IJoC Publishes Special Section on “Global Communication Power: Shift or Stasis”

The landscape of global media is undergoing a creative, technological, economic, cultural, and political metamorphosis that extend the reach of dominant players while simultaneously ushering emerging and alternative players. Guest-edited by Joe F. Khalil and John D.H. Downing,  the essence of the question that this Special Section on “Global Communication Power: Shift or Stasis” addresses is whether the current configurations and trends of global communication industries represent significant or superficial change. But precisely what do we mean here by “change”?

Over the past 40 or more years, both policy and research debates have, at times, raged over how “change” should be interpreted. The long-running “modernization,” “cultural imperialism,” NWICO and WSIS debates are among the most prominent examples. Terms such as “cultural hybridity,” “transnational,” “glocal,” even the foreign policy catchphrase “soft power,” have been batted backward and forward.

Two dimensions about the meaning of “change” and “power” have dominated discussion. One, the communication technology gap between the haves and have-nots (whether in nations, regions, or local neighborhoods), and the rest: Has this changed, and to what degree?  Two, increasingly visible jostling for territory in global communication space on the part of emergent players (reconfiguration of state international broadcasting, small states big media producers, or ubiquity of social media tools): What does this change in the distribution of communication power?

In this Special Section of the International Journal of Communication, the interdisciplinary contributions of eight original articles, a feature, and the editorial introduction come from respected experts across the planet in their respective fields. They drill down into news, entertainment, advertising, the shift to media use via smartphone, digital “piracy,” state international TV broadcasting, TV format trade, and still further dimensions.

These papers were first presented in a research conference at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) in February 2015, sponsored by NU-Q and the Qatar National Research Foundation.

We invite you to read these papers that published July 20, 2016 at http://ijoc.org or through the article links below.  We look forward to your feedback.

Questioning Global Communication Power – Editorial Introduction
Joe F. Khalil, John D.H. Downing, Northwestern University in Qatar

The 2015 Charlie Hebdo Killings, Media Event-chains and Global Political Responses
Annabelle Sreberny, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK

The Changing Geographies of Pirate Transnational Audiovisual Flows
Tristan Mattelart, Université Paris 8, France

Advertising and Media in the Age of the Algorithm
John Sinclair, University of Melbourne, Australia

CCTV News and Soft Power (Feature)
John Jirik, Independent Researcher, Istanbul, Turkey

Al Jazeera’s Complex Legacy: Thresholds for an Unconventional Media Player from the Global South
Mohamed Zayani, Georgetown University in Qatar

Engaging Youth in Low- and Middle-Income Countries Through Chat Apps: Challenges and Opportunities for International News Organizations
Anne Geniets, University of Oxford, UK

Challenging U.S. Leadership in Entertainment Television? The Rise and Sale of Europe’s International TV Production Groups
Andrea Esser, Roehampton University, UK

Vacillation in Turkey’s Popular Global TV Exports: Toward a More Complex Understanding of Distribution
Sevda Alankuş, Eylem Yanardağoğlu, Kadir Has University, Turkey

The Business Push and Audience Pull in Arab Entertainment Television
Joe F. Khalil, Northwestern University in Qatar