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International Communication at the Intersection of the Global & the Local

Review by
Lindita Camaj 
Indiana University

International Media Communication in a Global Age, edited by Guy J. Golan, Thomas J. Johnson, and Wayne Wanta. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010. ISBN: 9780415998994. 480pp.

International communication scholarship is gradually acknowledging the complexity of the contemporary international media environment, while accumulated literature points out the deficiencies of old paradigms to fully explain the dynamics of global communication. International communication processes are no longer understood in terms of a simple polarity between cultural imperialism and active audience approaches. However, scholars are also departing from the characterization of the international communication processes as part of an overriding world process of globalization. Rather, a new framework has emerged as an attempt to consolidate the polarization between the global and the local while grasping the complex contradictions and tensions between these two poles. Unlike previous paradigms, the new approach in international communication “recognizes and conceptualizes the technological developments, linguistic creolization, cultural hybridization, social decentralization, and political fragmentization that characterize contemporary international relations” (Kraidy, 2001, p.39).

“International Media Communication in a Global Age” edited by Guy J. Golan, Thomas J. Johnson, and Wayne Wanta falls in this line of research while elaborating the determinants of international news content and global strategic communication. The book chapters provide theoretical arguments and empirical evidence that challenge cultural imperialism, while avoiding to fully embracing the classical globalization framework. Instead, authors advocate and rely on the hybrid framework of “glocalization” to parcel out and explicate the complex dynamics of the multidirectional realities of current global communication, even though this is not a clearly stated goal by the editors. As Golan, Johnson, and Wanta claim in the introduction, this edited volume “aims to provide readers with some of the most up-to-date scholarship in the field of international communication.” Divided into three main sections, however, the book mainly explores new theoretical and empirical approaches to studying the international news content in terms of influences on news flow and news frames, and key concepts of strategic global communication.

The first part of this book opens with a critical examination of cultural imperialism theory. In Chapter 1, Chang questions the relevance of this theory to international communication research, based on familiar arguments of the advent of new information and communication technologies and the persistence of the autonomy of nation-states in the face of globalization. However, Chang does not “deny the existence of unequal flow of cultural products at the international level, nor the fact of continuing domination of a few countries in the global media landscape” (p.18). Rather, he emphasizes the need for multidisciplinary theories that account for the contemporary global interactions, even though he falls short of proposing new approaches to studying the field of international communication. In Chapter 2, Gunarante undertakes this task by adapting Miller’s “living system” theory from biology as a new framework that can guide the research frame of international communication, while other authors implement empirically the world system theory.

When examining the determinants of international news selection and framing, the authors do a good job in avoiding a bipolar model between globalization and localization, by reinserting the concept of “nation” as a variable that helps parcel out the deeper tensions that constitute the present world order. In Chapter 5, Wanta and Golan present a model that predicts coverage of international elections based on the nations’ location in the world system. As they elaborate, the world-system theory “merges an individual nation’s goals, its global exchange of trade, and its flow of international relations, capital, and information” (p.111). In Chapter 6, Golan juxtaposes the world system theory with other micro- and macro-variables in one of the most comprehensive models of international news selection determinants.

Most of the chapters in this book support Galtung and Ruge’s (1965) classical theoretical framework according to which world news coverage is determined by economic, social, political, and geographic relationships between countries on a global scale. Moreover, descending to a micro-level analysis, Chapters 9, 10, and 11 - authored by Chang et al., Ghanem, and Kalyango respectively - are outstanding empirical examples of how journalists negotiate the interplay of global issues with domestic perspectives. Tackling the nature of the news on global events from a cross-national and interdisciplinary context, these authors provide excellent examples as to how personal ideologies affect the domestication of global events into the relevant structures of a local audience.

The chapters published in the third section of this book provide a theoretical and empirical argumentation for the necessity of a paradigm shift in international strategic communication that would accommodate the multitudes of global cultures and systems and assess more accurately the industry’s new realities. In Chapter 15, Soon Lim makes a sound theoretical argument for the adoption of the integration-responsiveness grid in public relations that combines “the best domestic and international programs in one unified worldwide function” (p.303). Similarly, Molleda and Laskin introduce the theoretical concept of the “integration/localization principle.” While integrative communication devices contribute to the diffusion of transnational organizational values, the localization of the PR strategies at the subsidiary level can prevent and help in managing possible conflicts. Empirical case studies elaborated in Chapters 17 and 19 provide further evidence of the utility of the “glocal” theoretical approaches in explaining the interdependence of domestic and global marketplace.

This book undertakes a stimulating enterprise to introduce and advance new directions in the subfield of message production in International Communication while providing a compelling argument that the field as a whole should move away from the old paradigms in the wake of the new multifaceted global interactions. This is where its major strength lies. However, at times the goal of the book seems too ambitious as it includes chapters which arguably digress from the main focus of the book. For example, Chapters 4, 12, and 21 briefly touch on the area of communication effects even though overall the book does not provide in-depth elaboration of this aspect of international communication. Indeed, the editors of the book acknowledge the breadth of the field and the infeasibility of a single project to include every aspect of this discipline. Overall, this book can serve as a useful resource not only for scholars of international media communication, as the title suggests, but also for students focusing on strategic communication at a global level.