Dwayne Winseck
Biographic Data
| ID | 112888 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dwayne Winseck |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dwayne |
| FAMILY NAME | Winseck |
| SIGNATURE | WINSECK D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Carleton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8122-9223 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 169 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Between compute and geopolitics: The hyperscale pursuit of global infrastructural power
This article explores the changing global political economy of internet infrastructure by looking at data centres and submarine cables. Data on ownership and investment patterns is used to track developments in the industry. The article focuses on the increasing prominence of US and Chinese hyperscalers in the ownership and control of critical internet infrastructure and the strategies and operational needs that have driven this shift. These incl…
Networks of power: Media and internet concentration, platform capitalism, and the future of democracy
This essay introduces the Global Media and Internet Concentration Project (GMICP), and some of its findings as well as ten articles by project contributors that make up this special double issue of the International Communication Gazette . It begins by setting the topic of media and internet concentration within the long durée of communication and capitalism, reviews a slice of the contemporary literature on the topic, and then presents the proje…
Roundtable Discussion of Emerging Technology Companies and Transcultural Challenges
The conference and special issue of The Trajectory of Emerging Media and Technology Companies at the Journal of Transcultural Communication explore how transnational media and technology corporations transform global communication. We leveraged various analytical tools to examine the companies’ structure, the country-specific advantages, regulation methods and development dynamics, media system models, and the transcultural implication for busine…
The Struggle for Control in the Age of Imperialism vs the Belle Époque of Liberal Internationalism and the Modern World Economy in Communications History
This chapter identifies the core elements of global communication in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and shows that they were more global and organized as a system than previously thought. These elements included, for example, investment and ownership, corporate identity, international and national laws, the careers of experts and engineers, views of modernization, and imperial strategy. The onslaught of World War I threw all of this into…
Vampire squids, ‘the broken internet’ and platform regulation
Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix have come under intense criticism for acquiring undue influence on the media, economy, society and democracy. Google and Facebook’s business models, especially, are cast as a form of ‘vampire economics’ responsible for the crisis of journalism and upending the media industries. Many media scholars argue that since the platforms increasingly function like media companies, media policy should b…
The internet and the European market” from a multidisciplinary perspective: A “round-doc” discussion
David Howarth, Francesca Musiani, Julia Pohle and Dwayne Winseck were invited to discuss the main topic of this special issue, “The internet and the EU market.” This conversation at the crossroads of several research areas (communication studies, sociology, science and technology studies and political science) brought together leading experts who shared their experience, research and expertise on the internet, European integration, governance iss…
Making Media: Production, Practices, and Professions
Media Concentration in the Age of the Internet and Mobile Phones
Crisis or Transformation? Debates over Journalistic Work in Canada
Background There is a broad recognition that journalism is facing difficult times in Canada and internationally. Analysis This article reviews the literature on the state of journalism and then focuses on one element of the perceived crisis of journalism in the Canadian context: claims that the number of employed journalists has fallen sharply in recent years. Using data from Statistics Canada and the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the…
The political economy of Chinese internet companies: Financialization, concentration, and capitalization
The rapid growth of the internet in China has been propelled by the Chinese government’s push to develop the country’s information infrastructure and its tight control over the internet. The most recent stage of internet development in China, however, has been driven by a three-way dynamic between the State, internet companies, and international finance capital. This relationship has yielded three internet giants—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent—that …
The Geopolitical Economy of the Global Internet Infrastructure
According to many observers, economic globalization and the liberalization of telecoms/internet policy have remade the world in the image of the United States. The dominant roles of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have also led to charges of US internet imperialism. This article, however, argues that while these internet giants dominate some of the most popular internet services, the ownership and control of core elements of the internet infr…
Political Economy
The political economy of communication (PEC) takes the media, Internet, and telecommunications industries—for example the structure of their markets, technologies, rules, laws and polices, patterns of use—as objects of analysis. PEC examines the communication and media industries as a cluster of associated technologies set within an institutional context of business arrangements, policies, laws and regulations, established technologies, and arran…
Broadcasting Empire: The BBC and The British World, 1922–1970
Simon Potter's past contributions to media history have been path-breaking and seminal. Two of my favorites—News and the British World (2003) and Webs, Networks and Systems (2007)—are essential rea
New Zealand's Ultra-Fast Broadband Plan: Digital Public Works Project for the Twenty-First Century or Playfield of Incumbent Interests
This article examines the development of telecommunications, media and internet in New Zealand and the prospects for the government's Ultra-Fast Broadband and Rural Broadband initiatives. Several factors are identified that could contribute to consolidating the success of recent efforts: increasing telecommunications competition since 2006, a recent growth spurt in internet and mobile wireless use, an improved regulatory environment and the rise …
Weak Links and WikiLeaks
Weak Links and WikiLeaks: How Control of Critical Internet Resources and Social Media Companies’ Business Models Undermine the Networked Free Press
In his seminal piece on WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler (2011; also see Benkler’s chapter in this volume) makes a compelling case for why WikiLeaks is a vital element of the networked fourth estate and why we should view its harsh treatment by the US government as a threat to the free press. As he says, the case embodies a struggle for the soul of the Internet, a battle that is being waged through both legal and extralegal means, with major corporate a…
Submarine Telegraphs, Telegraph News, and the Global Financial Crisis of 1873
The development of submarine telegraph systems and telegraph news -- the global media of their time -- in the late-nineteenth century deserve study for many reasons, not least because they were front and centre in the global financial crisis of 1873 and fit the criteria used to define speculative bubbles remarkably well. The sharp leap in the amount of capital investment and the boom in submarine telegraph construction from 1869 to 1875 are two i…
The Political Economies of Media and the Transformation of the Global Media Industries
The Political Economies of Media: The Transformation of the Global Media Industries
Some advocates and more than a few critics have misconstrued the political economy of media as a unified field of inquiry. The authors from this volume, by contrast, draw from a more diverse stream of the schools of thought signified by this tradition: Neoclassical Economics, Radical Media Political Economy, Schumpeterian Institutional Political Economy, and the Cultural Industries School. The book as a whole is as alert to developments in our ma…
Network nation: Inventing American telecommunications
Network nation: inventing American telecommunications, by Richard R. John, Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010, viii + 520 pp., £29.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-6740-2429-8
Financialization and the “Crisis of the Media”: The Rise and Fall of (Some) Media Conglomerates in Canada
New media have expanded the size of the media economy without cannibalizing the economic base of traditional media. The current woes facing some media primarily reflect a short-term, cyclical decline in advertising revenue caused by the economic downturn, the accumulated results of media consolidation, and the financialization of the media. The latter process saw vast sums of capital investment in the creation of massive media conglomerates based…
The Global Media and the Empire of Liberal Internationalism, Circa 1910–301
This article briefly sketches the rise of the global media system after the mid-1860s before turning to the transformation of that system during the First World War and until the end of the 1920s. In particular, we look at how technological changes, especially the development of wireless and, by late 1926, short-wave radio, were dealt with by the companies that ran the world's vast network of undersea cables, news organizations and governments. W…
The State of Media Ownership and Media Markets: Competition or Concentration and Why Should We Care
This article presents a global overview of the state of communications media ownership and markets. The primary issue at stake is whether or not markets and ownership are becoming more or less concentrated. After reviewing contrasting views on this issue, I suggest that the question turns on whether or not we consider ‘numerical diversity’ (the number of channels available in any given area) versus ‘source diversity’ (a measure of the number of m…
Information Operations `Blowback: Communication, Propaganda and Surveillance in the Global War on Terrorism
The US's adoption of the broad doctrine of `information operations' (IO) in 2003 put information and media strategies on a par with conventional means of military power and made them pivotal to achieving `full-spectrum dominance'. This article focuses on the role of IO in shaping the global media ecology and in the battle for hearts and minds, especially in Muslim-majority countries. However, the author also argues that the impact of such operati…
Communication and empire: Media markets, power and globalization, 1860—1910
This article focuses on the formation of the `global media system' from 1860 to 1910. It begins with a critique of conventional knowledge in international communication and focuses on three themes: first, the rise of the global media; second, how markets, states and imperialism shaped the global media; and third, how the global media developed as a series of multinational cartels — powerful `private structures of control' through which corporate …
Communication and Empire: Media, Markets, and Globalization, 1860–1930
Filling in a key chapter in communications history, Dwayne R. Winseck and Robert M. Pike offer an in-depth examination of the rise of the global media between 1860 and 1930. They analyze the connections between the development of a global communication infrastructure, the creation of national telegraph and wireless systems, and news agencies and the content they provided. Conventional histories suggest that the growth of global communications cor…
The political economy of Chinese internet companies: Financialization, concentration, and capitalization
The rapid growth of the internet in China has been propelled by the Chinese government’s push to develop the country’s information infrastructure and its tight control over the internet. The most recent stage of internet development in China, however, has been driven by a three-way dynamic between the State, internet companies, and international finance capital. This relationship has yielded three internet giants—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent—that …
Netscapes of power: Convergence, consolidation and power in the Canadian mediascape
Grounded in a study of the Canadian mediascape, this article argues that trends toward media ownership consolidation are having a fundamental impact on broadcasting and the evolution of cyberspace as a whole. I argue that current trends reflect the rise of what we can call ‘Machiavellian media’ - communication and information systems saddled with three tasks: building the information society; populating cyberspace with workers/citizens/users; and…
The State of Media Ownership and Media Markets: Competition or Concentration and Why Should We Care
This article presents a global overview of the state of communications media ownership and markets. The primary issue at stake is whether or not markets and ownership are becoming more or less concentrated. After reviewing contrasting views on this issue, I suggest that the question turns on whether or not we consider ‘numerical diversity’ (the number of channels available in any given area) versus ‘source diversity’ (a measure of the number of m…
The Geopolitical Economy of the Global Internet Infrastructure
According to many observers, economic globalization and the liberalization of telecoms/internet policy have remade the world in the image of the United States. The dominant roles of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have also led to charges of US internet imperialism. This article, however, argues that while these internet giants dominate some of the most popular internet services, the ownership and control of core elements of the internet infr…
Contradictions in the democratization of international communication
The New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) is exhausted and the `free flow of information' doctrine has been brought back to life, despite persistent inequalities in global communication and the failure to significantly democratize the international communications system. This article maps the rise, fall and resuscitation of the free flow of information doctrine. It also presents evidence illustrating that people's access to basic …
Vampire squids, ‘the broken internet’ and platform regulation
Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix have come under intense criticism for acquiring undue influence on the media, economy, society and democracy. Google and Facebook’s business models, especially, are cast as a form of ‘vampire economics’ responsible for the crisis of journalism and upending the media industries. Many media scholars argue that since the platforms increasingly function like media companies, media policy should b…
The Politics of Global Media Reform, 1907–23
In contrast to contemporary discussions of globalization and the rise of the global media that see these as fundamentally new phenomena, recent research suggests that the rise of the global media system can be traced back to a period between, roughly, the 1860s and 1920s. During this era the outlines of a global media system became apparent as a worldwide network of cable communications arose to support international markets, the expansion of glo…
Pursuing the Holy Grail: Information Highways and Media Reconvergence in Britain and Canada
This article shows that media convergence has always been a historical possibility but was foreclosed by private industry and/or governments intent on preventing cross-media combinations. In contrast, the current push to bring about information highways in Britain and Canada promotes rather than prevents media reconvergence. Given the uncertainties surrounding new media, three potential evolutionary paths are suggested: the emergence of `informat…
Crisis or Transformation? Debates over Journalistic Work in Canada
Background There is a broad recognition that journalism is facing difficult times in Canada and internationally. Analysis This article reviews the literature on the state of journalism and then focuses on one element of the perceived crisis of journalism in the Canadian context: claims that the number of employed journalists has fallen sharply in recent years. Using data from Statistics Canada and the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the…
Communication and empire: Media markets, power and globalization, 1860—1910
This article focuses on the formation of the `global media system' from 1860 to 1910. It begins with a critique of conventional knowledge in international communication and focuses on three themes: first, the rise of the global media; second, how markets, states and imperialism shaped the global media; and third, how the global media developed as a series of multinational cartels — powerful `private structures of control' through which corporate …
Illusions of perfect information and fantasies of control in the information society
This article introduces the idea of ‘risk societies’ to highlight how conventional views of the information economy are confounded by the productivity paradox, uncertain demand for new information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the heterogenous qualities of information. Confronting these realities, the communication industries are using monopolization strategies, surveillance, and technological design in their, often elusive, attempts…
From Communication to Democratic Norms: Reflections on the Normative Dimensions of International Communication Policy
The North American Free Trade Agreement (1992) and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (1993) fundamentally affect UNESCO and International Telecommunications Union attempts to promote global communications equity. Essentially, NAFTA and GATT shield communication policies from citizens, and shift international communication policy out of UNESCO and the ITU. In so doing, these agreements institute a transnational politics of `limited democr…
The Global Media and the Empire of Liberal Internationalism, Circa 1910–301
This article briefly sketches the rise of the global media system after the mid-1860s before turning to the transformation of that system during the First World War and until the end of the 1920s. In particular, we look at how technological changes, especially the development of wireless and, by late 1926, short-wave radio, were dealt with by the companies that ran the world's vast network of undersea cables, news organizations and governments. W…
Information Operations `Blowback: Communication, Propaganda and Surveillance in the Global War on Terrorism
The US's adoption of the broad doctrine of `information operations' (IO) in 2003 put information and media strategies on a par with conventional means of military power and made them pivotal to achieving `full-spectrum dominance'. This article focuses on the role of IO in shaping the global media ecology and in the battle for hearts and minds, especially in Muslim-majority countries. However, the author also argues that the impact of such operati…
Broadcasting Empire: The BBC and The British World, 1922–1970
Simon Potter's past contributions to media history have been path-breaking and seminal. Two of my favorites—News and the British World (2003) and Webs, Networks and Systems (2007)—are essential rea
Submarine Telegraphs, Telegraph News, and the Global Financial Crisis of 1873
The development of submarine telegraph systems and telegraph news -- the global media of their time -- in the late-nineteenth century deserve study for many reasons, not least because they were front and centre in the global financial crisis of 1873 and fit the criteria used to define speculative bubbles remarkably well. The sharp leap in the amount of capital investment and the boom in submarine telegraph construction from 1869 to 1875 are two i…
Back to the future: Telecommunications, online information services and convergence from 1840 to 1910
Space Warc: A new regulatory environment for communication satellites
The ITU Space WARC in 1985 and 1988 was charged with re-evaluating the "first come first serve" premises of the international satellite regulatory regime and developing measures consistent with the principles of "guaranteed" and "equitable" access. This article situates the conference in its historical context, discusses the achievement of a minimalist version of "guaranteed access" through the adoption of the allotment plan, but finds the regula…
Critical Media and Communication Studies Today. A Conversation
This article documents a conversation between us that was first published in parallel on our two blogs http://dwmw.wordpress.com and http://fuchs.uti.at/blog. The conversation deals with our assessments of the status of Critical Media and Communication Studies today. We discuss the work of Dallas Smythe, how to study and assess Google, research dimensions of Critical Political Economy of the Media, how important each of these dimensions should be…
Space Warc: A new regulatory environment for communication satellites
The ITU Space WARC in 1985 and 1988 was charged with re-evaluating the "first come first serve" premises of the international satellite regulatory regime and developing measures consistent with the principles of "guaranteed" and "equitable" access. This article situates the conference in its historical context, discusses the achievement of a minimalist version of "guaranteed access" through the adoption of the allotment plan, but finds the regula…
A Social History of Canadian Telecommunications
To appreciate the implications of recent government and regulatory decisions advancing competition in certain local network and long-distance telecommunications services, new regulatory and pricing mechanisms, and even an entirely new legal framework, it is necessary to recover the historical origins of the regulatory concepts and industry structures that are being deregulated out of existence, or said to be altered by technological circumstances…
Power Shift: Towards a Political Economy of Canadian Telecommunications and Regulation
This article appraises attempts by some researchers to read a “power shift” thesis into recent regulatory decisions in Canadian telecommunications. While such arguments are predicated on a radical transformation of political and economic power brought about by technological and regulatory change, this article demonstrates that these assertions are without warrant. Instead, evidence is presented showing that recent developments—regulatory, economi…
Canadian Telecommunications: A History and Political Economy of Media Reconvergence
This paper discusses key concepts in telecommunications policy: common carriage, natural monopoly, universal service, and price setting. Three crucial points are made. First, in light of historical practices that created and sustained boundaries between the media industries, contemporary trends toward reconvergence need to be seen, mainly, as a consequence of economic, legal, and political factors -- not technology. Second, the governing discours…
From Communication to Democratic Norms: Reflections on the Normative Dimensions of International Communication Policy
The North American Free Trade Agreement (1992) and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (1993) fundamentally affect UNESCO and International Telecommunications Union attempts to promote global communications equity. Essentially, NAFTA and GATT shield communication policies from citizens, and shift international communication policy out of UNESCO and the ITU. In so doing, these agreements institute a transnational politics of `limited democr…
Contradictions in the democratization of international communication
The New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) is exhausted and the `free flow of information' doctrine has been brought back to life, despite persistent inequalities in global communication and the failure to significantly democratize the international communications system. This article maps the rise, fall and resuscitation of the free flow of information doctrine. It also presents evidence illustrating that people's access to basic …
Pursuing the Holy Grail: Information Highways and Media Reconvergence in Britain and Canada
This article shows that media convergence has always been a historical possibility but was foreclosed by private industry and/or governments intent on preventing cross-media combinations. In contrast, the current push to bring about information highways in Britain and Canada promotes rather than prevents media reconvergence. Given the uncertainties surrounding new media, three potential evolutionary paths are suggested: the emergence of `informat…
Reconvergences: A Political Economy of Telecommunications in Canada
Back to the future: Telecommunications, online information services and convergence from 1840 to 1910
Illusions of perfect information and fantasies of control in the information society
This article introduces the idea of ‘risk societies’ to highlight how conventional views of the information economy are confounded by the productivity paradox, uncertain demand for new information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the heterogenous qualities of information. Confronting these realities, the communication industries are using monopolization strategies, surveillance, and technological design in their, often elusive, attempts…
Netscapes of power: Convergence, consolidation and power in the Canadian mediascape
Grounded in a study of the Canadian mediascape, this article argues that trends toward media ownership consolidation are having a fundamental impact on broadcasting and the evolution of cyberspace as a whole. I argue that current trends reflect the rise of what we can call ‘Machiavellian media’ - communication and information systems saddled with three tasks: building the information society; populating cyberspace with workers/citizens/users; and…
The Politics of Global Media Reform, 1907–23
In contrast to contemporary discussions of globalization and the rise of the global media that see these as fundamentally new phenomena, recent research suggests that the rise of the global media system can be traced back to a period between, roughly, the 1860s and 1920s. During this era the outlines of a global media system became apparent as a worldwide network of cable communications arose to support international markets, the expansion of glo…
Toward a Political Economy of Culture: Capitalism and Communication in the 21st Century
Canadian Newspaper Ownership in the Era of Convergence
Canadian Newspaper Ownership in the Era of Convergence, Walter C. Soderlund and Kai Hildebrandt, Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta, 2005, pp. 194.This timely book contributes to ongoing debates in Canada about media ownership. The opening chapters summarize government responses to concentrated media ownership since the 1970s and survey some academic studies on the issue. The study's carefully compiled data on the influence of changes in ow…
Communication and Empire: Media, Markets, and Globalization, 1860–1930
Filling in a key chapter in communications history, Dwayne R. Winseck and Robert M. Pike offer an in-depth examination of the rise of the global media between 1860 and 1930. They analyze the connections between the development of a global communication infrastructure, the creation of national telegraph and wireless systems, and news agencies and the content they provided. Conventional histories suggest that the growth of global communications cor…
The State of Media Ownership and Media Markets: Competition or Concentration and Why Should We Care
This article presents a global overview of the state of communications media ownership and markets. The primary issue at stake is whether or not markets and ownership are becoming more or less concentrated. After reviewing contrasting views on this issue, I suggest that the question turns on whether or not we consider ‘numerical diversity’ (the number of channels available in any given area) versus ‘source diversity’ (a measure of the number of m…
Information Operations `Blowback: Communication, Propaganda and Surveillance in the Global War on Terrorism
The US's adoption of the broad doctrine of `information operations' (IO) in 2003 put information and media strategies on a par with conventional means of military power and made them pivotal to achieving `full-spectrum dominance'. This article focuses on the role of IO in shaping the global media ecology and in the battle for hearts and minds, especially in Muslim-majority countries. However, the author also argues that the impact of such operati…
Communication and empire: Media markets, power and globalization, 1860—1910
This article focuses on the formation of the `global media system' from 1860 to 1910. It begins with a critique of conventional knowledge in international communication and focuses on three themes: first, the rise of the global media; second, how markets, states and imperialism shaped the global media; and third, how the global media developed as a series of multinational cartels — powerful `private structures of control' through which corporate …
The Global Media and the Empire of Liberal Internationalism, Circa 1910–301
This article briefly sketches the rise of the global media system after the mid-1860s before turning to the transformation of that system during the First World War and until the end of the 1920s. In particular, we look at how technological changes, especially the development of wireless and, by late 1926, short-wave radio, were dealt with by the companies that ran the world's vast network of undersea cables, news organizations and governments. W…
Financialization and the “Crisis of the Media”: The Rise and Fall of (Some) Media Conglomerates in Canada
New media have expanded the size of the media economy without cannibalizing the economic base of traditional media. The current woes facing some media primarily reflect a short-term, cyclical decline in advertising revenue caused by the economic downturn, the accumulated results of media consolidation, and the financialization of the media. The latter process saw vast sums of capital investment in the creation of massive media conglomerates based…
The Political Economies of Media and the Transformation of the Global Media Industries
The Political Economies of Media: The Transformation of the Global Media Industries
Some advocates and more than a few critics have misconstrued the political economy of media as a unified field of inquiry. The authors from this volume, by contrast, draw from a more diverse stream of the schools of thought signified by this tradition: Neoclassical Economics, Radical Media Political Economy, Schumpeterian Institutional Political Economy, and the Cultural Industries School. The book as a whole is as alert to developments in our ma…
Network nation: Inventing American telecommunications
Network nation: inventing American telecommunications, by Richard R. John, Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010, viii + 520 pp., £29.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-6740-2429-8
Submarine Telegraphs, Telegraph News, and the Global Financial Crisis of 1873
The development of submarine telegraph systems and telegraph news -- the global media of their time -- in the late-nineteenth century deserve study for many reasons, not least because they were front and centre in the global financial crisis of 1873 and fit the criteria used to define speculative bubbles remarkably well. The sharp leap in the amount of capital investment and the boom in submarine telegraph construction from 1869 to 1875 are two i…
Political science (34 works) · Economics (27 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (21 works) · Business (20 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Law (17 works) · Engineering (13 works) · Media studies (13 works)