Academic literature on the topic 'Global Media Studies'

Includes bibliographical references (p. [223]-246).<br>This thesis examines the agency of marginalised subjects in the context of global capitalism and the information age. The key question that is addressed is whether transnational corporations have appropriated aspects of cultural identity, creative expression and technological innovation for their own enrichment - to the detriment of civil society. Where this is the case, this thesis considers what opportunities exist for issuing challenges to the power of global corporations. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's concept of Empire provides the theoretical foundation for examining cultural, technological and legal conflicts between the interests of citizens and those of corporations. Hardt and Negri theorise the ways in which former imperial powers continue to extend their military, economic and political power in former colonies. The authors argue that former imperial powers no longer compete with each other for the same resources because they now co-operate with each other through multilateral organisations and trade agreements. Ultimately, the key beneficiaries of these modes of co-operation are global corporations that tend to monopolise the production and distribution of technological and cultural products at the expense of the public interest and the functioning of democracy. This work considers the possibilities of responding to Empire and resisting globalisation through strategies that employ some of the same decentralised, network-based techniques that benefit global corporate entities. Hardt and Negri's concept of 'the multitude' as a multiplicity of singularities makes sense of the diverse struggles under discussion in this study, providing the conceptual basis for possibilities of multiple engagements with Empire that are not reductive and that do not exclude certain interest groups. This is an interdisciplinary project that uses case studies to analyse the relationships between law and policy documents, technological development, and the production of cultural texts (such as hip-hop music). Specifically, this work explores the MP3 revolution and Napster (version one); digital sampling in hip-hop; hip-hop activism on South Africa's Cape Flats and these activists' use of new media in their pursuit of social justice. It addresses concerns about the commodification of youth culture as well as debates about intellectual property and the United States' use of trade agreements as enforcement mechanisms that serve the interests of its own corporations. This thesis presents an overview of copyright and trade agreements in order to examine the vested interests that underlie them. In keeping with the focus on globalisation and cultural imperialism, US legislation - such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act - is discussed in relation to alternatives to proprietary approaches toward intellectual property, such as open source software and Creative Commons licenses.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 158-174).<br>This thesis examines the potential evolution of the current version of the Internet, popularly referred to as Web 2.0, to a third generation of the Web, referred to as the Semantic Web or Web 3.0. The paper provides an overview of the change in architecture and structure that the current version of the Web will need to undergo in the form of a standardised ontology development in order for the Web to evolve. The evolution to a third generation of the Web will ultimately improve the overall user experience both within a global and South African online context, through the innovation and development of Semantic Web technologies and capabilities. The thesis also discusses the role of the political economy of media and how this concept needs to be refreshed in terms of dealing with the advent of 'new' or digital media which are characterised by the Internet. The role of traditional media is also discussed and how, due to the advent of the Internet, there has been a movement away from a model of traditional centralised media to one of a more decentralised model. The challenges of intellectual property rights and copyright are analysed in terms of online users developing their own content online in the form of user generated content and how, through the evolution to a Web 3.0 version of the Internet, these challenges can be potentially solved through the use of Semantic Web innovation and technologies. One of the major challenges which Web 2.0 currently faces is that of privacy infringement, but through the adoption of Semantic Web technology these challenges which currently affect all users on the Web can potentially be solved. Finally, the paper looks at the way that South African online users interact with the Internet and how the potential evolution to a third generation of the Web could potentially impact their user behaviour online.

In late 19th century Norway, a small urban elite chose nature as a distinctive trait to define the young Norwegian nation. Ever since, this constructed nature mythology, based on real nature (dark forests, fjords and high mountains), has been a recurrent symbol equated with Norwegianness in the rhetoric of the nation. While this foundational narrative has been represented in most of the arts, it is depicted in a more complex manner in contemporary Norwegian films. Thus the main question in "Nature, Nation and the Global in Contemporary Norwegian Cinema" is the following. What is the relationship between Norwegian national culture (as established in national Romanticism) and contemporary Norwegian cinema in a globalization context? My hypothesis is that investigating the national category of nature in Norwegian films discloses Norwegian cinema as a transnational cinema. To this day, there has only been one major study on Norwegian nature mythology applied to literature and culture. However, the relation between nature and national identity in Norwegian cinema has not been the subject of a thorough study either in English or in Norwegian. Thus, "Nature, Nation and the Global in Contemporary Cinema" is the first study to investigate the representation of nature in Norwegian cinema in a global context. This dissertation thus fills a gap in providing a study of nature in Norwegian cinema. This dissertation joins other recent studies of a minor national cinema, originating in a small nation, that place their cinemas in a global context. Methodologically, I rely on cultural, genre, global, and transnational cinema studies. Each chapter takes one type of natural geography as a starting point (the wild forest, the sea and the mountain) in order to analyze how, in the film texts, each aspect of nature negotiates the local and the global contexts. Thus, each chapter creates a bridge between cinematic representations, Norwegian national and global culture. As a result, this project has demonstrated that the relationship between cinema and culture is complicated by the relationship both have cultivated with nature. This dissertation has confirmed that as a mode of representation cinema is fundamentally transnational, crossing borders and, thus, contradicts the attempts of national ideologies to contain culture and identities within enclosed borders. At the same time, I have shown that cinema and nature are equally transnational, fluid and porous and that they are places of negotiation between the local and the global.

This study deals with the Middle East reporting of three gigantic media companies which together are largely responsible for refining and shaping our views of events in the world. The informational and communicative arm of these giants – Aljazeera, the BBC and CNN – is unprecedented in the history of human communication. The BBC, for example, broadcasts in 33 languages and has an army of nearly 10,000 journalists. In only one decade Aljazeera has turned into the kind of media whose power policy and decision makers can hardly ignore. The recent addition of an English language satellite channel has turned the network into a global media player. CNN, the world’s first 24-hour news satellite channel, has services in 12 languages and several English editions covering the four corners of the world. But the study is not about Aljazeera, the BBC or CNN as new phenomena in world media and communication. Its purpose, approach, data and analysis focus mainly on their Middle East reporting and specifically how they represent the voices involved in the conflict in Iraq and the ongoing struggle between the Palestinians and Israelis. The investigation is mainly concerned with the language of hard news discourse and how the broadcasters intentionally or otherwise produce and reproduce certain linguistic items and patterns to interpret both the discursive and social worlds of the events they carry. The study comprises five papers all published in international journals dealing with issues of critical discourse analysis. Together, the papers highlight the significant role power holders have in shaping the discourse of their institutions. They provide a new theoretical framework to arrive at the discursive patterns and social assumptions to uncover how the strings of power help refine and shape these patterns and assumptions relying on a variety of sources and empirical data besides textual material. The ultimate aim is to increase awareness and consciousness among both reporters and audiences of how discursive choices are made and the social relationships of power behind them are enacted. The picture painted in the five papers is not a happy one for readers who have long taken the ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’ of the BBC, CNN and Aljazeera for granted. A vital role of a critical analyst is to help readers first to become conscious of how the more powerful in the society work to control our lives through their discourse and that we cannot be emancipated unless we can recognize how and why they do that. It will be rather shocking for many readers to realize that the language we read and listen to is mostly what the broadcasters intentionally have selected to shape the world of both conflicts their own way and not the way the observers (journalists) want it to be or we as audiences expect it to be.

Over the last 30 years, awareness of anthropogenic climate change has increased and quickly become the one of the most pressing issues facing our planet. Canada is both a nation that has contributed to the acceleration of the climate problem and one that aims to help address the issues through commitments to global climate accords and other accountability actions. Global journalism is both a theory and practice born of the evolution of our world into a more global collective. Climate change, as a problem that is faced by every nation in the world, is one subject matter area that has been difficult to report on in the past but more necessary than ever to discuss. It is crucial work for journalists to normalize the connections between people, places, problems, and how they are interrelated throughout the world. This thesis aims to explore the presence or absence of global journalism in two different regions of Canada: Alberta and Ontario, represented by the cities of Calgary and Ottawa. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, articles that mention“climate change” or “global warming” over a six-month period in 2015 are collected and catalogued. The quantitative data provides a macro view of the amount and kinds of discourse taking place in each city around the topics of climate change and global warming, giving a sense of the scale and framing of the issue. Four of these articles and two headlines are then reviewed through the lens of critical discourse analysis for their choice of words, quotations, the voices that are present and absent, and the local coherence of the article. Collectively, this information is collated and reviewed to argue for the presence or absence of global journalism in the reporting. The final results should a stark difference in the representation of climate change in Calgary and Ottawa. There are promising signs of global journalism in action throughout the Calgary Herald, while the Ottawa Citizen has missed opportunities to reflect the same global perspective.