Challenging Globalization Theories

Media and communication studies have been defined from the start by scholars working in the academic institutions of North America and Europe. This ‘West and the Rest’ approach has been increasingly criticized as quite inadequate for grappling with the rapid globalization of the world in the last thirty years or so. It is clear that the development communication model of the 1950s and the cultural imperialism thesis of the 1970s no longer address today’s global realities. Economic and political power is shifting from the global north to the global south. How to understand the role of global media and technologies of communication in today’s transforming world is a crucial challenge for communication research today. Emerging research into new media centers in other parts of the world today engages with and challenges the Western paradigm. My paper reflects on the implications of that challenge for global media studies still dominated by that paradigm.