A Note from the Graduate Guest Editor for This Issue

Dear Colleagues:

Welcome to the graduate research section of the latest Global Media Journal. I have the pleasure of presenting the top refereed graduate student papers of Global Fusion 2005, hosted by Ohio University’s College of Communication in Athens, Ohio. Priscilla Karuru, of Ohio University, penned the top graduate student paper, Scoring for Social Change: Mathare Youth Sports Association Girls Team in Kenya. Karuru’s paper was selected as the best among many worthy articles through the same rigorous blind review process as faculty submissions. Her research explores the revealing intersection of girl identity and sport. Through a feminist lens, Karuru examines Kenya’s Mathare Youth Sports Association as a catalyst for social change in traditional female stereotypes and expectations in the region.

The next two refereed articles were also identified as award-worthy submissions through the peer-reviewed process. Jiali Ye’s (Georgia State University), Seeking Love Online: A Cross-cultural Examination of Personal Advertisements on American and Chinese Dating Websites, uses cross-cultural content analysis to investigate the role of gender and culture in mate selection on dating web sites. Ye discusses the striking differences between Chinese and American singles. In Cultural Proximity, Diasporic Identities and Popular Symbolic Capital: Taiwan Cultural Worker Qiong Yao’s Cultural Production in the Chinese Media Market, ShaoChun Cheng (Ohio University) interrogates the role of cultural proximity in the regional popularity of mediated works and explains how cultural proximity can be successfully employed in globalized cultural production.

You will also find outstanding papers presented by graduate students at the conference in the invited section of this edition. Joe Khalil (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) combines historical, political economic and ethnographic research to explore the shifts and processes of Arabian news channels, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, in News Television Transitions in the Arabian Gulf... Period of Transitions. Khalil examines the channels’ impact on the regional and global media landscape. In Reality Television Frames, Pro-U.S. Frames, and Episodes in the First 31 days of Iraq War News Coverage, Michael Todd (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) analyzes the first 31 days of U.S. news coverage of the Iraq War through the frames of reality television. His assessment identifies the news media as presenting the war to viewers through a lens of entertainment, much like reality television. Finally, Michael Koch (Ohio University) outlines the social, political and cultural issues implicated by sustainable development education in Telling the Feel-Good Story of the Decade: Potentials and Pitfalls of Education for Sustainable Development. Koch critically analyzes the discourse of this global issue and offers suggestions for improvement.

The graduate research summarized here examines global communication in its many forms and is evidence of the hard work of this diverse group of emerging scholars.

Sincerely,

Danielle M. Stern
Ohio University

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