Disrupting the Geopolitics of Global Communication: BRICS and Beyond

Despite being traditionally dominated by the US-led Western nations and corporations based there, global geopolitics and its mediatization has witnessed disruptions in recent decades, triggered by the rise of major non-Western nations and their growing media and communication presence in a digitized world. The traditional conceptions of geopolitics are being challenged by the BRICS (Brazil, Russian, India, China and South Africa) countries, notably China and Russia, and, to a lesser extent, by India. Analysing official and corporate policy documents, this paper examines the role of US versus Chinese digital infrastructure in two country case studies, one each from Asia (Pakistan) and Africa (Kenya), to establish how far and in what ways the US digital hegemony is being challenged by China.