Virtual cartels, introduction

Among the most striking development of the 1990s has been the emergence of a global commercial media market utilizing new technologies and the global trend toward deregulation.
This global commercial media market is a result of aggressive maneuvering by the dominant firms, new technologies that make global systems cost-efficient, and neoliberal economic policies encouraged by the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and the US government to break down regulatory barriers to a global commercial media and telecommunication market.

A global oligopolistic market that covers the spectrum of media is now crystallizing the very high barriers to entry."

(Robert McChesney, author of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy")

The network structure of information and communication technologies means that even deregulated markets are not "free". The functional logic of global networks only tolerates a small number of large players. Mergers, strategic alliances, partnerships and cooperations are therefore the daily routine of the ICT business. They bypass competition and create "virtual cartels".

TEXTBLOCK 1/5 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611709/100438658911
 
PR Firms and their Mission

Looking at how public relations practitioners advertise their services, they do not primarily seem to be followers of the "social engineering" approach. Burson-Marsteller, the worlds leading PR agency, for example sells itself as a specialist in "... public affairs, government relations, crisis communication, investor relations, environmental issues and marketing communications ... experienced at orchestrating effective campaigns, which motivate the right behaviors.". Porter Novelli, third largest international PR company, somewhat more aggressive promises, that their marketing-based public relations "... penetrate the consumer psyche - where - your target audiences work, learn, play or shop, through everything they read, hear and see.". While Porter Novelli seems to be specialized in psychological warfare, Fleishman-Hillard highlights its know-how and experience in government relations programs. "We have handled some of the nation's most challenging public policy issues, including issues affecting the environment, from clean air to agricultural chemicals; aviation safety; regressive taxes; international trade; and human rights.". To handle those difficult tasks, Fleishman-Hillard maintains "... an effective, professional lobbying team that includes registered lobbyists recruited from the Senate and the House."

TEXTBLOCK 2/5 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438658045
 
Sponsorship Models

With new sponsorship models being developed, even further influence over content from the corporate side can be expected. Co-operating with Barnes & Nobel Booksellers, the bookish e-zine FEED for instance is in part relying on sponsoring. Whenever a specific title is mentioned in the editorial, a link is placed in the margin - under the heading "Commerce" - to an appropriate page on Barnes & Noble. Steve Johnson, editor of FEED, says "We do not take a cut of any merchandise sold through those links.", but admits that the e-zine does indirectly profit from putting those links there.

TEXTBLOCK 3/5 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438658034
 
Advertising and the Media System

Media systems (especially broadcasting) can be classified in two different types:

Public Media Systems: Government control over broadcasting through ownership, regulation, and partial funding of public broadcasting services.

Private Media System: Ownership and control lies in the hands of private companies and shareholders.

Both systems can exist in various forms, according to the degree of control by governments and private companies, with mixed systems (public and private) as the third main kind.

Whereas public media systems are usually at least partially funded by governments, private broadcasting solely relies on advertising revenue. Still also public media systems cannot exclude advertising as a source of revenue. Therefore both types are to a certain degree dependent on money coming in by advertisers.

And this implies consequences on the content provided by the media. As the attraction of advertisers becomes critically important, interests of the advertising industry frequently play a dominant role concerning the structure of content and the creation of environments favorable for advertising goods and services within the media becomes more and more common.

TEXTBLOCK 4/5 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438657942
 
The Advertising Industry

The advertising industry is dominated by three huge advertising networks, which offer their services throughout the world. Gross income of the three leading agencies is twice as much, as the one of places four to ten.

Table: World's Top 10 Advertising Organizations 1999

(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)

Rank 1999

Advertising Organization

Headquarters

World-Wide Gross Income 1999

1

Omnicom

New York, USA

$ 5,743.4

2

Interpublic Group of Cos.

New York, USA

$ 5,079.3

3

WPP Group

London, UK

$ 4,819.3

4

Havas Advertising

Levallois-Perret, France

$ 2,385.1

5

Dentsu

Tokyo, Japan

$ 2,106.8

6

B Com3 Group

Chicago, USA

$ 1,933.8

7

Young & Rubicam Inc.

New York, USA

$ 1,870.1

8

Grey Advertising

New York, USA

$ 1,577.9

9

True North

Chicago, USA

$ 1,489.2

10

Publicis SA

Paris, France

$ 1,434.6



Table: Top 10 Global Marketers 1998

(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)

Rank 1998

Advertiser

Headquarters

World-Wide Media Spending 1998

1

Procter & Gamble Co.

Cincinnati (US)

$ 4,747.6

2

Unilever

Rotterdam (NL)/London (UK)

$ 3,428.5

3

General Motors Corp.

Detroit (US)

$ 3,193.5

4

Ford Motor Co.

Darborn (US)

$ 2,229.5

5

Philip Morris Cos.

New York

$ 1,980.3

6

Daimler Chrysler

Stuttgart (GER)/Auburn Hills (US

$ 1,922.2

7

Nestle

Vevey (SUI)

$ 1,833.0

8

Toyota Motor Corp.

Toyota City (JP)

$ 1,692.4

9

Sony Corp.

Tokyo (JP)

$ 1,337.7

10

Coca-Cola Co.

Atlanta (US)

$ 1,327.3



On the other hand the three biggest advertisers only spend about US$ 2 millions less than places four to ten together. Whereas money spent on advertising in traditional media comes from very diverse categories, companies offering computer hard- and software, peripherals or Internet services mainly pay for on-line advertisements.

Table: Top 10 Internet Advertisers 1998

(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)

Rank 1998

Advertiser

Internet Spending 1998

1998 - 1997 % Change

1

Microsoft Corp.

$ 34.9

9.4

2

IBM Corp.

$ 28.5

58.6

3

Compaq Computer Corp.

$ 16.2

169.8

4

General Motors Corp.

$ 12.7

84.8

5

Excite

$ 12.4

1.5

6

Infoseek Corp.

$ 9.3

22.3

7

AT&T Corp.

$ 9.3

43.5

8

Ford Motor Co.

$ 8.6

46.7

9

Hewlett-Packard Co.

$ 8.1

102.9

10

Barnes & Noble

$ 7.6

280.2



Source: Advertising Age

TEXTBLOCK 5/5 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611652/100438657954
 
Burson-Marsteller

Burson-Marsteller, the worlds leading public relations firm employs over 2,000 professionals in over 30 countries, operating in multiple functional and industry practice specialties. Its focus is on adding value to its clients through the use of
Perception Management. The goal is to ensure that the perceptions which
surround their clients and influence their stakeholders are consistent with
reality and the clients' desired business objectives.

INDEXCARD, 1/8
 
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

FTP enables the transfer of files (text, image, video, sound) to and from other remote computers connected to the Internet.

INDEXCARD, 2/8
 
Satellites

Communications satellites are relay stations for radio signals and provide reliable and distance-independent high-speed connections even at remote locations without high-bandwidth infrastructure.

On point-to-point transmission, the transmission method originally employed on, satellites face increasing competition from fiber optic cables, so point-to-multipoint transmission increasingly becomes the ruling satellite technology. Point-to-multipoint transmission enables the quick implementation of private networks consisting of very small aperture terminals (VSAT). Such networks are independent and make mobile access possible.

In the future, satellites will become stronger, cheaper and their orbits will be lower; their services might become as common as satellite TV is today.

For more information about satellites, see How Satellites Work (http://octopus.gma.org/surfing/satellites) and the Tech Museum's satellite site (http://www.thetech.org/hyper/satellite).

http://www.whatis.com/vsat.htm
http://octopus.gma.org/surfing/satellites
INDEXCARD, 3/8
 
Bulletin Board Systems

A BBS (bulletin board system) is a computer that can be reached by computer modem dialing (you need to know the phone number) or, in some cases, by Telnet for the purpose of sharing or exchanging messages or other files. Some BBSs are devoted to specific interests; others offer a more general service. The definitive BBS List says that there are 40,000 BBSs worldwide.

Bulletin board systems originated and generally operate independently of the Internet.

Source: Whatis.com

INDEXCARD, 4/8
 
Terrestrial antennas

Microwave transmission systems based on terrestrial antennas are similar to satellite transmission system. Providing reliable high-speed access, they are used for cellular phone networks.

The implementation of the Wide Application Protocol (WAP) makes the wireless access to Internet services as E-Mail and even the World Wide Web via cellular phones convenient. Therefore microwave transmission systems become increasingly important.

INDEXCARD, 5/8
 
Gopher

Gopher is a menu system with hierarchically structured list of files that predates the World Wide Web.

Today Gopher is of diminishing importance and mostly replaced by the World Wide Web.

INDEXCARD, 6/8
 
World Wide Web (WWW)

Probably the most significant Internet service, the World Wide Web is not the essence of the Internet, but a subset of it. It is constituted by documents that are linked together in a way you can switch from one document to another by simply clicking on the link connecting these documents. This is made possible by the Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML), the authoring language used in creating World Wide Web-based documents. These so-called hypertexts can combine text documents, graphics, videos, sounds, and Java applets, so making multimedia content possible.

Especially on the World Wide Web, documents are often retrieved by entering keywords into so-called search engines, sets of programs that fetch documents from as many servers as possible and index the stored information. (For regularly updated lists of the 100 most popular words that people are entering into search engines, click here). No search engine can retrieve all information on the whole World Wide Web; every search engine covers just a small part of it.

Among other things that is the reason why the World Wide Web is not simply a very huge database, as is sometimes said, because it lacks consistency. There is virtually almost infinite storage capacity on the Internet, that is true, a capacity, which might become an almost everlasting too, a prospect, which is sometimes consoling, but threatening too.

According to the Internet domain survey of the Internet Software Consortium the number of Internet host computers is growing rapidly. In October 1969 the first two computers were connected; this number grows to 376.000 in January 1991 and 72,398.092 in January 2000.

World Wide Web History Project, http://www.webhistory.org/home.html

http://www.searchwords.com/
http://www.islandnet.com/deathnet/
http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/199...
INDEXCARD, 7/8
 
Edward L. Bernays

Born 1891 in Vienna, Bernays was one of the founders of modern public relations. An enigmatic character, he was a master of mise en scène with far-reaching contacts in the world of business and politics. The nephew of Sigmund Freund and related with Heinrich Heine, he was also among the first to pursue PR for governments and to produce pseudo-events. Bernays considered the manipulation of public opinion as an important element of mass democracies and was of the opinion that only through PR a society's order can be kept.

INDEXCARD, 8/8