International Communication: Continuity and Change
by Daya Kishan Thussu

Review by
Robbin D. Crabtree,
Associate Professor and Chair,
Department of Communication, Fairfield University

 This review should be prefaced with some background information. When I developed my course, “Globalization, Communication & Culture,” I was teaching master’s students at a large state university. I used Tomlinson’s excellent book, Globalization and Culture, and added a large packet of supplementary readings. Because I was teaching in a traditional communication program (interpersonal, intercultural, organizational, political--journalism/mass communication was a separate department), I felt compelled to develop a course that would cover not only media-related issues, but also issues that would overlap with the main curricular areas. Thus, the course focused on migration issues, international organizations and transnational corporations, political economy of media and culture, and substantially on the impact of globalization on cultural identity and sovereignty, indigenous languages and cultures, and the environment. The students responded very well; many cited the course as the most challenging and most intriguing of their master’s program. Then I moved to an undergraduate-only program, with the specific task of developing a “Global Media” course (the name imagined by those colleagues who hired me to teach at Fairfield University).

In order to adapt the course to undergraduates in a media studies curriculum sequence, I had to choose a textbook that undergraduates could use, and that would provide the framework for the new course, now called “Globalization, Media, and Culture.” Daya Kishnan Thussu’s book, International Communication: Continuity and Change, was this book. There are other textbooks that have since become available related to global media issues; some are single-author texts (e.g., McPhail’s Global Communication: Theories, Stakeholders, and Trends) and others are edited volumes (e.g., Kamalipour’s Global Communication). Nevertheless, I still prefer Thussu’s book as a framework for undergraduate courses in global media and communication.

Thussu begins with an exploration of the historical context of international communication, and this is vital to my course. There is no field that changes as rapidly as this one, yet without an historical context, it’s difficult for students to connect the material to that of other courses (e.g. the introduction to mass communication course) or to their core classes in (primarily) U.S. and Western history. Thussu balances the descriptive, theoretical, and analytical aspects of the issues very well and sets up a fascinating discussion of the dialectical trends of democratization and corporatization that characterize global media history. This is precisely the theme that I want running through my course, and I can weave together easily the broad strokes of Thussu’s book with the more particular cases and research presented through supplementary readings.

The next chapter, “Approaches to Theorizing International Communication,” again facilitates links back to earlier courses in the curriculum (Intro to Comm Theory, Intro to Mass Comm) and takes it to the international level. The way Thussu traces international mass communication theory is very compatible with the ways I teach this material, namely from an historical perspective, examining the ways theorizing evolved with changing historical and political circumstances. The sections on theories such as modernization, dependency, hegemony, and so on, are short, but there is sufficient framework provided to expand upon in class lecture.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Thussu’s book is the ways it reveals how texts are polysemous. From my perspective, Thussu’s detailed historical and descriptive accounts of privatization (chapter 3) and convergence (chapter 4) provide overwhelming evidence for critical and political economy conclusions about global media. In other words, I believe Thussu argues that the history of global media is one of the oligopolization of technologies and industries and the simultaneous colonization of nations and cultures. My students, however, do not find his prose polemical in the least, nor his presentation of information remotely biased. I find this fascinating, and that it serves my goals as the instructor. I want to present information historically and descriptively, in ways that do not leave increasingly-conservative (though alarmingly uninformed) students defensive. Yet I, too, argue that the history of global media is one of oligopolization, neo-colonization, and hegemony. If I used a text that approached the material in a patently ideological way, I know I would have difficulty reaching many of these students. Thussu’s approach leads to “the facts speaking for themselves,” and thus students seem more likely to participate in the analysis and come to the same (or accept) the conclusions I propose. Moreover, the specific companies presented (CNN, Disney, ESPN) are very compelling to students, and they remember what they’ve read, able to bring these examples to bear as evidence or examples in future discussions.

The fifth chapter, on cultural globalization, is not as incisive regarding the cultural imperialism/homogenization debates, though the examples (MTV, Zee TV) remain vivid and useful. I am able to bring in supplementary readings that explore the competing theories: empirical evidence of limited effects, neo-marxist perspectives on cultural imperialism and hegemony, and the more postmodern/postcolonial notion of hybridity. To extend this discussion, Thussu provides a particularly valuable exploration of “contraflow” (chapter 6) that demonstrates the complex ways some nations and non-Western media organizations have been incorporated into the global media landscape. These examples point to ways that developing nations and regional alliances can rupture the framework of Western media domination. Nevertheless, most of these efforts remain commercial, and while they disrupt Western hegemony in some interesting ways, they often reinforce the strength of global capitalism in the production of all things cultural.

After an intriguing discussion of the internet and digital divide, Thussu ends on this note of warning: “If global peace and prosperity for all have to go beyond merely being platitudes, international communication will have to be harnessed to promote a people-centered capitalism to check the corporate colonization of the planet.” I remain unconvinced that such a people-centered capitalism exists, or that the answer lies in capitalism at all, but I appreciate the ways Thussu brings these issues to my class. His book lends itself well to both critical and dialectical approaches to the study of global media (and would not be problematic for a more administrative approach), and provides an accessible text that undergraduate students find both useable and compelling.

Return to Book Review List | Return to Top of Review