ABSTRACT
The 1970s, a UNESCO report claimed, will be the “communication decade.” In the 1960s, UNESCO had started research on new means of mass communication for development purposes. The issue evolved into a debate on the so-called “New World Information and Communication Order” (NWICO) and the democratization of media markets in the 1970s. It led UNESCO into a major crisis in the 1980s. The formulation of what was called “national communication policies” was a key issue. Like in the fields of education and sciences policies, UNESCO sought to elaborate a policy norm that could be translated into national legislation by its member states. The formulation of “national communication policies,” however, turned out to be more complicated. The debate that unfolded, I argue, followed a trajectory from communication as a tool and goal of national development in the 1960s to communication as a catalyst of a new global order in the 1970s. I show how a mainly Western paradigm of development thinking slowly ceded a series of wider claims for the recalibration of international relations voiced by actors of the Global South. More broadly, the chapter argues that the media formed a key component of the global debates about “new orders” in the 1970s.
