Global Media and Communication

Cross-national media freedom comparison is often based on Western-biased indices published by organizations such as Freedom House or Reporters Without Borders. Additionally, Eurocentric analysis and comparison are endorsed by the application of hegemonic media systems models to compare media environments. This study argues that cultural contextualization is indispensable to challenging the prevailing Eurocentrism. Comparison of the ‘connotative’ contexts of Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand demonstrates the analytical and explanatory power of inductively inferred variables to understand the formation of political communication. The comparison highlights factors which go beyond the comparison of media systems using predefined categories and models.

Using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis, this study investigates how two Chinese Communist Party newspapers frame the same story to international and national audiences. The empirical findings illustrate how propaganda techniques originally developed and applied in Western and democratic countries have been adopted and refined by newspapers in a state-run Communist press environment to create frames that best align with the cultural and political predispositions of domestic and international readers. The findings suggest Chinese authorities understand Western communication theory and appreciate how that theory can be applied to disseminate messages to both foreign and domestic audiences.

Celebrity talk shows are perceptive illustrations of how they are rooted in profusion of flattery for the bourgeois class, and applaud class consciousness to the extent of normalizing it. This paper encapsulates the trends and patterns in the media sphere through the talk show, Simi Selects India’s Most Desirable and how it flourished as a celebrity’s brand augmenting platform. The study reads into commodification of content, links it to capitalism and also how it is a celebrity branding or rebranding platform. Using the talk show as an apparatus, this work integrates the political economy of communication approach with Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).

As elsewhere in the world, Arab news websites depend on revenue streams built on the commercialization of social media platforms. Reliance on these platforms has created a major structural shift in news production, distribution and monetization, which has triggered serious concerns about fake news, misinformation and quality journalism. This paper investigates the extent to which four online-only news websites abide by quality journalism in the context of increasing platformization of digital news production. We use qualitative document analysis to systematically analyse the contents of a representative sample from four news websites from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia.

This project ethnographically explores how individuals in a small Japanese town negotiate the changes brought about by the increased omnipresence of digital technologies in their everyday lives. It delves into the affective dimensions of individuals’ imagination of a global digital order, of the impact of digital media on social organization, and of their own sense of place in a globalized world. It demonstrates that while digital media’s connective affordances help reduce the sense of isolation stemming from the community’s geographic position, conflicting feelings of disconnection, alienation and loss simultaneously arise in its members’ broader relationship to the digital world.