The future and the future of journalism

Understanding the globalization of journalism entails reflection on a wide range of factors – not just factors shaping journalism as such, like the coming of social media and the so-called “sharing economy”, with Google stealing alle the advertising with a smarter scheme. Discussions are found everywhere concerning these aspects of the future of journalism and how journalism is being affected by new technologies – disrupting established practices and financial models. Now, what about climate change as a phenomenon, escalating cultural and civilizational conflicts, the interlocking of the world into one unified power grid and information – the the extent that we can separate the two? All of these factors are extremely important to our understanding of the future of journalism. A couple of decades ago: The Cold War was gone. So was Ayatollah Khomeini. Then came the New World Order without a Soviet Empire. And then came both George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, expansions of NATO and the European Union, Osama Bin Laden. Also The mobil phone, Twitter and Facebook. 

Can we expect journalism to not be in a crisis? Or Many? In short, no. But a less seldom reflection on the future of journalism as something more than financial models and technology, is simply a discussion on how journalism is confronted with the forces of globalization and what these forces reprecent in the way of threats or opportunities for journalism?

Accordingly, when trying to understand global journalism, a key provision is to understand globalization. And that is a very big challenge. Do we think of the technologies driving globalization? Journalism has been part of that since the invention of journalism. News reporting has always been a globalizing force in society. It is perhaps something we do not think about all that often, but an argument can be made that research confirms it – a lot of research.

So: The cultural aspect of globalization? Or the political? Or the economical? One might also want to point to the ideological, in order to make allowances for the great variety amongst students of globalization when it comes to basic understandings of what makes societies work; market freedom, the role of the state, mixed economic models, and so on.

Al Gore and the future

A good but large book to begin that reflection is this one: Al Gore’s The Future. You can look it up on the link just provided. Here is a review from The Guardian. Another one from New York Times. Here is Al Gore’s own blog page. Here is a link on GoodReads.

Al Gore is also known from the documentary and book An Inconvenient Truth, where he discusses the origins and consequences of climate change. Not everyone agrees with him, but there is little doubt that his arguments, insights, and research-driven points of view are worthy of serious consideration.

The six drivers referred to in the reviews, and shaping the core of the book, are these – all of them interconnecting forces that remind us of how contemporary societal problems and challenges are global, requiring global solutions:

To this one could add a distinction between factors that are material – like technology and other resources, and on the other hand the immaterial – like organization, belief, emotion, and knowledge.

One would find that the future of journalism and the globalizatino of journalism is an aspect that belongs in both divisions.

About journalism

If we take each of the six drivers from Al Gore’s book, as a basis for raisning some questions about journalism and its futures, we might end up with these:

1. Earth, Inc. – the emergence of a deeply interconnected global economy;
   • We’re lacking both globally oriented media covering this interconnection
   • And especially a news audience culture consuming and making use of it.
2. The Global Mind – the emergence of a planet-wide electronic communications grid;
   • Popular culture is what drives the global imagination, not civic issues
   • When is the right time for a Global Public Service News Service? GPS–NS.
3. Power in the Balance – the emergence of a completely new balance of political, economic, and military power in the world;
   • The news media favor the nation-state as arena for policy-driven solution and deliberation, over more global arenas like the UN, EU, NATO, IMF, WB and others.
   • The is a general tendency in the news as genre, prevailing across the world
4. Outgrowth – the emergence of rapid, unsustainable growth in a variety of areas, including population, resource consumption, and pollution flows, to name only a few;
   • Inequality in terms of economic resource
   • Inequality in terms of political resources
   • Imbalance in terms of cultural controntations, shifting mores, taboos, tradition
   • Excess is a normative word: The lack of will to be normative – where science cannot help to establish an empirical basis for what is “too much”, values will have to.
5. The Reinvention of Life and Death – the emergence of a revolutionary new set of powerful biological, biochemical, genetic, and materials science technologies; and
6. The Edge – the emergence of a radically new relationship between human civilization and the Earth’s ecological systems.

It is the last two points that require most attention – one might argue, as far as the future of belief, optimism, and civic mindset is concerned. And they will be discussed in another blog post.

About Al Gore

And finally, here is what GoodReads writes about him:

Albert Arnold “Al” Gore, Jr. was the forty-fifth Vice President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore also served in the U. S. House of Representatives (1977–85) and the U. S. Senate (1985–93), representing Tennessee. Gore was the Democratic nominee for president in the 2000 election, ultimately losing to the Republican candidate George W. Bush in spite of winning the popular vote. A legal controversy over the Florida election recount was eventually settled in favor of Bush by the Supreme Court.

A prominent environmental activist, Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for the “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” He also starred in the Academy Award – winning documentary on the topic of global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. In 2007, Gore helped to organize the July 7 benefit concert for global warming, Live Earth.