Communications Media, Globalization and Empire

Description

In Communications Media, Globalization and Empire , an international team of experts analyze and critique the political-economy of media communications worldwide. Their analysis takes particular account of the twin, sometimes conflicting pressures of globalization and ‘neo-imperialism’. The first is commonly defined as the dismantling of barriers to trade and cultural exchange, and responds significantly to lobbying of the world’s largest corporations, including media corporations. The second has to do with US pursuit of national security interests as response to ‘terrorism’, at one level and, at others, to intensifying competition among both nations and corporations for global natural resources. Global communications media underpin both phenomena, providing the communication infrastructures (physical hardware and operational software networks) including telephony, cable and satellite, as well as the informational, entertainment and advertising products that these facilitate and disseminate, and which hegemonically frame representations of the world.

Authors include: Oliver Boyd-Barrett (editor), Richard Gershon, Leise Hutchison, Geetika Jain, Kwangmi Kim, Jia Lin, Richard Maxwell, Mercedes Medina, Toby Miller, Graham Murdock, John Pauly, Granville Williams, Izabella Zandberg.

Biography

Oliver Boyd-Barrett is Director of the School of Communications Studies at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA, where he also holds a joint professorship in the Department of Journalism and Telecommunications.