Emerging Economies, Emerging Power? A Citation Network Analysis of Global Media

There are consistent empirical indications to support Wallerstein's (1974) World System Theory which argues for the presence of an unbalanced international news flow and points to the domination of Western news agencies and their specific core-periphery-news exchange (Chang et al., 2009; Wu, 2007). In the age of digital information and communication technology, however, fast-growing global communication networks have arguably not only decentralized the news delivery, but also have changed how the readers consume it. In terms of international communication flows, for example, mixed evidence suggests that the increasing centrality of some core countries is coupled with a growing presence of semi-peripheral countries (e.g., Barnett & Park, 2005; Segev, 2008). Given emerging economies and the profound changes in the new media environment (Pavlik, 2001), the phenomenon of news flow across national borders should be reconsidered and re-examined. Using the Social Network Analysis (SNA), this study aims to examine the flow of information between 30 global media network of 15 countries from 2010 to 2014, to explore the reconfiguration of power distribution between emerging countries and other countries. Based on Babones' list of world economies in core, semi-periphery and periphery zones (Babones, 2005),this paper selected five countries from each world system zone, for a total of 15 countries. Five semi-periphery or periphery economies--Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the so-called BRICS countries--are the focus of the analysis, while the other ten countries were randomly selected. This study views the citation relationships between global media as network metrics and each global media outlet as a social actor. It compares information power of the BRICS media with the other media in three zones, by analyzing the whole network, ego-networks, sub-groups, and longitudinal differences over the past 5 years. Several conclusions can be drawn from this study'1) Regarding the whole network, statistics show the network centralization is very low, which indicates that the flow of information among global media is less concentrated and very difficult for any one actor to control the whole network. 2) Centrality analysis indicates that BRICS media are neither more powerful than core countries nor significantly more powerful than other semi-periphery media in the citation network. 3) The density of BRICS network is far lower than core network, and not significantly higher than semi-periphery network, which means there is no active exchange of information within BRICS countries. 4) Longitudinal analysis indicates that BRICS media are not getting more powerful during the past 5 years in the citation network. 5) As an exception, China's information power is growing rapidly during the past 5 years.The results suggest that although China has risen rapidly both as an information sender and as an information receiver, the BRICS network as a whole is still at the semi-periphery. The structure of global information networks has not been challenged by emerging economies. This study could be further discussed relative to China's rising power and the potential reconfiguration of power in the networked world.