On Certain Research Approaches to the World Information and Communication Order

Abstract

The article analyzes new trends and features of development of the World Information and Communication Order (WICO). Particular attention is focused on scientific approaches of Russian and Western authors to modern problems of international communication. The role and place of WICO in the world order are shown. While in the 1970–1980s, the disputes around the establishment of the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) used to be a popular object of investigation in political, social and legal sciences, this interest died away as soon as NWICO ceased to be a factor in global political debates. However, the authors reject the attitude towards NWICO as being merely a historic phenomenon, because it has been referred to in the UN General Assembly acts until recently. As soon as the world order incorporates the urge for an ideal and objective reality, NWICO is considered as an indispensable part of WICO. In the article, WICO is regarded as a sub-system of the world political order and world economic order, which is greatly influenced by the developments experienced by the latter. In the meantime, WICO itself contains at least four sectoral sub-systems which have reached different levels of evolution: the technical cooperation sub-system, the economic sub-system, the content sub-system and the security sub-system. As far as approximately 55 regional organizations have established their cooperation frameworks in the information and communication field, WICO contains a highly developed regional sub-system which in many cases has reached much more advanced levels than the global WICO. The authors analyze the influence on WICO exerted by such trends in the world order system as non-state actors’ strengthening and the expansion of the order’s comprehensive rules on national policies’ spheres. The WICO evolution is shown as a continuous process throughout which its rules have emerged in the growing number of segments of the information and communication sphere, fueled, on the one hand, by the progress in information receiving, transfer, storage and processing and, on the other hand, by developments in the world political order and world economic order. According to the article, from the middle of the 19th century until early 21st century, this evolution had passed seven stages. The authors expect the upcoming switch to the realistic approach in the further development of WICO, which presupposes a restriction of its rules to those issues, which can be a subject to broad international consensus.