Journalism

As a social practice and form of communication, journalism contributes to the intensification of social interconnections, which allows the possibility of apprehending the world as a single place and creating a greater awareness of our own place in it. As part of a larger platform of media, journalism contributes to this experience and thus represents a key component in the social transformations associated with globalization, both as cause and outcome. Journalism contributes to spaces for political discourse and social transparency, which are at the heart of the hopes for global democracy.

The journalism and media role of global culture often seems like an afterthought in studies of globalization, although it is a self-evident symbol of the global era: Cable News Network (CNN), for example, or Al Jazeera global television networks. Indeed, research has been slower to consider the changing role of journalism, compared to the attention devoted to economic and entertainment flows. That may be expected, given that economic and cultural globalization is more extensive than that of politics, and journalism has been closely tied to democratic structures inherently rooted in local communities. The media-centrism of communication research, on the other hand, may give the media too much credit in the globalization process, assuming that certain media are the primary drivers of global connections and properly the main object of study.

Global connections support new forms of journalism, which create politically significant new spaces within social systems, lead to social change, and privilege certain forms of power. Journalism has contributed to these new spaces, bringing together new combinations of transnational elites, media professionals, and citizens. To what extent are these interactions shaped by a globally consistent shared logic, and what are the consequences for social change and democratic values? This discussion often gets reduced to whether a cultural homogenization is taking place, a single “McWorld” thesis of a unitary media and journalistic form. But it is not necessary to subscribe to a one-world media monolith prediction to expect certain transnational logics to take their place alongside existing ones. The insertion of these new logics into national communities, especially those closed or tightly controlled societies, can bring an important impulse for social change. Understanding the complex interplay of the global and local requires an interdisciplinary perspective, mixing the sociology of globalization with aspects of geography and social anthropology.