Explaining Global Media: A Discourse Approach

Abstract

That communication technologies in general and the media in particular are essential ingredients in the process of globalization has long been a commonly accepted assumption in the social sciences (Thompson, 1995). The deterritorialized nature of new communication technology generated early idealistic ideas about the emergence of a “global village” (McLuhan, 1964), and in response to the rapidly increasing complexity of global communication infrastructures, theories about the rise of a “network society” (Castells, 1996) followed. Satellite technology has enabled the simultaneous distribution of news across nation-state borders, and transnational1 media networks such as CNN have “become emblematic of a world in which place and time mean less and less” (Hjarvard, 2001: 18). Transnational news services are believed to offer new styles and formats for journalistic practices, contributing to the loosening up of national identities, and arguments about an emerging “global public sphere” have been pursued (e.g. Volkmer, 2003). Thus, the media are allegedly key elements of the compression of time and space, one of the salient features of globalization (Harvey, 1989), and are viewed as both products of and significant contributors to the fluidity of globalization (Chalaby, 2003). However, these notions about the media’s pertinent role in globalization processes have also been fiercely challenged by quite a few media scholars, who instead emphasize the continuing stability and centrality of the nation-state paradigm. National propaganda is often present in transnational media as well, not least in CNN, as are stereotypical and negative depictions of the “others” (Hafez, 2009; Thussu, 2003). Given the existence of obstacles such as language barriers and the “digital divide,” which separates the “haves” from the “have nots” with regard not only to communication technology itself, but also to the skills necessary for using it, there are no real signs of a media network with the ability to constitute a global public sphere (Hafez, 2007). Severe scepticism concerning the notion of global media has also been expressed by scholars within the political economy tradition who claim that global media are in fact better described as Western or American media, and only contribute to maintaining Western dominance (e.g. Herman & McChesney, 1997). Some authors are critical of the very idea of globalization, of the way the concept has developed