Theorizing Global Media as Global Discourse

Ulrika Olausson

Abstract


Within the field of global media studies, there is an ongoing conflict between the globalists, who emphasize the media’s pertinent role in globalization processes, and the skeptics, who stress the continuing stability of the nation-state paradigm as regards the media. Nonetheless, these two positions share one fundamental view on global media: that the proper objects of study are those media whose global nature is defined in terms of geographic reach. In the discourse perspective theorized in this article, however, “globality” is instead viewed as a discursive feature. It is argued that the established understanding of global media as media of transnational reach needs to be complemented with a discourse approach―focusing on the very knowledge production of “the global.”

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