This paper contrasts the role of UNESCO as a global forum, one with a particular remit for dialogue and tolerance, with the more limited attention given to it by local actors. UNESCO forums, declarations and principles are argued to be significant for their capacity to be diffused as common sense in communications and cultural policy-making. This capacity to create shared norms has made UNESCO both important and contentious, with its New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) deliberations in the late 1970s and early 1980s leading the United States and the United Kingdom to withdraw from the organisation. The article considers how UNESCO has shaped its policy interventions in the wake of NWICO, and more latterly the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001) in both the cultural and creative industries and in information and communication technology (ICT).
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