Since 11 September 2001 we have seen the publication or resurfacing of books on globalization's harmful effects, on the dangers of religious fanaticism, and on the relationships between civilizations. The shock of the drama which took place on American soil appears to have reactivated interest in these subjects. Both in these works and in media debates, two fashionable perspectives often emerge in a bid to provide simplified, readily-understandable accounts of the international relations which underpinned 11 September's events and consequences. The first perspective is that of Jihad vs McWorld, the title of Benjamin Barber's book; the second is that of the Shock of Civilizations, from Samuel Huntington's book of that title. Barber's thesis is built around treating social and religious movements, which are opposed to economic and cultural imperialism, and the movement towards economic and cultural integration as two faces of the same threat to democracy. This does not, however, prevent Barber from setting these two movements in opposition, seeing in them irreconciliable antagonisms. Huntington, meanwhile, analyzes the civilisational and religious collision which, to him, explain Western liberalism's failure in the rest of the world. The two authors thus converge in their evaluation of of the communicational relationships between cultures, arriving at an opposition, or struggle, or Jihad against modernity that is promoted by ethnoreligious nationalisms, be these nationalisms local, as in Barber's case, or transnational, as in Huntington's. Instead, we suggest that these oppositions reveal only a small part of the reality of these movements, which are not simply the result of a refusal or a failure of modernity and democracy. Rather, these movements are the product of a series of complex historic processes which we propose to examine here in showing that Jihad sometimes stands with, not against, McWorld: the one need not mean negating the other.

Does television operate by reactivating the Lacanian mirror stage? That is the hypothesis explored in this article. A comparison of the televisual apparatus with Jacques Lacan's model suggests a specular play of imagos in what is very much a question of identification. In both apparatuses, the Other is interpellated by an identity to be incarnated. But where psychoanalysis describes a process whose endpoint is the formation of an autonomous personality, the televisual apparatus draws its subjects into a narcissistic trap that locks them into dependency. The televisual experience is in this sense regressive, privileging primary processes. The medium directs the viewer's identity in three ways. First, through the televisual apparatus, which assigns a place and role to the viewer. Second, via signs of recognition displayed by the medium to the viewer, allowing the viewer to know who he or she is expected to be. Third, through informational sustenance, supporting the viewer in this identity and building a coherent world around it to which the viewer can adapt.

This article examines cinema's figures of power and representation of the social bond. Grounded in an analysis of the Hollywood film Armageddon, the author interrogates how ideas of American “power” and “excellence” are represented via their incarnation in heroes of often-mythic stature. By looking at the figures of authority which the film portrays and the social roles they are led to take on, the author shows how they refer to an ideal model of the social bond. The author further explains how the figure of the “hero” is deployed in institutions and organizations that America cherishes—the family, the army, the techno-scientific complex, the government and, of course, the church. Behind these, it is the representation of power and, specifically, its manifestations through a fantasmatics which we call the “phantasmic real”, which are examined here. Is there a link between fiction and reality? How does “Hollywood” cinema contribute to technosociety's valorization? The article attempts to trace the beginnings of a response to these questions by reflecting on power and its representation through the figure of the hero in order to question, at bottom, the relationship between Hollywood cinema and the social bond.

This article reviews government research in the Chilean context dealing with media communications via an examination of texts published between 1995 and 2000, placing them in historic and institutional context. The article is part of a larger project which resulted in a masters thesis; the project's larger goal was to contribute to mapping the key reference points in Chilean communications research.

Changes to the mobile Internet framework and attempts to install 3G mobile are part of a process of radiocommunications-Internet convergence that helps highlight the evolution of socio-economic and club logics, and the role that these play in ongoing processes of globalization. Here we review the history of this convergence in four stages, starting with the integration of paging and Minitel, and ending with mobile multimedia messaging. The four-stage sequence leads to examine both pricing structures and inter-actor relationships, highlighting the idealized apparatus. The club logic is traced through the development of major strategic alliances that structure the relationships between the companies involved in this process of convergence.