![]()
Part I
Contextualising contra-flow
![]()
Chapter 1
Mapping global media flow and contra-flow
Daya Kishan Thussu
In his magisterial work The Information Age, Manuel Castells has argued that flows dominate contemporary life: āour society is constructed around flowsā, he writes, āflows of capital, flows of information, flows of technology, flows of organisational interactions, flows of images, sounds, and symbolsā (Castells, 2000:442). In an increasingly networked global society such flows have shown extraordinary growth in direction, volume and velocity. My aim in this chapter is to attempt a mapping of media flows, both as mainstream commercial commodities to be consumed by heterogeneous global audiences, and as alternative messages and imagesāemanating from a wide range of actorsāfrom anti- and alter-globalisation activists to revisionist radicals circulating on an emerging āalternative Internetā (Atton, 2004).
My focus is on the global flows and contra-flows of visual media, mainly television and film, as, despite the exponential growth of the Internet in the last decade, it was being used only by about 15 per cent of the worldās population in 2006, while television and film had a much larger audience base. The chapter proposes a typology to divide the main media flows into three broad categories: global, transnational and geo-cultural. It then goes on to examine what it terms as the ādominant flowsā, largely emanating from the global North, with the United States at its core; followed by contra-flows, originating from the erstwhile peripheries of global media industriesādesignated āsubaltern flowsā. While celebrating the global circulation of media products from a wider range of hubs of creative and cultural industries, the chapter emphasises the disparities in the volume and economic value of such flows in comparison to the dominant ones and cautions against the tendency to valorise the rise of non-Western media, arguing that they may reflect a refiguring of hegemony in more complex ways.
Multi-vocal, multi-directional, multimedia
In the late 1990s, the UNESCO World Culture Report argued that media globalisation had increased Western cultural influence but noted that it also triggered possibilities of other models based on ādifferent cultural, institutional and historical backgroundsā¦such alternatives are likely to multiply in the era of globalisation, in spite of appearances, which may paradoxically witness greater diversity than uniformityā (UNESCO, 1998:23).
The global media landscape in the first decade of the twenty-first century represents a complex terrain of multi-vocal, multimedia and multi-directional flows. The proliferation of satellite and cable television, made possible by digital technology, and the growing use of online communication, partly as a result of the deregulation and privatisation of broadcasting and telecommunication networks, have enabled media companies to operate in increasingly transnational rather than national arenas, seeking and creating new consumers worldwide. With the exception of a few powers such as the United States, Britain and France, whose media (particularly broadcasting, both state-run and privately operated) already had an international dimension, most countries have followed a largely domestic media agenda within the borders of a nation-state.
Gradual commercialisation of media systems around the world has created new private networks that are primarily interested in markets and advertising revenues. Nationality scarcely matters in this market-oriented media ecology, as producers view the audience principally as consumers and not as citizens. This shift from a state-centric and national view of media to one defined by consumer interest and transnational markets has been a key factor in the expansion and acceleration of media flows: from North to South, from East to West, and from South to South, though their volume varies according to the size and value of the market.
The US-led Western media, both online and offline, and in various formsāinformation, infotainment and entertainmentāare global in their reach and influence (Bagdikian, 2004; Boyd-Barrett, 2006; Thussu, 2006). Given the political and economic power of the United States, its media are available across the globe, if not in English then in dubbed or indigenised versions. As its closest ally, Britaināitself a major presence in global media, particularly in the field of news and current affairsābenefits from the globalisation of Americana. The only non-Western genre with a global presence is Japanese animation (and this would not have been possible without the economic underpinnings of the worldās second largest economic power). These represent what might be termed as ādominant media flowsā. Though some peripheral countries have emerged as exporters of television programmes and films (Sinclair et al., 1996), the USA continues to lead the field in the export of audio-visual products. From news and current affairs (CNN, Discovery) through youth programming (MTV), childrenās television (Disney), feature films (Hollywood), sport (ESPN) to the Internet (Google), the United States is the global behemoth. One result of the privatisation and proliferation of television outlets and the growing glocalisation of US media products is that American film and television exports witnessed nearly a five-fold increase between 1992 and 2004 (see Figure 1.1).
The convergence of television and broadband has opened up new opportunities for the flow of media content. As US-led Western media conglomerates have regionalised and localised their content to extend their reach beyond the elites in the world and to create the āglobal popularā, many Southern media organisations have benefited from synergies emerging from this glocalisation process. Some have skilfully used their position within a media conglomerate, drawing on technological and professional expertise to grow into global operators. In addition, the globalisation of Western or Western-inspired media has contributed to the creation of professional careers in media and cultural industries. The localisation of media content and the outsourcing of digital media for transnational corporationsāfrom Hollywood post-production to animation and digital data managementāhave provided the impetus for the formation of important global hubs for creative industries: by 2006, for example, India had emerged as a key destination for outsourcing media content (UNESCO, 2005a).
A second layer of international media players may include both private as well as state-sponsored flows. The Indian film industry (popularly referred to as Bollywood) and the Latin American telenovelas are the two major examples of transnational global flows that operate in a commercial environment. The South Africa-based, pan-African network M-Net is another example of such transnational and regional communications. Among the state-supported flows we can include Euronews, the 24/7 multilingual news consortium of Europeās public service broadcasters, TV5 and Radio France Internationale, aiming at the francophone market. Other transnational actors may include the Arab news network Al-Jazeera, the pan-Latin American TV channel Televisora del Sur (āTelevision of the Southā, Telesur) based in Venezuela, and the round-the-clock English-language global television channel, Russia Today (RTTV), intended to provide news āfrom a Russian perspectiveā, launched in 2005. The expansion of CCTV-9, the English language network of China Central Television, reflects the recognition by the Beijing authorities of the importance of the English language as the key to success for global commerce and communication and their strategy to bring Chinese public diplomacy to a global audience. These originators of transnational media flows have a strong regional presence but are also aimed at audiences outside their primary constituency. These can be categorised as representing āsubaltern flowsā (see Table 1.1 over page). As one recent study of Al-Jazeera concluded: āThe information age is upon us and in the decades ahead we can expect only more Al-Jazeeras, adding to an ever greater torrent of information, as regional ideas spread around the world and become globalā (Miles, 2005:426).
A third category of geo-cultural media caters to specific cultural-linguistic audiences, which may be scattered around the world. The Chinese television channel Phoenix and the pan-Arabic entertainment network MBC are examples of media representing what may be labelled as āgeo-cultural flowsā,
Table 1.1 A typology of media flows
Dominant flows | Contra-(subaltern) flows |
Global | Transnational | Geo-cultural |
Hollywood | āBollywoodā | Phoenix |
MTV | Al-Jazeera | Zee TV |
Disney | Telenovelas | TRT-International |
CNN | TV5 | AI-Hayat |
Discovery | Telesur | Baidu.com |
BBC | Radio France Internationale | MBC |
ESPN | CCTV-9 | NHK World TV |
Google | RTTV | islamonline.net |
CNBC | Euronews | Roj TV |
Wall Street Journal | M-Net | |
Japanese animation | Korean films | |
aimed largely at diasporic populations, which may not necessarily be defined solely by languageāfor example, a network such as Indiaās Zee TV is watched by second-generation British Asians who may not have competency in Hindi. The emerging transnational and geo-cultural networks both represent contra-flows and may operate in both dimensions.
The extension of satellite footprints and the growth of Direct-to-Home (DTH) broadcasting have enabled Southern media networks to operate across the globe, feeding into and developing the emergent ādiasporic public spheresā (Appadurai, 1996). With the acceleration of movements of populations around the world, primarily as a result of economic globalisation, major geo-cultural markets based on languages such as Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Turkish and French are becoming increasingly prominent in transnational communication. Here again a combination of state-supported and privatised media flows is discernible. The state-run Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) has been operating an international channel TRT-INT as well as TRT-AVRASYA TV (later renamed as TRT-TĆRK) specifically f...
