Jonas Brendebach
I am a PhD candidate at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. I studied history and German literature at the Humboldt-University in Berlin and went on exchanges to the University of Cambridge during my BA and to Columbia University in New York during my PhD.
Following cultural history and global history approaches my research interests center around 19th and 20th century international politics, the history of international organizations, development thinking, planning, transnational media, the processes of globalization and decolonization, the history of spaces and circulations of knowledge.
My dissertation looks at the changing international landscape of the 1970s through the prism of an international organization, namely UNESCO. Instead of writing a conventional institutional history, it will take the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a observation point for an empirical global history. From this perspective, it traces national ambitions intersecting with internationalist claims to universality, different visions of world order, and technological progress that sparked development ideas and images of the future. To do so, this study revisits the largely forgotten debate on a “New World Information and Communication Order” (NWICO) that unfolded in and around UNESCO between the 1960s and the 1980s. The story of this debate can shed new light on what we understand as globalization as well as on the historic contexts of decolonization and the Cold War.
Following cultural history and global history approaches my research interests center around 19th and 20th century international politics, the history of international organizations, development thinking, planning, transnational media, the processes of globalization and decolonization, the history of spaces and circulations of knowledge.
My dissertation looks at the changing international landscape of the 1970s through the prism of an international organization, namely UNESCO. Instead of writing a conventional institutional history, it will take the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a observation point for an empirical global history. From this perspective, it traces national ambitions intersecting with internationalist claims to universality, different visions of world order, and technological progress that sparked development ideas and images of the future. To do so, this study revisits the largely forgotten debate on a “New World Information and Communication Order” (NWICO) that unfolded in and around UNESCO between the 1960s and the 1980s. The story of this debate can shed new light on what we understand as globalization as well as on the historic contexts of decolonization and the Cold War.
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11.02.2010, URL: https://docupedia.de/zg/Cold_War_Studies?oldid=75506.
Reviews by Jonas Brendebach
Call for Papers by Jonas Brendebach
Venue: European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy,
Deadline: 15 September 2015
Conveners: Jonas Brendebach (EUI), Martin Herzer (EUI), Heidi Tworek (Harvard/University of British Columbia)
Keynotes: Iris Schröder, (University of Erfurt), Glenda Sluga (University of Sydney)
International organisations throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are unimaginable without the media. People around the globe learned about international organisations and their activities largely through the media and images created by journalists, publicists, and filmmakers in texts, sound bites, and pictures. In many cases, the very existence and success of international organisations depended on media attention, communication, and publicity.
This conference explores how international organisations were communicated to the public via the media during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The conference aims to bring together two burgeoning, yet largely unconnected strands of research: the history of international organisations and media history.
The conference takes a deliberately expansive view of both international organisations and media. International organisations involve institutionalised cooperation in both looser and regional as well as highly institutionalised and global forms. This comprises ‘classic’ intergovernmental organisations such as the United Nations, but also the vast array of NGOs and other international fora. Media refers to newspapers, news agencies, radio, and television, but also to film, cinema, and photography.
The conference proposes four related fields of investigation.
(1) International organisations and the media. Publicity and media visibility played a crucial role for intergovernmental as well as nongovernmental international organisations. The League of Nations, the United Nations, or the European Communities devised public information strategies to attract, direct, or avoid media attention. NGOs drew on the powerful potential of media campaigns to promote the causes of international law, human rights, or environmentalism. What role did different international organisations attribute to various types of media? How did they work on their public image by influencing journalists and media coverage? In which circumstances did national governments and international organisations compete or cooperate in their communication to the media?
(2) The media and international organisations. For the media, international organisations represented new sources of information, new journalistic environments, and new topics to cover. How did individual or collective media actors adapt to the new hubs of internationalism in Geneva, New York, or Brussels? How did they position themselves vis-à-vis the morally charged ideas of liberal internationalism, European unity, or human rights, which functioned as raison d’être for many international organisations? How did they navigate between the dynamics of an international environment and national audiences?
(3) Infrastructures and politics of global media. International organisations became fora for debates on the standardization of transnational communication technologies and global norms of journalism and transborder media activities. What kind of technological and journalistic standards did international organisations promote? How did journalists, media companies, and national governments position themselves towards these standards? How did their cultural, social, and economic backgrounds determine their attitudes towards the social functions of the media, the desirability of international norms, or the relationship between governments and the media?
(4) Imagining a ‘global public sphere’ and transnational publics. The ideas of liberal internationalism were closely related to imaginations of a ‘global public sphere’ and a ‘global consciousness’. Similarly, many supporters of European integration came to see a European public sphere as a precondition for a democratic EU. Moreover, international organisations themselves became incubators for transnational publics in which international civil servants, diplomats, journalists, and interest groups debated international organisations’ activities. How did internationalist ideas of the ‘global public sphere’ evolve over time? What were the characteristics, scope, and durability of transnational publics based upon international organisations?
The conference will take place on 10-12 March 2016 at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy. Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered. We invite researchers of all stages to submit an abstract of 300 words (including name, paper title, institutional affiliation) and a CV to [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] by 15 September 2015.
11.02.2010, URL: https://docupedia.de/zg/Cold_War_Studies?oldid=75506.
Venue: European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy,
Deadline: 15 September 2015
Conveners: Jonas Brendebach (EUI), Martin Herzer (EUI), Heidi Tworek (Harvard/University of British Columbia)
Keynotes: Iris Schröder, (University of Erfurt), Glenda Sluga (University of Sydney)
International organisations throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are unimaginable without the media. People around the globe learned about international organisations and their activities largely through the media and images created by journalists, publicists, and filmmakers in texts, sound bites, and pictures. In many cases, the very existence and success of international organisations depended on media attention, communication, and publicity.
This conference explores how international organisations were communicated to the public via the media during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The conference aims to bring together two burgeoning, yet largely unconnected strands of research: the history of international organisations and media history.
The conference takes a deliberately expansive view of both international organisations and media. International organisations involve institutionalised cooperation in both looser and regional as well as highly institutionalised and global forms. This comprises ‘classic’ intergovernmental organisations such as the United Nations, but also the vast array of NGOs and other international fora. Media refers to newspapers, news agencies, radio, and television, but also to film, cinema, and photography.
The conference proposes four related fields of investigation.
(1) International organisations and the media. Publicity and media visibility played a crucial role for intergovernmental as well as nongovernmental international organisations. The League of Nations, the United Nations, or the European Communities devised public information strategies to attract, direct, or avoid media attention. NGOs drew on the powerful potential of media campaigns to promote the causes of international law, human rights, or environmentalism. What role did different international organisations attribute to various types of media? How did they work on their public image by influencing journalists and media coverage? In which circumstances did national governments and international organisations compete or cooperate in their communication to the media?
(2) The media and international organisations. For the media, international organisations represented new sources of information, new journalistic environments, and new topics to cover. How did individual or collective media actors adapt to the new hubs of internationalism in Geneva, New York, or Brussels? How did they position themselves vis-à-vis the morally charged ideas of liberal internationalism, European unity, or human rights, which functioned as raison d’être for many international organisations? How did they navigate between the dynamics of an international environment and national audiences?
(3) Infrastructures and politics of global media. International organisations became fora for debates on the standardization of transnational communication technologies and global norms of journalism and transborder media activities. What kind of technological and journalistic standards did international organisations promote? How did journalists, media companies, and national governments position themselves towards these standards? How did their cultural, social, and economic backgrounds determine their attitudes towards the social functions of the media, the desirability of international norms, or the relationship between governments and the media?
(4) Imagining a ‘global public sphere’ and transnational publics. The ideas of liberal internationalism were closely related to imaginations of a ‘global public sphere’ and a ‘global consciousness’. Similarly, many supporters of European integration came to see a European public sphere as a precondition for a democratic EU. Moreover, international organisations themselves became incubators for transnational publics in which international civil servants, diplomats, journalists, and interest groups debated international organisations’ activities. How did internationalist ideas of the ‘global public sphere’ evolve over time? What were the characteristics, scope, and durability of transnational publics based upon international organisations?
The conference will take place on 10-12 March 2016 at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy. Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered. We invite researchers of all stages to submit an abstract of 300 words (including name, paper title, institutional affiliation) and a CV to [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] by 15 September 2015.