Latin America Media and the Limitations of the Media ‘Globalization’ Paradigm

Abstract

The study of media globalization has often tripped over muddled definitions. As an analytical concept, media globalization has proven to be frustratingly flexible and porous. Although it is one of the fundamental ideas of the current age, it remains too ambiguous (Caselli, 2012). The mini-industry of research produced in the past decades has not settled these matters. More than a clear set of questions and theories, media globalization is an appealing buzzword to be praised or criticized that is the inevitable backdrop for all media-related processes in contemporary societies; the über-trend that defines our times. Globalization is used to refer to different developments such as the interconnectivity among media platforms, the planetary expansion of media corporations, the international spread of commercialism and consumerism, the communication infrastructure that nurtures and facilitates cosmopolitanism and global solidarity, the cross-border traffic of content, and so on. Applied to media policy making, globalization refers to ‘a shift from the nation state to the global’ (Mansell and Raboy, 2011: 4; also see Iosifidis, 2011).