"Social media can be very anti-social,” says Toby Miller. An important name, globally, in media and cultural studies, Professor Miller has authored or edited over a dozen books. His co-edited work, Global Hollywood, enjoys an iconic status. Likewise, his theory: ‘new international division of cultural labour’ (NIDCL) has achieved the status of an important lens to study global media. Previously, he has taught at New York University, University of California-Riverside, among others. Presently, he is teaching in Mexico. In an interview with The Friday Times (TFT), he dilates upon trends in global media and NIDCL. Excerpts:
TFT: We were informed in the 1990s that deregulation of state-television in India, Pakistan will usher in diversity. It didn’t happen. How would you assess the1990s scholarship on deregulation?
TM: We see Modi being almost completely supported by the Indian media while there is a poor coverage of the Covid-19 crisis. In Pakistan, Imran Khan, a well-known playboy during his time, now says that Grindr and Tinder shouldn’t be permitted. Not to suggest that political freedom is measured by Grindr and Tinder. But sexual freedom is a very important part of political freedom and expression in those areas is very important.
In the 1990s, it was predicated on neo-classical economic ideas that if you have financial competition, especially the media, then you get real diversity. It is simply an assumption. There are all these movie studios in the USA. But can you honestly tell the difference between a Paramount film and a Fox production in terms of ideas of generic diversity?
One of the benefits of real public service broadcasting is that it is at arm’s length from the state, it is meant to provide an array of programmes. Nowadays, we increasingly get a network dedicated purely to a particular genre. You get all the cricket all the time. Or all the religion all the time.
Regarding Latin America: as you know Latin America has a very different trajectory from most of the rest of the world in terms of television. It never really had big governmental presence in the sense of Doordarshan or BBC because it was so much under the spectre of the USA in terms of technology, programming, and general political and economic influence.
Because of the nature of dictatorships, effectively TV channels were spokespersons for the regimes, especially in the case of Brazil. Same in Peru, Chile etc. In Columbia, you have a tradition where virtually every leading politician who comes to power comes from a media dynasty. They were chief executives or owners of TV channels, newspapers or “journalists working for daddy.”
TFT: Media has been provincialized, post-globalisation, in South Asia. How about Latin America?
TM: About South Asia, I wasn’t aware of that tendency. But this is not unusual. At CNN offices in the USA, journos watch CNN International to learn about the rest of the world.
Here, in Mexico there is fascination with the USA, China and Spain because of colonial times. Some interest in other big Latin American economies. When it comes to Asia, one would be hard pressed to find anything. A little bit on India but Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam or other big and small but significant countries are off the map basically. There is a wider problem of journalism. Supposedly, it is not due to deregulation. It is because proprietors are pushing journalists to be more focused on local, sometimes important but sometimes trivial issues, giving them less exposure to the wider world. In the Anglo world, it tends to be the case that journalists are neither trained to think about the rest of the world.
TFT: You propounded NIDCL theory over two decades ago, do you think globalization has aggravated NIDCL?
TM: This theory discusses inequality of communication systems, technology and texts on global scale. There is one glaring omission in much debate on media and within media studies as well: invisible labour.
Take cricket. Pakistan is a very important manufacturer of cricket bats. Pakistan and Bangladesh are very important producers of tennis balls. People in wealthy countries and wealthy people in most countries who buy a tennis ball or use a bat, despite all the transportation costs, prices are minimized because of largely invisible labour of workers in Pakistan and Bangladesh in manufacturing these products.
Similarly, when I looked at television and film, I realized that many of the things that we think of as Hollywood are funded in New York, produced by people in Los Angles and filmed potentially in Canada, Britain, Australia. What I saw and still see there is the tendency to exploit labour at a global scale in ways in which it renders labour virtually invisible.
TFT: Your comments on social media.
TM: Here in Mexico, I teach at Proletarian University. Students do not have privacy to study at home. They do not have laptops, wifi. Yes, they own a cell phone but on a contract that allows very minimum bandwidth. In places like Mexico, a lot of them are analphabet and many do not speak Spanish, the dominant language of the elite and social media.
I have spoken to a number of community leaders in the Afro-Colombian world about social media. They say two things. First, no one with light skin listens to anything we say. Secondly, we can’t afford contracts with bandwidth needed. They use these mobiles to flirt, and check on their children, parents and friends.
I am very sceptical of these claims [about social media], completely leave out intersecting inequalities of language, class and race. In addition, in many countries misogyny is so rampant that many women – same is true for many queer people – have simply withdrawn. I am worried that social media can be very anti-social and assumption of middle class liberal democratic model of social media does not apply to a vast majority of the world population.
TFT: what is to be done?
TM: In the USA, institutions like Facebook and Twitter need to be regulated as communication companies. It is important to regulate hate speech, lies about science and public health and issues of public policy. These entities won’t do that. We don’t need that to be done by the government either. We need it to be done by an arm’s length institute consisting of professionals in the field. We need a workers’ takeover of the media. Less power to proprietors and editors. Universities are, despite their legal personalities, are meant to be self-governing. That is what bourgeois media need to become: entities that are governed by those who work within them.
TFT: We were informed in the 1990s that deregulation of state-television in India, Pakistan will usher in diversity. It didn’t happen. How would you assess the1990s scholarship on deregulation?
TM: We see Modi being almost completely supported by the Indian media while there is a poor coverage of the Covid-19 crisis. In Pakistan, Imran Khan, a well-known playboy during his time, now says that Grindr and Tinder shouldn’t be permitted. Not to suggest that political freedom is measured by Grindr and Tinder. But sexual freedom is a very important part of political freedom and expression in those areas is very important.
In the 1990s, it was predicated on neo-classical economic ideas that if you have financial competition, especially the media, then you get real diversity. It is simply an assumption. There are all these movie studios in the USA. But can you honestly tell the difference between a Paramount film and a Fox production in terms of ideas of generic diversity?
One of the benefits of real public service broadcasting is that it is at arm’s length from the state, it is meant to provide an array of programmes. Nowadays, we increasingly get a network dedicated purely to a particular genre. You get all the cricket all the time. Or all the religion all the time.
Regarding Latin America: as you know Latin America has a very different trajectory from most of the rest of the world in terms of television. It never really had big governmental presence in the sense of Doordarshan or BBC because it was so much under the spectre of the USA in terms of technology, programming, and general political and economic influence.
Because of the nature of dictatorships, effectively TV channels were spokespersons for the regimes, especially in the case of Brazil. Same in Peru, Chile etc. In Columbia, you have a tradition where virtually every leading politician who comes to power comes from a media dynasty. They were chief executives or owners of TV channels, newspapers or “journalists working for daddy.”
TFT: Media has been provincialized, post-globalisation, in South Asia. How about Latin America?
TM: About South Asia, I wasn’t aware of that tendency. But this is not unusual. At CNN offices in the USA, journos watch CNN International to learn about the rest of the world.
Here, in Mexico there is fascination with the USA, China and Spain because of colonial times. Some interest in other big Latin American economies. When it comes to Asia, one would be hard pressed to find anything. A little bit on India but Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam or other big and small but significant countries are off the map basically. There is a wider problem of journalism. Supposedly, it is not due to deregulation. It is because proprietors are pushing journalists to be more focused on local, sometimes important but sometimes trivial issues, giving them less exposure to the wider world. In the Anglo world, it tends to be the case that journalists are neither trained to think about the rest of the world.
TFT: You propounded NIDCL theory over two decades ago, do you think globalization has aggravated NIDCL?
TM: This theory discusses inequality of communication systems, technology and texts on global scale. There is one glaring omission in much debate on media and within media studies as well: invisible labour.
Take cricket. Pakistan is a very important manufacturer of cricket bats. Pakistan and Bangladesh are very important producers of tennis balls. People in wealthy countries and wealthy people in most countries who buy a tennis ball or use a bat, despite all the transportation costs, prices are minimized because of largely invisible labour of workers in Pakistan and Bangladesh in manufacturing these products.
Similarly, when I looked at television and film, I realized that many of the things that we think of as Hollywood are funded in New York, produced by people in Los Angles and filmed potentially in Canada, Britain, Australia. What I saw and still see there is the tendency to exploit labour at a global scale in ways in which it renders labour virtually invisible.
TFT: Your comments on social media.
TM: Here in Mexico, I teach at Proletarian University. Students do not have privacy to study at home. They do not have laptops, wifi. Yes, they own a cell phone but on a contract that allows very minimum bandwidth. In places like Mexico, a lot of them are analphabet and many do not speak Spanish, the dominant language of the elite and social media.
I have spoken to a number of community leaders in the Afro-Colombian world about social media. They say two things. First, no one with light skin listens to anything we say. Secondly, we can’t afford contracts with bandwidth needed. They use these mobiles to flirt, and check on their children, parents and friends.
I am very sceptical of these claims [about social media], completely leave out intersecting inequalities of language, class and race. In addition, in many countries misogyny is so rampant that many women – same is true for many queer people – have simply withdrawn. I am worried that social media can be very anti-social and assumption of middle class liberal democratic model of social media does not apply to a vast majority of the world population.
TFT: what is to be done?
TM: In the USA, institutions like Facebook and Twitter need to be regulated as communication companies. It is important to regulate hate speech, lies about science and public health and issues of public policy. These entities won’t do that. We don’t need that to be done by the government either. We need it to be done by an arm’s length institute consisting of professionals in the field. We need a workers’ takeover of the media. Less power to proprietors and editors. Universities are, despite their legal personalities, are meant to be self-governing. That is what bourgeois media need to become: entities that are governed by those who work within them.