic "end-run" around the first problem and provides an appropriate technological solution to overcome the second.

Hamelink observed that the very powers that obstructed civil society at the national level--markets and governments--also con-trolled most of the communication flows at the global level. Government monopolies still control a huge share of the world's air waves and telecommunications flows. Even worse, a handful of immense corporations now dominate the world's mass media. If present trends continue, Bagdikian predicted, by the turn of the century "five to ten corporate giants will control most of the world's important newspapers, magazines, books, broadcast stations, movies, recordings and videocassettes."(4) Telecommunications infrastructures and data networks must also be included in this gloomy account. Today's "lords of the global village" are huge corporations that "exert a homogenizing power over ideas, culture and commerce that affects populations larger than any in history. Neither Caesar nor Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt nor any Pope, has commanded as much power to shape the information on which so many people depend to make decisions about everything from whom to vote for to what to eat."(5)

Why is this happening? The most fundamental reason is that fully integrated corporate control of media production and dissemination reaps vast profits and creates huge corporate empires. Already more than two- thirds of the U.S. work force is now engaged in information-related jobs.(6) Almost half the Gross National Product of the 14 most industrialized countries, and one-quarter of all international trade, comes from services.(7) Telecommunications services grew by 800 percent worldwide in the 1980s. According to Unesco, the total world information and communication economy in 1986 was $1,185 billion, about 8 to 9 percent of total world output, of which $515 billion was in the United States.(8) Growth in this sector is accelerating and it is no surprise that a few large corporations now predominate in the world's information flow. While there are more than one hundred news agencies around the world, only five--Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Agence France Presse, and TASS--control about ninety-six percent of the world's news flows.(9) Such corporations as Sears, IBM, H&R Block, and Lockheed control the bulk of the videotex information markets.

In addition to transnational control of information, global civil society and the NGO movements confront the increasing gap between the world's info-rich and info-poor populations. In virtually every medium, the disparities are dramatic.

Ninety-five percent of all computers are in the developed countries.

While developing countries have three-quarters the world's population, they can manage only thirty percent of the world's newspaper output.

About sixty-five percent of the world's population experiences an acute book shortage.

Readers of the New York Times consume more newsprint each Sunday than the average African does in one year.

The only Third World country to meet Unesco's basic media standards for per capita numbers of newspapers, radio, and cinema is Cuba.

Only seventeen countries in the world had a Gross National Product larger than total U.S. advertising expenditures.

The United States and Commonwealth of Independent States, with only 15 percent of the world's population, use more than 50 percent of the geostationary orbit. The Third World uses less than 10 percent.

Ten developed countries, with 20 percent of the world's population, accounted for almost three-quarters of all telephone lines. The United States had as many telephone lines as all of Asia; the Netherlands, as many as all of Africa; Italy, as many as all of Latin America; Tokyo as many as all of Africa.(10)

Even within the United States we have the info-rich and the info- poor. From the streets of Manhattan to the barrios of Los Angeles, from the homeless to the immigrants populations, from Appalachia to the inner cities, there are millions upon millions of our fellow Americans who cannot read or type, do not have access to computers, do not consume newsprint, cannot afford a book.

***

To counter these twin trends that threaten to engulf civil society with a highly controlled of commercialization, there has arisen a worldwide metanetwork of highly decentralized technologies--computers, fax machines, amateur radio, packet data satellites, VCRs, video cameras and the like. They are "decentralized" in the sense that they democratize information flow, break down hierarchies of power, and make communication from top and bottom just as easy as from horizon to horizon. For the first time in history, the forces of peace and environmental preservation have acquired the communication tools and intelligence gathering technologies previously the province of the military, government and transnational corporations.

Many people, organizations and technologies are responsible for this development, but one organization has distinguished itself by specializing in the communication needs of the global NGO Movement. The history of the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) dates back to 1984, when Ark Communications Institute, the Center for Innovative Diplomacy, Community Data Processing, and the Foundation for the Arts of Peace--all located in the San Francisco Bay Area near Silicon Valley, California--joined forces to create what was then called PeaceNet, the world's first computer network dedicated exclusively to serve the needs of the movements for peace, human rights and social justice. In 1987, PeaceNet became a division of the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation, and the Institute for Global Communications (IGC) was formed to direct and support its activities.

Parallel to this, with seed money from Apple Computer and the San Francisco Foundation, in 1982 the Farallones Institute created EcoNet to advance the cause of planetary environmental protection and sustainability. Farallones transferred EcoNet to the newly-formed Institute for Global Communications in 1987. ConflictNet, dedicated to serving nonviolent conflict resolution, dispute mediation and arbitration, joined IGC in 1990. Together, these three networks-- PeaceNet, EcoNet and Conflict--make up what we now refer to as the IGC Networks, the largest computer system in the world dedicated to peace, human rights and environmental preservation.

Inspired by the technological success of establishing these networks in the United States, the Institute for Global Communications began collaborating with a similar network in the United Kingdom, London-based GreenNet. To raise funds, rock stars Little Steven and Peter Garbriel performed two "Hurricane Irene" concerts in Tokyo in December 1986. Thus we can say that the idea of a global network for peace, human rights, and the environment was born in Peter Gabriel's New York hotel room in 1987 when the money was distributed and the original charter was drafted on a laptop computer.

With this impetus, in 1987 GreenNet and the IGC Networks joined together seamlessly demonstrating that transnational electronic communications could serve the these communities. This transatlantic link was so successful that, with the support of the MacArthur, Ford and General Service foundations and the United Nations Development Program, IGC helped to establish five more networks, in Sweden, Canada, Brazil, Nicaragua and Australia. This quickly led in 1990 to the founding of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) to coordinate this global operation. Today, more than 15,000 subscribers in 90 countries are fully interconnected through low-cost personal computers and software provided free of charge to APC partners. These groups constitute a veritable honor role of nongovernmental organizations working in these fields, including Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, Greenpeace and many labor unions.

***

APC members are fond of saying that they "dial locally and act globally." Today, there are APC partner networks in the United States, Nicaragua, Brazil, Russia, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden and Germany and affiliated systems in Uruguay, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Bolivia, Kenya and other countries (see "APC Network Topology"). The APC now even has an affiliated network in Cuba and can boast of providing the first free flow of information between the United States and Cuba in thirty years. Dozens of FidoNet system connect with the APC through "gateways" located at the main nodes. At the hub of this system is APC's largest computer, known as "cdp" or Community Data Processing, located in Silicon Valley, California.

The APC Networks can now set up complete electronic mail and conferencing systems on small, inexpensive appropriate-technology microcomputers for between $5,000 and $15,000 with software developed since 1984 and available to partner systems at no charge. Individual users typically make a local phone call to connect to their host machine, which stores up mail and conference postings until contacted by a partner computer in the network, typically about every two hours. Aside from its low cost, this technological configuration is appropriate for countries whose telecommunications infrastructure is still poor. The file transfer protocols used between the computers have a high level of resiliency to line noise and satellite delays, and if an interruption does occur, they are able to resume a transfer right at the point it was interrupted. This is particularly important for transporting large binary files, when the chances of losing the connection over poor quality telephone lines is significant.

Within the APC, main nodes at London (GreenNet), Stockholm (NordNet), Toronto (Web) and San Francisco (IGC Networks) bring the communication flow in from regional nodes. Messages are then exchanged and distributed around the world so that a message from Australia can end up on a screen in Estonia in two to four hours. Messages can be sent through these machines to outbound fax and telex servers, to commercial hosts such as Dialcom and GeoNet, and to academic networks such as Janet, BitNet, EARN, and UseNet/UUCP. The entire network is funneled on to the Internet through the IGC Networks, which are a full Internet host (igc.org). The price is low by any standard; in the United States hourly connect charges range as low as $3 per hour.

Simply put, electronic mail (or "email") connects two correspondents through a computer and a modem to a "host" computer. One user, let's say a peace researcher in Finland, uses her computer to dial into a local data network (analogous to the telephone network but for data traffic instead of voice). She either types in a message or "uploads" a prepared text, into her host computer, in this case, NordNet in Stockholm. Within a short time that message is transferred via high- speed modems through the telephone lines to the host system of her correspondent, a university peace studies professor in Hawaii. His host system is the PeaceNet computer in California. At his convenience, he connects to his host and "downloads" the message. This miraculous feat, near instantaneous communication across half the globe, costs each user only the price of a local phone call plus a small transmission charge.

Unlike systems used by the large commercial services, the APC Networks are highly decentralized and preserve local autonomy. One microcomputer serves a geographical region and is in turn connected with other "nodes." The local node collects the international mail, bundles and compresses it, then sends it to the appropriate foreign messaging system for distribution using a special high-speed connection.

In addition to email, the APC Networks also oversee about 900 electronic "conferences"--basically a collective mailbox open to all users--on subjects from AIDS to Zimbabwe. It is here that people can publicize events, prepare joint proposals, disseminate vital information and find the latest data. APC conferences carries a number of important alternative news sources, including Inter Press Service (the Third World's largest news agency); Environmental News Service (Vancouver), the United Nations Information Centre news service ; Agencia Latinoamericana de Informacion (Ecuador, in Spanish); Alternet (Washington, DC); Moscow News (Russia, in English); New Liberation News Service (Cambridge, MA); Pacific News Service (San Francisco, CA); World Perspectives Shortwave Monitoring Service (Madison, WI); and Yugofax Information Services (London).

***

The first large-scale impact of these decentralizing technologies on international politics happened in 1989. When the Chinese government massacred its citizens near Tianamen Square, Chinese students transmitted the most detailed, vivid reports instantly by fax, telephone and computer networks to activists throughout the world. They organized protests meetings, fundraising, speaking tours and political appeals. Their impact was so immense and immediate that the Chinese government tried to cut telephone links to the exterior and started to monitor the Usenet computer conferences where much of this was taking place.(11)

Another example is the 1991 Gulf War, where computer networks such as PeaceNet and its partner networks in the APC exploded with activity. While mainstream channels of communication were blocked by Pentagon censorship, the APC Networks were carrying accurate reports of the effects of the Gulf War on the Third World, Israel and the Arab countries and the worldwide anti-war movement. For a movement caught off-guard, amazingly smooth coordination took place rapidly across the country and the world. Competing groups agreed on common platforms, set synchronized action dates, and planned large-scale events across vast distances. Computerists seized the technology and made it work.

During the attempted coup in the Soviet Union in August 1990, the APC partners used telephone circuits to circumvent official control. Normally, the outdated Russian telephone system requires hordes of operators to connect international calls by hand, and callers must compete fiercely for phone lines. But the APC partner networks found other routes for data flow. While the usual link with Moscow is over international phone lines, APC technicians also rigged a link over a more tortuous route. That plan saw Soviet news dispatches gathered through a loose network of personal computer bulletin board systems in Moscow and Leningrad. The dispatches which were sent by local phone calls to the Baltic states, then to NordNet Sweden, and then to London- based GreenNet, which maintains an open link with the rest of the APC.

Later this year, the Association for Progressive Communications will play a major role in providing communications services for environmentalists, non-governmental organizations and citizen activists before, during, and after the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment at Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The largest United Nations conference in history, UNCED is the first global gathering on the environment since 1972. It is also the first global summit to take place fully within the age of the NGO and computer technologies. APC maintains over 30 electronic conferences on UNCED documents, agendas, reports, discussion and debate. This information sharing service allows official UN documents to be accessible to citizens around the world, thus providing broader citizen participation in a heads-of-state summit than has ever been possible before. APC's Brazilian member network, AlterNex, was chosen to spearhead communications services for non-governmental organizations at UNCED itself.

Around the globe, other APC networks are working on issues of peace, social justice, and environmental protection. In Australia, the members of the Pegasus network are working to hook up the affluent 18 percent of the electorate that votes Green, which would make the party more powerful. Back in the United States, EcoNet is helping high school students monitor water quality in local rivers. One such experiment involved 50 students along the Rouge River in Michigan. When in 1991 neo-Nazi skinheads ransacked a Dresden neighborhood populated by foreigners, users of the German partner network ComLink posted news of the event. Soon Dresden newspapers were flooded with faxes from around the world deploring the action. All in all, tens of thousands of messages a day pass back and forth within the "APC village," and the number grows every day.

***

The partner networks of the Association for Progressive Communications have built a truly global network dedicated to the free and balanced flow of information. The APC Charter mandates its partners to serve people working toward "peace, the prevention of warfare, elimination of militarism, protection of the environment, furtherance of human rights and the rights of peoples, achievement of social and economic justice, elimination of poverty, promotion of sustainable and equitable development, advancement of participatory democracy, and nonviolent conflict resolution."

The APC Networks are trying to make an "end-run" around the information monopolies and to construct a truly alternative information infrastructure for the challenges that lie ahead. By providing a low- cost, appropriate solution for nongovernmental organizations and poor countries, they are attempting to civilize and democratize cyberspace.

We are moving into a "new world order." The age of democracy may have had its beginnings in the French and the American revolutions, but only today is it finally reaching the hearts and minds of sympathetic populations around the world. This "preferred" world order of democratic change depends heavily on the efficiency of communication systems.

Perhaps the most durable impact of the APC Networks is their promotion of that illusive phenomenon known as "world public opinion." One way that we can confirm the ascendance of global civil society is to examine the accumulating evidence for world public opinion, a cosmopolitan convergence of interactively communicating national civil societies. The MacBride Report observed that world public opinion is "still in the process of formation, and thus fragile, heterogeneous, easily abused."(12) As we approach the third millennium, communications technologies such as the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) networks are transforming international relations. They have greatly accelerated the rise of global civil society and the NGO Movement. Not only do they report violations and victories of human rights; they are also demonstrating that communication and information are central to human rights and to the emergence of democratic, decentralized planet- loving movements.

NOTES

(1) Permission to reprint (excepting electronic distribution) granted individually by author. Howard H. Frederick has taught communications and international relations for more than a decade. Recently he was Fulbright Professor of Communication at the University of Salzburg in Austria. Previously he taught at Ohio University, Mary Baldwin College, San Francisco State University, and California State University. The author of Global Communication and International Relations (Brooks-Cole, 1992) and Cuban-American Radio Wars (Ablex, 1986) and numerous articles, he has lectured and worked in Europe and Latin America. Frederick was formerly Director of PeaceNet and currently directs news services at the Institute for Global Communications, a worldwide computer network based in San Francisco, California. He is President of the International Communication Section of the International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR/AIERI). He also serves in an advisory capacity with the Center for Media and Values in Los Angeles, and Radio for Peace International in Costa Rica. He lives in Los Angeles and works in San Francisco, commuting across California weekly by airplane.

(2) International Encyclopedia of Communications, s.v. "International Organizations," by Hamid Mowlana. See also Union of International Associations, Yearbook of International Organizations, 1987-88 (Munich: K.G. Saur, 1987), Volume 1, Appendix 7, Table 4.

(3) Cees J. Hamelink, "Global Communication: Plea for Civil Action," in Informatics in Food and Nutrition, B. V. Hofsten, ed. (Stockholm: Royal Academcy of Sciences, 1991), pp. 5-8.

See also "Communication: The Most Violated Human Right," Inter Press Service dispatch, May 9, 1991, below.

amsterdam, may 9 (ips) -- the most violated human right in the world today is the right to freedom of expression, cees hamelink, head of the international association for mass communication research, argued here thursday.

speaking at a seminar on 'communication, democracy and development', hamelink said that when channels for expression were left in the hands of those who control either the state or the market, ''we have lost our freedom of speech''.

''nothing less than a revolt of the communications clients against the forces that keep us ignorant is needed,'' he argued.

''if any company had begun to produce the kind of sub- standard product that cnn (cable news network) gave us day after day during the gulf war, we would refuse to buy it,'' hamelink said.

both the state and the market had failed to provide cheap, reliable information, and the opportunity for participation, he said.

the new social movements which had campaigned in other fields had only now begun to realize that culture and information were too important to be left to these two agencies, prof. hamelink stated.

for too long they were caught up in the atmosphere of powerlessness created by the ubiquitous nature of media.

two important elements had come into existence, he noted. the first was the diverse forms of cheap information technology which could be used by sufficiently skilled social movements.

the other was the increasing awareness around the world that values need to be defended. ''there is less trust in political systems at present than there was in the social movements of the 60s and 70s.

''then, they believed that if they tried to grab some of the power of the state, they could change society. but today, their consciousness is different. they are more wary of the state.''

hamelink argued that the gulf war would further this process. ''it was an enormous demonstration of the deliberate use of disinformation and propaganda,'' he said.

the issue of communication had been overlooked in the development debate because it was much more personal and individual and more difficult to mobilize people around.

halle hansen, head of the norwegian development agency, norad, provided evidence for this view from experience in india and africa.

he said that the failure of democracy and development efforts in africa was the direct result of the lack of communication and information on that continent.

''the contrasts between the two regions is startling,'' he said. ''in india, you have about 20,000 non-governmental organizations. there are about 20,000 functioning newspapers and periodicals there, leading to a fantastic plurality in the society.''

hansen rejected arguments that the mass media have ever been an agent for social change. ''they were propelled to take up issues such as environment and peace by the social movements,'' he argued. ''they have always been the partner of the establishment.''

but roberto savio, director-general of inter press service (ips), warned that the issue of information and communication was slowly and steadily disappearing from the development debate.

ministries of information were disappearing all over the third world, he said. governments felt that to touch the issue of information was counterproductive.

the state was no longer investing in information and communication infrastructure. there was no longer any discussion of communication policy.

this, he revealed, was also happening at the level of the international donor agencies. only 0.4 percent of development aid was devoted to communications development.

new publications on development fail to make any mention of the issue of communication.

''at the same time, newspapers are shrinking in the third world,'' savio stated. ''the prevailing theory is that the market place will put everything in order, with the formula that the united states will teach the world how to develop itself.''

this was creating serious distortions in the south, he warned. (end/ips/ic/nm/fn)

(4) Ben Bagdikian, "The Lords of the Global Village," The Nation, June 12, 1989, p. 805.

(5) Ben H. Bagdikian, "The Lords of the Global Village," The Nation, June 12, 1989, p. 807.

(6) "U.S. International Communication and Information Policy," Gist (Department of State), December 1988, p. 1.

(7) Meheroo Jussawalla, "Can We Apply New Trade Rules to Information Trade?" in International Information Economy Handbook, eds. G. Russell Pipe and Chris Brown (Springfield, VA: Transnational Data Reporting Service, 1985), p. 11.

(8) Unesco, World Communication Report (Paris: Unesco, 1990), p. 83.

(9) Sources: Hamid Mowlana, Global Information and World "Communication: New Frontiers in International Relations (New York: Longman, 1986), p. 28; International Journalism Institute, The Mass Media in the World, 1987, p. 40, citing World Communication Report (draft), UNESCO, 1988, p. 1.54; World Communication Report (Paris: UNESCO, 1989), pp. 136-141.

There are more than one hundred news agencies around the world, yet five transnational news agencies controlled about ninety-six percent of the world's news flows.

 
             WORDS PER DAY OF MAJOR NEWS AGENCIES, 1986-87
                            (MILLIONS)
 
         17.000 Associated Press (AP)
         14.000 United Press International (UPI)
          4.000 TASS
          1.500 Reuters
          1.000 Agence France Presse (AFP)
 
           .500 EFE (Spain)
           .300 Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (Italy)
           .115 Deutsche Presse Agentur (Germany)
           .150 Inter Press Service (Rome, New York)
           .100 Non-Aligned News Pool
           .075 Telegrafska Agencia Nova Jugoslavya (Tanjug)
           .025 Caribbean News Agency
           .020 Pan African News Agency
           .018 Gulf News Agency

Source: World Communication Report (Paris: UNESCO, 1989), pp. 136-141; Draft World Communication Report (Paris: UNESCO, 1988), p. 1.54.

(10) Howard H. Frederick, Global Communications and International Relations (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks-Cole, 1992), chapter on "The Dimensions of Global Communication.

(11) John S. Quarterman, The Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide (Bedford, MA: Digital Press, 1990), pp. xxiii-xxiv.

(12) International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems [MacBride Commission], One World, Many Voices (Paris: Unesco, 1980), p. 198.


Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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