International Media Communication in a Global Age

Guy Golan, Thomas Johnson, Wayne Wanta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135838829
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume provides a comprehensive examination of key issues regarding global communication, focusing particularly on international news and strategic communication. It addresses those news factors that influence the newsworthiness of international events, providing a synthesis of both theoretical and practical studies that highlight the complicated nature of the international news selection process. It also deals with international news coverage, presenting research on the cross-national and cross-cultural nature of media coverage of global events, in the interdisciplinary context of research on political communication, war coverage, new technologies and online communication. The work concludes with a focus on global strategic communications: in the age of globalization, global economies and cross-national media ownership, chapters here provide readers with some of the most up-to-date research on international advertising, public relations and other key issues in international communications.

With contributions from many of the leading scholars in the field of international media communication research, this collection presents a valuable resource for advancing knowledge and understanding of the complicated international communication phenomenon. It will be of value to upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in mass media and communication programs, and to scholars whose research focuses on global communication research.

Part I
The Determinants of International News Flow and Coverage

Introduction

International News Coverage and Americans’ Image of the World

Guy J. Golan, Thomas J. Johnson, and Wayne Wanta

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent end of the Cold War, the world has witnessed an unprecedented transformation of global politics and economics that was sparked by the emergence and applications of new communication technologies. As globalization redefined the basic axioms of 21st century society, scholars of international communications had to reexamine some of the very fundamental understandings of how the mass media operate in this new globalized world.

In his book, The World is Flat (2005), New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman outlined a new paradigm for understanding this so-called new flat world. He argues that globalization, along with a variety of factors, have made the world flat. In this flat world, knowledge-based industries can be assisted from any place in the world. So, for example, a software company that is based in the United States can hire software engineers from Russia and Israel for development, customer service representatives from India, accountants from Canada, and marketing firms from California and New York. Friedman argues that the flattening of the world has reshaped and redefined many of the very basic concepts of world economics, politics, and culture. Friedman identified several separate forces that led to the flattening of the world, including the fall of barriers, Internet browsers, open sourcing, out sourcing, off-shoring, supply chain logistics, the availability of information and digitalization.

One can argue that globalization has redefined international communication in several ways. First, it opened previously closed markets to conglomerate media corporations across the world. Second, the diffusion of high speed Internet and bandwidth has transformed the nature of international news content availability. Finally, the combination of globalized media conglomerates and the Internet/digital revolution has changed the very nature of the area in which global journalism and mass communication operate across the world (Pavlik, 2001).

The first proposition regarding globalization and media conglomerates was evident in the late 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of free markets. As former spheres of influence, nations opened their doors to foreign investors, and media conglomerates from all across the globe undertook ambitious corporate acquisitions into once impenetrable markets (Chan-Olmsted & Chang, 2003). Such business moves resulted in the growth of Newscorps not only in the North American market with the Fox network and most recently the Wall Street Journal but also into many nations across Asia and Europe. The Al-Jazeera Network rose from being a small channel in Qatar into one of the dominant news companies in the Middle East and surrounding region. Yet, conglomeration was not limited to newspapers and television networks. Sony International expanded into Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Several of the leading strategic communication giants such as Edelman and Grey International signed affiliation deals with industry leaders across the world.

The presence of international news bureaus and foreign correspondents also changed (Wu, 2000). However, recent developments in the expansion of blogging and user generated content seem to have transformed the very nature of the news selection process. Thanks to new technologies in cell phone video cameras and the wonders of the World Wide Web, ordinary people from every corner of the world can be transformed into video journalists at the snap of their mobile device and a quick upload onto YouTube. This phenomenon has become salient during recent years in such places as the Middle East, Africa, and South America where user generated content has been supplied to, and broadcast by, leading media outlets.

The changing sphere of international journalism not only influences the news selection process but also the very nature of global journalism. Globalization has now expanded readership and media viewing into vast international markets, where once journalists were localized into their own geographic area (Jin, 2007). Thus a local story shot in Atlanta for CNN can easily find its way to televisions in Bangladesh, Togo, and Uruguay. The expansion of the viewing and reader markets require journalists and mass communication practitioners to adhere to a more globalized perspective on reporting that may adhere to internationalism and cultural differences.

The current book aims to provide readers with some of the most up-to-date scholarship in the field of international communication. We brought together research from some of the leading scholars of international communications. Our book will provide readers with an in-depth empirical approach that will focus on some of the key issues that face international mass communication research. Of course, we are fully aware of the breadth of the field and realize that our project alone cannot cover every aspect of this multidimensional discipline.

The book is divided into three main sections. The first deals with new theoretical approaches to studying the field of international communication. Tsan-Kuo Chang argues that in this era of a quickly changing media landscape the study of cultural imperialism has become outdated. Chang examines several other approaches that may be more appropriate in studying Western influence on culture in the 21st century. Shelton Gunaratne adapts J. G. Miller’s living systems theory, a theory originally developed in biology, to suggest new ways to examine the subject matter and the research frame of international communication. Several of the chapters in part I focus on the determinants of international news flow and coverage. This area of research investigates some of the key news values that may shape the newsworthiness of international events. Several of the chapters in this section deal with key theoretical and methodological issues in the field of determinants research. In particular, scholars explore the integration of world system theory as a theoretical construct that may account for some of the international news. The article by Kuang-Kuo Chang and Tien-Tsung Lee, in particular, seeks to update factors influencing international news determinants since the end of the Cold War era. Yon Soo Lim and George A. Barnett explore how news determinants influence aid allocation and aid relations. Additionally, several of the chapters deal with such important methodological issues as the application of more robust linear and general linear models into research on the determinants of international news flow and coverage. For instance, Wayne Wanta and Guy J. Golan employ path analysis to explore the effect of news determinants on coverage of international elections. Finally, Guy J. Golan uses a generalized linear model to examine news determinants solely on country-based contextual variables.

Part II of the book deals with international journalism, particularly ways in which journalists frame the news, how credible readers perceive the news, as well as the influence of online news and blogging on the media environment. Shahira Fahmy addresses why the increase in the amount of foreign affairs coverage since 9/11 has not necessarily translated into more comprehensive and useful coverage. Similarly, Esther Thorson and Renee Kratzer explore data collected by the Project for Excellence in journalism to discus the important patterns and content of international news reported in the United States. Several authors explore how different nations frame the news. Kuang-Kuo Chang and associates explore contextual factors in how newspapers from six countries frame news about the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic. Salma I. Ghanem compares how newspapers from America, Egypt, Britain, and France framed the initial ground war in the War in Iraq. Similarly, Yusuf Kalyango compares the media in the United States and Uganda to see how they frame counterterrorism and factors that influence these frames. Thomas J. Johnson and Shahira Fahmy examine international coverage from the user’s perspective, exploring the degree to which individuals who have visited the English language Al-Jazaeera Web site have transferred their credibility judgments of the Web site to the Arab-language Al-Jazeera television network. Finally, two studies explore questions concerning convergent media technologies. Xiaopeng Wang expanded the study of international news flows to the online media environment by focusing on online media coverage in Australia. Wei Zha and David D. Perlmutter look at a popular Chinese blog “Eighteen Touch Dog Newspapers” to explore ways in which a blog supposedly devoted to canine issues can be a vehicle of dissent without incurring the wrath of the state.

Part III of our book deals with key concepts of strategic global communication, such as international public relations practices, ethics, international advertising, and global media ownership. Two authors suggest new theoretical approaches to improve the practice of public relations. Joon-Soo Lim introduces the integration-responsiveness grid model for optimizing multinational corporations’ international public relations strategies. Juan-Carlos Molleda and Alexander Laskin provide a comprehensive review of the public relations and international business literatures to offer evidence for effective organizational structure, strategies, and actions to manage conflicts or crises that originate in one country that transfer and have consequences for the organization’s headquarters or main host markets. Sooyoung Cho and Glen T. Cameron employed conflict management and crisis management strategies to examine how a South Korean company tried to communicate and manage a specific crisis in regards to nude images it was marketing through cell phones that portrayed a famous Korean actress as a “comfort woman,” those women who were used by the Japanese army as sex slaves during World War II. Paul S. Lieber and Colin Higgins, on the other hand, synthesized research on international public relations ethics, examining PR ethics in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Juan-Carlos Molleda and Marilyn Roberts examine Colombia’s strategic communication campaign to select and rebrand one of the world’s most famous icons, Juan Valdez. Ran Wei studied high school students in the United States and China and examined the role of advertising in cultivating a dependency relationship with the mobile phone. Zeny Sarabia-Panol did an experiment that examined reactions of Filipinos to advertising that featured models with physical impairments and ones that did not. Finally, Marius Dragomir discusses the trend toward concentration of media ownership in Europe and the problems inherent in this trend.

Fully aware of both the extensive breadth and the scope of the international communication research field, the current book serves as an introduction rather than a summary of some of the latest trends in global communication scholarship. As the ever changing nature of international communication continues to evolve, it is our hope that this book will help advance knowledge in the field of international communication for both students and scholars alike.

References

Chan-Olmsted, S. M., & Chang, B. H. (2003). Diversification strategy of global media conglomerates: Examining its patterns and determinants. Journal of Media Economics, 16(4), 213–233.

Friedman, T. L (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the 21st century. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,

Jin, D. Y. (2007). Transformation of the world television system under neoliberal globalization, 1983–2003. Television and New Media, 8(3), 179–196.

Pavlik, J. V. (2001) Journalism and new media. New York: Columbia University Press.

Wu, H. D. (2000). Systemic determinants of international news coverage: A comparison of 38 countries. Journal of Communication, 30(2), 110–130.

Chapter 1
Changing Global Media Landscape, Unchanging Theories?

International Communication Research and Paradigm Testing

Tsan-Kuo Chang

On May 25, the 2008 Cannes film festival awarded the French film Entre les Murs (“The Class”) the Palme d’Or as the best film among the 22 films in competition. This was the first time in 21 years that a French film had won the top prize at the Cannes international festival. Also, according to The Economist (“On-Screen Confidence,” May 31, 2008, p. 89), another French film, Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis (“Welcome to the Sticks”), “is set to overtake James Cameron’s Hollywood blockbuster, ‘Titanic,’ as the country’s all-time top box-office hit.” Given the significance of these two historical moments, The Economist opened its report from Paris this way: “The French film industry is more often given to introspective agonizing about American cultural imperialism [italics added] or the tyranny of the market than to self-congratulation” (p. 89,). In the wake of the two milestones, it remains to be seen whether French intellectuals and critics of U.S. media practices will breathe a collective relief over the passing of American cultural imperialism in France. It is not clear whether the characterization of American cultural imperialism by The Economist, a highly respected international magazine, implies that there are types of non-American cultural imperialism.

Nevertheless, what is significant, both theoretically and ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• PART I The Determinants of International News Flow and Coverage
• PART II The Language of International News
• PART III Strategic Global Communication