For
nearly half a century, the cold war divided the world into hostile
East-West blocs. This had significant implications for the development
of Third World countries , most of whom wanted to avoid bloc politics
and concentrate on the economic emancipation of their populations. The
phrase ‘third World’ itself was a product of the cold war, said to have
been coined by French economic historian Alfred Sauvy in 1952, when the world was divided between the capitalist First World, led
by the United States, and the communist Second World, With its centure
in Moscow. The ‘Third World ‘ was the mass of countries remaining
outside these two blocs (Brandt Commission, 1981; South Commission,
1990).
National liberation movements in Asia
, Africa and Latin America had altered the political map of the world.
The vast territory occupied in 1945 by European colonial powers extended
over 36 million sq. km; by 1960, as a result of decolonization , the
area under colonial occupation had shrunk to 13 million sq.km. For the
newly independent ex-colonial states, international communication opened
up opportunities for development.
The Non-Aligned Movement, through the Group of 77,established in1964,began to demand greater economic justice
in such UN forums as UNCTAD, and in 1974, The un General Assembly
formally approved their demand for the creation of a New international
Economic Order (NIEO), a democratic, Interdependent economic order,
based on equality and sovereignty, including the right to’ pursue
progressive social transformation that enables the full participation of
the population in the development process’(Hamelink ,1979:145) . While this remained largely an ideal , it provided a new framework to redefine international relations,
ifor the first time after the Second World war, not in terms of
East-West categories, but by the North-South divide. At the same time ,
it was argued that the new economic order had to be linked to a New
World Information and Communication Order (NWICO).
The general
improvement in superpower relations in the age of détente , as marked
by the 1975 Helsinki Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe
(CSCE), encouraged the Non-Aligned countries to demand these changes in
global economic and informational systems. The conference recognized the need for ‘freer and wider dissemination of information of all kinds’(Nordenstreng,!986). As Chilean scholar Juan Somavia , Writing in the mid-1970, observed:
It
is becoming increasingly clear that the transnational communications
system has developed with the support and the service of the
transnational power structure. It is an integral part of system which
affords the control of that key instrument
of contemporary society: information. It is the vehicle for transmitting
values and lifestyles to Third World countries which stimulate the type
of consumption and the type of society necessary to the transnational
system as a whole.
(Somavia , 1976:16-17)
Apart from highlighting the structural inequalities in
international communication, there were also efforts made among many
developing countries , Often with financial or technical support from
the West , to use communication technologies for development. This could
take different forms promoting literacy and information about health
care to spreading consumerism. One area which received particular
attention from policy-makers was satellite television , which, given its
reach, was considered a powerful medium that could be harnessed for
educational purposes and , in the long run, to help change social and
cultural attitudes of ‘traditional’ people and ‘modernize ‘ societies.+
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Education