My (Global) Media Studies

What we commonly refer to as “global media studies” or “global communication studies” still struggles to live up to its name. Mercifully, the field appears to have exited the suffocating paradigmatic monoliths of the past, opening up space for theoretical and methodological experimentation and for studies grounded in a geosocial locus but without predetermined outcomes. At the same time, the field is painstakingly coming to terms (to speak optimistically) with its Western ethos and location. Most parts of the world contribute mainly case research framed by Anglo-American, French, or German theory. Other approaches rarely become theoretical guideposts, with the notable exception of Latin American cultural theory (itself with unequivocal European influences). This “weak” internationalization is clearly caused by the precariousness of institutions of knowledge production in much of the world and the lack of (required) instruction in languages other than English (sometimes French or German) in the West, especially in the United States. “Strong” internationalization would require the integration of theoretical ideas and historical experiences from the non-West in knowledge production not only in the West but also about the West, with corresponding linguistic and cultural competences. As I have argued elsewhere (Kraidy 2005), if American studies has managed to make this issue central to its development, a field that calls itself “global communication studies” has no excuse not to

Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media

CARGC Paper 8, “Vamping the Archive: Approaching Aesthetics in Global Media,” by CARGC Postdoctoral Fellow, Rayya El Zein, is based on El Zein’s CARGC Colloquium and draws its inspiration from Metro al-Madina\u27s Hishik Bishik Show in Beirut. CARGC Paper 8 weaves assessments of local and regional contexts, aesthetic and performance theory, thick description, participant observation, and interview to develop an approach to aesthetics in cultural production from the vantage of global media studies that she calls “vamping the archive.”https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/1007/thumbnail.jp

Mediating Possibility after Suffering: Meaning Making of the Micro-political through Digital Media

CARGC Paper 9, “Mediating Possibility after Suffering: Meaning Making of the Micro-political through Digital Media,” by CARGC Postdoctoral Fellow, Samira Rajabi, is based on Rajabi’s 2018 CARGC Colloquium. Using three empirical case studies from Instagram, Rajabi examines the Trump administration’s 2017 travel ban as a traumatic experience and its digital mediation. First exploring a general understanding of trauma as it relates to global media studies, she then develops the notion of “symbolic trauma” to understand how Iranian-Americans mediated the travel ban’s effects.https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_papers/1008/thumbnail.jp

Beyond normative dewesternization: examining media culture from the vantage point of the Global South

This article examines five dominant conceptualizations of “the Global South” in the field of media and communication studies, and more specifically in the subfields of (1) comparative media studies, (2) international communication or global media studies, and (3) development communication. Engaging with the broader calls made by a number of scholars since the early 2000s to “dewesternize,” “decolonize,” or “internationalize” the field, I argue that the Global South continues to be theorized from the vantage point of the Global North. Instead of understanding the Global South on its own terms, scholarship frequently appreciates the role of media and communication only insofar as it emerges from, represents the negative imprint of, or features the active intervention of the Global North. Such accounts have failed to acknowledge the agency of the Global South in the production, consumption, and circulation of a much richer spectrum of media culture that is not a priori defined in opposition to or in conjunction with media from the Global North. In advocating for a shift from media systems to media cultures, I hope to contribute to an approach that practices media and communication studies from the Global South, grounded in the everyday life experiences of ordinary people but always situated against the background of crucial processes such as neoliberalization, which have not only had drastic implications for the division of labor between the state and market in the area of media and communication but have also produced radical changes in the lives of the majority of people living in the Global South

'Preditors': Making citizen journalism work

Although there is great interest in citizen journalism services that harness user-generated content, the continuing contribution of professional staff who coordinate such efforts is often overlooked. This paper offers a typology of the work of the professional "preditors" who continue to operate at the heart of "pro-am" journalism initiatives. It shows that their work takes place along four dimensions – content work, networking, community work and tech work. It suggests that this is a structural change in journalistic practice, which has implications for journalists' professional identity and journalism education

Convergence and Disjuncture in Global Digital Culture

The question “Is there a global culture?” fueled heated debates in the 1980s and 1990s, when intellectual opponents grappled with the sociopolitical and cultural consequences of globalization. Deploying notions of dependency, imperialism, homogenization, and hybridization, dueling thinkers espoused rival scenarios of cultural domination, mixture, and resistance. A quarter century later, with the explosion of digital expression around the world, it is time to revisit the debate and ask: Is there a global digital culture

International Communication, Ethnography, and the Challenge of Globalization

This article articulates media ethnography with international communication theory in the context of globalization. It explores the history and regional trajectories of media ethnography, as well as anthropology’s epistemological and political issues of representation that have become relevant to media studies. The authors argue that rethinking the limits and potential of media ethnography to address cultural consumption also necessarily involves considering how ethnography can serve to engender a vision of international communication theory grounded in the practices of everyday life. This reformulation is crucial at a time when some media scholars celebrate difference via microassessments of postcolonial locales and the plurality of cultures without attempting to consider global structural concerns. In fact, the authors argue, if media ethnographies are rigorously developed, they can offer international communication theory the material to bridge the gap between meaning and structure without losing site of the complexity, context, and power imbalances inherent in processes of globalization

Convergence and Disjuncture in Global Digital Culture: An Introduction

In the 1980s and 1990s, the question “Is there a global culture?” fueled heated debates as intellectual opponents debated the social, political, economic, and cultural consequences of globalization. Guest-edited by Marwan M. Kraidy, this Special Section of the International Journal of Communication by global communication scholars revisits the discussion on global culture in light of the digital revolution. Originally presented at CARGC’s second Biennial Symposium in April 2016, these articles do not pretend to provide a comprehensive answer to the existence or lack thereof of a global digital culture. Rather, they consider this question as an intellectual provocation to revisit how the universal relates to the particular, the global to the local, the digital to the material. Questions guiding these articles include: How do networks transmute individual autonomy and the sovereignty of the body? How is digital culture fomenting disjuncture across the globe in dissident, marginal, or rogue formations? How is the digital affecting the ways people work and play, how they experience and judge beauty, and how they protest? Most fundamentally, does digitization herald a new chapter in how we understand ourselves? To read this special issue of International Journal of Communication in full, visit http://ijoc.org