International communication

Efficient communication networks played crucial roles in establishing ancient imperial authority and international trade. The extent of empire could be used as an 'indication of the efficiency of communication'. Ancient empires such as Rome, Persia and China, all utilized writing in collecting information and dispersing, creating enormous postal and dispatch systems. As early as in fifteenth century, news had been disseminated trans-nationally in Europe. 'The wheat traders of Venice, the silver traders of Antwerp, the merchants of Nuremberg and their trading partners shared economic newsletters and created common values and beliefs in the rights of capital.' In 1837, Samuel Morse invented telegraph. Given its speed and reliability in delivering information, telegraph offered opportunities for capital and military expansion. As showed in Table 1.1, the establishment of cable hardware signifies global power order in late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Table 1.1 Cabling the world The newspaper industry and international telegraph networks mutually facilitated each other. As the supply and demand of newspaper industry rapidly increased in nineteenth century, news agencies were established successively. The French Havas Agency was founded in 1835, the German agency Wolffin 1849 and the British Reuters in 1851. These three European agencies, which started to operate internationally, were all subsidized by their respective governments. Western countries seized the chances to implement radio communication after the first radio transmissions of human voice in 1902. But the two mechanisms of radio broadcasting were distinctively different. In the USA, the Radio Act of 1927 confirm its status as an advertising-funded commercial enterprise, while in Britain, the public broadcasting pioneer British Broadcasting Corporation set up in the same year. During the First World War and the Second World War, radio broadcasting played a significant role in both domestic public opinion management and international diplomacy propaganda abroad. Even in the Cold War times, this radio-dominated international communication still featured in propaganda respective ideologies. The prominent example is the Voice of America, which ran a global network to indoctrinate 'American dream' to its international audience. Since the cold war officially ended in 1990, the intense relations of super powers halted with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of the Third World countries, the unequally developed communication order can no longer exist. The Third World called for ceasing their marginalized communication status. Especially when international communications stepped into the information age, 'the convergence of telecommunication and computing and the ability to move all type of data – pictures, words, sounds – via the Internet have revolutionized international information exchange.'