Transnational Media

Concepts and Cases

Suman Mishra, Rebecca Kern-Stone, Suman Mishra, Rebecca Kern-Stone

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781119394600, 9781119394594
• eBook ISBN: 9781119394570
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A broad and accessible introduction to national and transnational media

Transnational Media: Concepts and Cases provides a clear and engaging overview of media communication from a global and a region-based perspective. Rather than focusing on just complex theories and industry-specific analyses, this unique book offers an inclusive, comparative approach to both journalism and entertainment media—introducing readers to the essential concepts, systems, transnational influences, and power dynamics that shape global media flow. Broad coverage of different media forms from Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania offers country-based and transnational perspectives while highlighting examples of media trends in television, radio, film, journalism, social media, music, and others. 

Promoting a balanced, multipolar exploration of transnational media, this innovative book discusses topics such as media concentration, the cultural, political, and economic impact of media, and the primary centers of new and traditional media activities. Chapters organized by geographic region offer instructive pedagogical features—including case studies and essays, and illustrations, maps and charts—that strengthen understanding of distinctive and emerging practices in the production, distribution, and consumption of media products.

• Explores a wide range of global media topics, infrastructures, cultures, and political-economic climates
• Written in an engaging, relatable, and easy to understand style
• Covers major aspects of journalism and various forms of entertainment media
• Organized by regions of the world to reflect a global perspective
• Includes newly-written case studies by international scholars from each region

Designed for undergraduate and graduate courses in comparative media analysis, international media and communication, and related areas of study, Transnational Media: Concepts and Cases is an indispensable resource for colleges and universities that are internationalizing their curriculum to meet the needs of an increasing globalized world.

1
Introduction

Rebecca Kern‐Stone and Suman Mishra

This edited book is designed to meet the introductory needs of undergraduate and graduate courses in international media, international mass communication, global media transnational media, comparative media analysis, and the like. More broadly, it aims to fulfill the needs of colleges and universities who are internationalizing their curriculum to meet the needs of an increasingly globalized world through introduction of international‐oriented courses. Books that exist on the subject tend to be highly theoretical and often focus on journalism or entertainment media or specific regions of the world. In this book we have provided a broader perspective on national and transnational media in an easy to read accessible form and covered different media forms from Africa, Asia (including the Middle East), the Americas, Europe, and Oceania.

In media studies, concepts such as global communication, transnational communication, international communication, trans‐border communication, world communication, inter‐cultural communication, and so on have been used to highlight the communication and flow of information across boundaries. Each of these terms has its own dimension and complexity (Kamalipour 2007). We use the term “transnational” to recognize media's role in communication and relevance both within a nation and also across the transnational arena.

Thus, this book provides a country‐based perspective along with a transnational perspective. It is important to note that it is impossible to cover every region of the world and every country within a region; nevertheless, the book covers media from a wide array of countries from around the globe and highlights its national and transnational dimensions.

Chapters are arranged so that important foundation material is presented at the beginning of the book with regional and country discussions in the remaining chapters. The following two chapters introduce and discuss key transnational media concepts and theories and media systems. The first introduces concepts like globalization and the historical development of transnational media and communication theories in the area, also referred to in general as theories of international communication. It highlights the major strengths and weaknesses of these theories and changes over time. Last, it addresses the many complexities of today's world to provoke thought and discussion for future theories in this area. The chapter on media systems introduces how media is directly integrated with political, economic, and cultural conditions. These discussions are meant to be introductory and are presented not as highly theoretical models, but as background information to understand how media function around the world.

The book is then divided by regions of the world, namely: Africa, the Americas, Asia (including the Middle East), Europe, and Oceania. These regions have been defined based on the UN's Standard Country and Area Codes Classifications, revised October 2013 (UN Stats). In each regional section of the book, we have first provided some basic information about selected countries from the region, including a brief description of their media, and then provided more in‐depth country‐specific media cases as well as transnational influences of media from that country.

We have invited international scholars to write essays or case studies on specific countries as we wanted to include more international voices in this book. The essays and case studies offer country‐specific examples of media trends in television, radio, films, journalism, social media, and music, among others. As a whole, this book explores and answer the following questions:

1. How can media be understood on a global scale within and between nations?
2. How do changing global conditions – including economic, political, and cultural – impact media and how are they impacted by media in transnational information flow?
3. What are some of the primary centers of transnational media activities, both new and old?

1.1 Understanding Transnationalism and Related Trends

Transnationalism engages in political, cultural, social, and economic initiatives that extend beyond the borders of nation‐states. A nation‐state is a geographic locale that has defined borders where people share similar identities. These identities may be cultural in that they involve religion, food, traditions, clothing, history, or other factors that bring groups of people together. The identities may also be nationalistic or have nationalism, in that the people of the nation see themselves as part of a geographic place where they live, work, raise families, and engage with government affairs. As a result, there evolves a sense of allegiance with place. While not necessarily politically motivated, people of a nation‐state feel a belonging to the place they call home. Nation‐states, however, usually have fluid borders. Citizens, in most cases, are able to come and go from their home country and travel. Their view of the world expands beyond their local geography and culture, resulting in new curiosities about global understandings. Under transnationalism, global movement and interactions are what create a more integrated global society.

For transnationalism to occur a few additional factors need to exist. First, there needs to be “regular and sustained social contacts over time across national borders” (Portes et al. 1999, p. 219). In other words, regular trips across borders – whether business or pleasure – that involve activity and transaction, facilitate the concept of transnationalism. The trend of transnationalism is not new. While the term might be, transnationalism has existed since people have crossed borders to engage in political, cultural, social, or economic transactions. It can be tied to the history of globalization, which will be discussed in Chapter 2. Essentially, it could be argued that transnationalism is a long‐established trend that only recently was given a name. Second, as Portes et al. (1999) note, transnationalism began with the individual. It is at the local level that individuals sought opportunities across borders, whether for political motivations – as a need to escape government policies or regimes, or economic motivations – as a way to obtain goods or connections for business, for example. Displays of nationalism in sport, music, art, and traditional dress are all presented by the individual. Transnationalism does not only exist at the level of the individual: it begins with the individual but works to embolden larger institutions. These institutions may be government, corporation, education, religion, or of course mass media. Mass media can function on both the local and public level, which would be considered more nationalistic, or on the transnational level. Both are important to how people gain information about the world around them.

Examples of transnationalism can be seen at a macro level through global statistics; for example, in population changes, economic changes, immigration flows, global travel, and technology. All these changes are intrinsically linked with growth, production and consumption of media, global flow of information, patterns of media adoptions, cultural influences and changes, and so on. For example, many leading media companies from America and Europe today, for example Bertelsmann, are investing in the media markets of developing countries like India, China, Brazil, and Nigeria because of their size, and this provides a growth opportunity for these companies as well as growth of international m...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Contributor Biographies
• 1 Introduction
• Part I: Setting the Foundations: Key Concepts
• Part II: Africa
• Part III: The Americas and the Caribbean
• Part IV: Asia
• Part V: Europe
• Part VI: Oceania
• Index
• End User License Agreement