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CIAO DATE: 04/05/07
Mobile Service Revolution: CNN Effect Goes Mobile
by Dan Steinbock
During the past two decades, global television, enabled by an astonishing array of technological devices, has collectively reset the terms of debate in the foreign affairs arena. Initially, the perceived impact was called the "CNN Effect," but with the launch of a number of alternative outlets in multiple geographies, it has been recently called the "CNN Effect Plus." This phenomenon is due to new outlets that facilitate television news reports and information media from distant or inaccessible locations.
The dramatic transformation has only begun. The discourse on international affairs is facing still another upheaval, due to the advent of global real-time television, which is about to be driven by new mobile services (including advanced mobile voice, Internet, messaging and content services). "We're moving from a business of ears to the business of eyes," said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's senior VP and multimedia chief, in the late 1990s.2 Over time these mobile services will be available to a wider range of consumers in different income levels and in diverse countries around the world.
Improved access to news and information, combined with faster and easier methods of communication, has already changed the international political climate and the way in which governments and officials respond to natural disasters, security emergencies, foreign policy changes, and social developments. With the arrival of increasingly advanced mobile services, changes in the relationship between politics, technology, and the international media will be even more pronounced. The era of "command and control" is effectively over; the era of "sense and respond" has arrived.
The advent of CNN in the 1980s forced a more complex and challenging information environment upon American foreign policy officials. Suddenly policymakers found themselves operating in a potentially global media landscape extending far beyond the three national news networks and a handful of wire services and elite newspapers. What began as a business revolution had a wide array of policy implications. As CNN began to globalize and regionalize its services, indigenous local clones and services followed in its path, and foreign policy officials in other nations had to cope with comparable policy challenges.
For years, media observers in the United States and abroad have argued that policies can no longer be presented to the public in the abstract, and that they are constantly measured against images on television-images that are instantly available, around the clock and around the globe. The conceptual substance of the argument was true as early as the mid- 1990s, but the empirical reality was not. At that time, CNN's coverage of international events was still limited to a handful of world cities with periodic attention to regions in crisis and major catastrophes in less developed parts of the globe. Furthermore, the potential of worldwide transparency has not been matched by actual facts, not least because of the exigencies of market-driven competition. For years, critics have argued that the struggle for higher ratings nullifies the impact of technology advances. "We live and die by the size of our audience; we dumb down the news to pump up the ratings," writes Tom Fenton, the CBS News Senior European correspondent.
Today, CNN and its regional partners and competitors worldwide are able to reach beyond the typical handful of metropolitan areas and report news live from distant and previously inaccessible locations. Some of this is the consequence of advances in news technology, and some is due to an increase in the number of news outlets, such as al Jazeera in the Middle East.
However, despite the hype to the contrary, global real-time television has yet to come into being. The enabling technology is there, but not the consumers. Until recently, viewers have been chained to specific locations by relatively immobile media devices, such as news on TV sets or Internet-enabled PCs and notebooks. Now, the collaborative efforts of a slate of global industry groups are bringing about a mobile service revolution. It is these advanced services that will mobilize international affairs by empowering people-anytime and anywhere.
Dan Steinbock is Director of the Finnish Center of International Business Research and Education at Finland's Academy of Sciences and author of The Mobile Revolution: The Making of Worldwide Mobile Markets (Kogan Page, 2005).