Dear Colleagues:

Welcome! The 6th Annual Global Fusion Conference of 2006 held in downtown Chicago, IL presented extraordinary scholarship done by graduate students from a variety of backgrounds, institutions, and interests.  I am pleased to present 10 outstanding papers and invited papers from the graduate student competition of Global Fusion 2006, which was held under the able guidance of Dr. Yahya Kamalipour and Dr. Lee Artz. All papers of the Global Fusion paper competition have been blind-refereed by readers from AEJMC, BEA and ICA. Further information about the Global Fusion Conference can be found at:  http://globalfusion.siu.edu/ . 

The diverse interests of our contributors represent the diverse responses needed to address issues concerning Nation, State, and Culture in the Age of Globalization, our conference theme. Representative of this is our top paper, Framing the Biotechnology Debate authored by Hannah Reinhart, Master's candidate at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Her examination of  how the subject of agricultural biotechnology is framed in editorials and letters to the editor in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1997 to 2006 explores issues that range from media framing to the complex concerns brought about by globalization. Reinhart’s paper was selected as the best among many worthy articles through the same rigorous blind review process as faculty submissions.

Young Soo Shim penned the second-place paper titled, The Impact of the Internet on Students Face to Face Communication, which is a quantitative analysis detailing that our interactions with media do have an effect on the time communicators spend in dyadic communication. Sueen Noh's  work, Intersecting Gender and Race in Globalization: Beyond the Evolution from Cultural Imperialism to Cultural Hybridity, is our third place work. Noh's work takes us on a journey, laying the foundation through the exploration of hybridity and its connection to modern pop-culture in Asia while also connecting this concept to her feminist voice. Omolola Fumiyawa contributed our fourth-place paper, A Place on the Edge:  Fumiyawa's research is personal and poignant, inspired by her own experience with students' limited understandings of her homeland - Africa. Through examining online media articles, she shows us just how limited information presented to readers is. Rounding out our selection of top papers is Tania Cantrell's Killing US Softly with Their Story: New York Times Coverage of the My Lai and El Mozote Military Massacres. Cantrell's work examines the intersections of press freedom, international investigative journalism, and U.S. military power, information that is especially poignant for our times.

In the invited section of Global Media Journal, five graduate student authors have been asked to present their work on specific topics of global importance. Aziz Douai presents a timely piece analyzing the Danish cartoon controversy. HIs paper, The Danish Cartoon Controversy’s Coverage in Arab Media and the Culture Clash Paradigms presents an interesting analysis of a timely but seemingly reoccurring theme - the clash of civilizations. Benjamin Eveloff presents us with Memo: Where is Downing Street? … An Opinion Page Analysis. Eveloff's object of analysis is different than most, as he has concentrated specifically on how the Opinion Page presented information on the Downing Street Memo, if any information was presented at all.

Other authors presented us with information that is important, but often overlooked. Govind Shanadi presents us with the work, Right-Wing Hindu Nationalism on the World Wide Web: An Analysis of HinduUnity.org, which gives us timely information concerning what messages are conveyed to the Hindu diaspora and how these messages are conveyed. Lynda Fork Kintz presents us with her work, An Overview of Current Media Practices and Trends in West Africa: A Case Study Analysis of theMedia of Ghana and Nigeria. This analysis puts into context the interplay of globalized media (Transnational Media Corporations) and local media. Finally, Olesya Venger's  work Transformation of Ukrainian and Serbian Media Identities during the Velvet Revolutions: The Impact of the Global Media presents us with much needed analysis concerning important changes that have happened to Eastern European media.

All of the articles presented in this edition of the Global Media Journal attest to the level of scholarship seen at the Global Fusion Conference of 2006. Timely, current, and poignant - these articles are important additions to currently published scholarly work.

Evelyn Bottando
Communication and Creative Arts
Purdue University Calumet

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