Horizons of the State: Information Policy and Power

Abstract

Conceptions of the state underlie all information and communication policy,' for the state uses policy as tools of power. This is true whether those conceptions are well or poorly formed, understood or not, explicit or implicit-but, as Bell (1995) points out in this issue, failure to understand the state leads to an inability to analyze policy. Historically, however, policy analysis has tended to treat the state generally as a venue, a justification for particular positions, or one institutional player among many. In the area of communication policy, few policy analysts have attended to the state.In this, the field joined both political science and sociology, which for decades were characterized by "statelessness" as they turned instead towards systems, societies, or classes as their units of analysis. Ironically, attention returned to the state in the m i d -l 9 8 0~,~ at a time when it was widely believed that the state was losing power.Understanding information and communication policy as power is particularly important in today's environment because there has been a qualitative shift in the level of dependence upon information technologies and in the degree to which activities are informational (Braman, 1990(Braman, , 1993. Regulation in this domain has come to dominate political and economic culture. The use of new information technologies permits the state, like other institutions and cultural forms, to evolve; a new form of the state is emerging, specializing in forms of power specific to the environment of the global telecommunications network (the "net").ating the conditions under which future activity (including policy-making) will take place (Braman, 1990). This is critical in an environment oriented towards the two poles of the global and the local and in which boundaries of the state Information policy plays self-reflexive and constitutive roles for the state, cre-' Information policy is defined here as policy relating to any stage of an information production chain that goes from creation through processing and storage to destruction.

The Role of the State in Shaping Taiwan’s Cable Television Industry

“…As Chong-Jan Hong, the then-Director of the Department of Radio & Television Affairs of the GIO, stresses, the government now is to assist and guide, instead of prohibiting and punishing, the cable industry (Hong, 1997). Braman (1995) notes that the decrease or increase in state power caused by the use of new communication technologies varies from country to country. Taiwan may be a case in which new media have caused a decrease of the state's power.…”

A Communication Theory Perspective on Telecommunications Policy

“…Most importantly, liberalization is changing the relationship between the power of the state and the power of the individual. As Braman (1995) has observed, understanding information and communication policy in relationship to state power and authority is particularly important in today's environment, because there has been a qualitative shift in the level of dependence upon information technologies. Regulation in the domain of telecommunications policy has come to dominate political and economic spheres.…”

The field of information policy: 2. Redefining the boundaries and methodologies

“…Braman argues the information policy is essentially about the exercise of power by the State and sees this aim underlying all communication and information policy [32]. She believes that a new form of the State is emerging which utilises forms of power specific to new information technologies and global telecommunications in the 1990s, so that, with the new networked information environment, there are effectively no natural boundaries to the State.…”