· GLOBALIZATION According to Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus, globalization is "the process enabling financial and investment markets to operate internationally, largely as a result of deregulation and improved communications". I would like to add that this deregulation may not always be the cause but the effect of globalization. Globalization does not imply cultural homogenization (McGrew 1992: 65), but it does imply political interdependence. Policies that traditionally were considered "internal" will be affected by other countries (McGrew 1992: 88). The "currency of power" is transformed from military to economic capabilities (McGrew 1992: 88), since democracies (which are another advantage of improved communications) do not wage war on each other. McGrew also quotes Garret and Lange (McGrew 1992: 91): "Governments no longer posess the autonomy to pursue independent macroeconomic strategies effectively, even if they were to seek to do so." A world more diverse than nation states can control. This also applies to information. There are many world-wide problems that in this way motivate globalization, both as a way of controlling the uncontrollable and to some extent as a way to evade that control. Globalization is not mere interconnectedness, as McGrew claims (1992: 94), because such connecting has been going on since the first transatlantic telegraph cable was put in place in 1858, and global communications have only got better since. "Globalization" in our time is socio-political, naturally prompted by the advances that the globalization of communications (i.e. interconnectedness) has been offering to both individuals and nations for the past 140 years.
   · ELECTRONIC MEDIA Bardoel is the only one to make the distinction that I would like to have between "audiovisual" and "electronic" media, but mentions it only in passing. (1996: 285)
   · INFORMATION SOCIETY The society in which we live, basically. Information is so essential (to quote CNN hotel ads) to our lives that it permeates almost every profession there is. This can, of course, be the result of effectively used IT jargon (see below) and other changes of our perception of the world--"the computer is becoming the key symbol of the present. [...] Thus humans begin to think of themselves as 'information processors' and nature as information to be processed." (Lyon 1995: 66)--but it is nonetheless a reality that we all need to communicate in order to survive. This situation has been developing throughout the 1900s, and earlier still. (The information society has come a long way when a writer can speak of people "who cannot read or type" [Frederick 1993: 288].)
   · IT JARGON So many prophecies about the future start with assuming that some fad of the moment will continue forever and become more and more important. Words like "cyberspace", "information highways", "multimedia", "virtual reality" and "IT" show clear signs of overuse. These are catch phrases that in effect mean very little. "Cyberspace" has been around since the 1800s, when people started meeting on the "information highway" which was the telephone network (a kind of "Information Technology" if you will)--in a space where none of the parties was actually physically located. Peter Dahlgren defines cyberspace as "the vast universe created by the linkage of computers" (Dahlgren 1996: 59), which is a very practical definition for the word should the need to use it arise. "Multimedia" is simply several traditional media (text, sound, images, animation) consumed in parallel, like TV with a more powerful remote control. Computers have been doing this for a long time, more or less well; it is not news to the 1990s. "Virtual reality" is a computer simulation, but the expression was so catchy that almost anything to do with computers or information technology now can be called virtual by otherwise half-sane people (both Iain A Boal and Manuel Castells, for example) who are only almost joking.
   · INTERACTIVITY It is not just a catch phrase, but actually something which is new. Compared to the very sporadic phone calls that newsrooms get from readers or viewers, e-mail can be encouraged since it does not require any editors' time to simply receive the opinions. E-mail is also much more akin to letters, since it can be quoted--and in addition answered in the same form, when the editor has had time to compose an intelligent reply. (When a neo-nazi calls the newsroom at half past seven in the evening to object to the article about concentration camps and to abuse the journalist who wrote it, it is much more difficult to find words.)
   · JOURNALISM To seek, find, and edit information, with an aim to objectivity, perspective, diversity, and critique, offering the audience a reference point and a common language, having the time to look deeper and provide the background of events. Hunting, gathering, and cooking the information, if you will. Journalism makes it possible for all the people who do other things to keep up with events that would otherwise take too much time to sort out.