Beyond Globalisation

My paper Beyond Globalisation: Rethinking the Scalar and the Relational in Global Media Studies has just been published in Global Media Journal: Australian Edition.

Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the World Communications Association conference in July 2007, the Seoul Symposium on Mobile Communication in October 2007, and the International and Intercultural Communication in the Age of Global Media conference at Monash University in August 2008.

Thanks to Hart Cohen for his support with this publication, and to Caroline Hatcher, Song Gi-Baek and Ron Gallagher for their invitations to present at these events.

The abstract for this paper is below, and the full paper can be accessed here.

This paper traces how the concept of globalisation has been understood in media and communications, and the ongoing tension as to whether we can claim to be in an era of ‘global media’. A problem with this discussion is that it continues to revolve around a scalar understanding of globalisation, where the global has superseded the national and the local, leading to a series of empirically unsustainable, and often misleading, claims. Drawing upon recent work in economic and cultural geography, I will argue that a relational understanding of globalisation enables us to approach familiar questions in new ways, including the question of how global large media corporations are, global production networks and the question of ‘runaway production’, and the emergence of new ‘media capitals’ that can challenge the hegemony of ‘Global Hollywood.’

Understanding what is happening in Iran

In trying to understand what has happened in Iran since the election results came through, there is a need to avoid two temptations of the Western observer following this through the Western media:

1. The temptation to assume that people in countries where there is anti-Western feeling only vote for leaders who express that feeling because they are manipulated by the media and the government. Not only does this ignore the extent to which manipulation occurs in Western democracies; it also obliterates the significance of the history of colonialism and the manifest inequalities in the global system;
2. The temptation to align with the candidate who people support who seem to be "most like us". This can become particularly easy if they also make use of the Internet, Facebook, My Space, You Tube, Twitter etc. Not surprisingly, this will be the younger middle class.

While both of these are possibilities with the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran this weekend, the extensiveness and spontaneity of the uprisings that have followed suggest that a real fault line has emerged in post-1979 Iranian society, and that the suppression of popular feeling has reached a critical mass.

Soem of the online coverage of this has been excellent. Via Andrew Sullivan's site, there is an analysis of the official figures from Nate Silver that suggests that these figures verge on the completely impossible. Juan Cole points to problems with the assumption that the poor voted for Ahmadinejad, and the vote for Mir-Hossein Mousavi is an urban middle class phenomenon (which has become the quasi-official line). Interesting discussion on this site as well.

Excellent coverage from the BBC and John Simpson in Teheran. Not so CNN which has been attacked for failing to pay attention to the story as it was breaking very publicly and very visibly.

Aside from SBS, the Australian coverage has generally been poor, despite the significant number of Iranians living, working and studying in Australia.

Beyond Globalization

Below is my presentation to the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University in a very wintry Melbourne.

It generated a very lively discussion, particularly round the question of whether I underestimate the role of conscious global agency in management of the world-system, as argued by Hardt & Negri and by Immanuel Wallerstein.

There was also an interesting question asked by Professor Sung Gwan Park from the Seoul National University, Korea, about whether comparable global data exists on media consumption to match that available from UNESCO and other sources on media production. If anyone knows good sources on this, I would be interested to know more.

From: tflew, 1 hour ago

Monash 2008 Terry Flew

View SlideShare presentation (tags: runaway culture geography media)

Presentation on media globalization arguing for more insights from cultural and economic geography.


SlideShare Link

ICA Presentation, and more on Neoliberalism

I presented my ICA paper this morning in Montreal. Too many paper, not enough time, as tends to happen at ICA, with six papers in just over one hour. The paper was called "Rethinking Global Media: Creative Diversity and Media Dispersal". The final paper will be sent to the International Journal of Communication shortly, but a draft is available from the ICA web site. An earlier version presented in Seoul last year can be found at the QUT ePrints web site.

It was in a session that also had papers on the Lineage online games from Korea and on the Nigerian video boom, both of which fitted the theme of my paper well.

In the question time, the all embracing trope of "neoliberalism" appeared again. The final question was "Aren't we missing the elephant in the room here, which is the global dispersal of neoliberal ideology by the dominant Western powers?". Before I could say "No", the session came to a close with that question.

I had the good fortune to meet Simon Ellis, the Head of Section for Science, Culture and Communication Statistics at the session, and we had coffee afterwards. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics is headquartered in Montreal. Among the issues we discussed, we agreed that I should have said no to the last question, as the dispersal of global media production and distribution is supported by the UNESCO data. He also pointed to some flaws with the recent UNCTAD Creative Economy report, which I have referenced in a previous post.

UNESCO are hosting a session tomorrow that I am looking forward to. There is also a session on the impact of NAFTA on the cultural and creative industries.