Dialectical Spaces in the Global Public Sphere: Media Memories across Generations

A decade ago, CNN and MTV emerged as new types of 'global' players, initiating and supporting a new global transnational community of 'news junkies' and music cultures from New York, to Tokyo, to Buenos Aires and Los Angeles. Today, access to international news is not only available in many countries around the world, but international channels have multiplied and created 'imagined communities' (Anderson, 1983), affecting new political alliances, conventional journalism and - increasingly - national public spheres. The following research report will discuss new issues of globalization and focus on the impact of media-related globalization processes on 'life-worlds' in various countries

Public actors in new spaces: A case study of digital Malaysia in transnational public deliberation

This article examines the role of new transnational public actors and their influence on public deliberation processes in Malaysia. Malaysia is one of the world’s most social media-connected countries where online platforms greatly influence the Malaysian public sphere. Our study suggests considering digital news portals as specific ‘public actors’ since they enable new political debates in an otherwise fragile national public sphere. While national media are controlled by the state, digital news portals offer not only an alternative news perspective but are a stage for a diversity of voices. Furthermore, they link the Malaysian civic discourse to transnational political debates, such as human rights and ethnic interests. Results from eight in-depth semi-structured interviews with news journalists and editors of traditional media and independent digital news portals provide insights into their perceptions concerning the implications of digital news portals for new aspects of public discourse in Malaysia

Soft power, hard news:How journalists at state-funded transnational media legitimize their work

How do journalists working for different state-funded international news organizations legitimize their relationship to the governments which support them? In what circumstances might such journalists resist the diplomatic strategies of their funding states? We address these questions through a comparative study of journalists working for international news organizations funded by the Chinese, US, UK and Qatari governments. Using 52 interviews with journalists covering humanitarian issues, we explain how they minimized tensions between their diplomatic role and dominant norms of journalistic autonomy by drawing on three – broadly shared – legitimizing narratives, involving different kinds of boundary-work. In, the first ‘exclusionary’ narrative, journalists differentiated their ‘truthful’ news reporting from the ‘false’ state ‘propaganda’ of a common Other, the Russian-funded network, RT. In the second ‘fuzzifying’ narrative, journalists deployed the ambiguous notion of ‘soft power’ as an ambivalent ‘boundary concept’, to defuse conflicts between journalistic and diplomatic agendas. In the final ‘inversion’ narrative, journalists argued that, paradoxically, their dependence on funding states gave them greater ‘operational autonomy’. Even when journalists did resist their funding states, this was hidden or partial, and prompted less by journalists’ concerns about the political effects of their work, than by serious threats to their personal cultural capital

Inequality and Communicative Struggles in Digital Times: A Global Report on Communication for Social Progress

Originally the “Media and Communication” chapter of the International Panel on Social Progress, published by Cambridge University Press, we hope this version as a CARGC Press book will expand the reach of the authors’ vision of communication for social progress.https://repository.upenn.edu/cargc_strategicdocuments/1001/thumbnail.jp

Media, communication and the struggle for social progress

This article discusses the role of media and communications in contributing to social progress, as elaborated in a landmark international project ? the International Panel on Social Progress. First, it analyses how media and digital platforms have contributed to global inequality by examining media access and infrastructure across world regions. Second, it looks at media governance and the different mechanisms of corporatized control over media platforms, algorithms and content. Third, the article examines how the democratization of media is a key element in the struggle for social justice. It argues that effective media access ? in terms of distribution of media resources, even relations between spaces of connection and the design and operation of spaces that foster dialogue, free speech and respectful cultural exchange ? is a core component of social progress