Introduction: Contextualizing the BRICS media

More than a decade has passed since the BRIC acronym entered the international lexicon. It was coined in 2001 by Jim O'Neill, a Goldman Sachs executive, to refer to the four fast-growing emerging markets - Brazil, Russia, India and China. This pioneering study assesses the impact of the exponential growth in media in some of the world's fastest growing major economies on the geo-political environment. Despite the emergence of the media in the BRICS countries, it is still the case that the US continues to dominate and define the global media scene, being the largest exporter of media content across the increasingly interconnected and digitized globe. The exponential growth of multichannel networks has made the global media landscape multicultural, multilingual and multinational. Digital communication technologies in broadcasting and broadband have given viewers in many countries the ability to access simultaneously a vast array of local, national, regional and international media in various genres.