James Curran - De-Westernizing Media Studies

Hussein Amin , Professor, Adham Center for Television Journalism, American University in Cairo.

W.Lance Bennett , Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Washington.

Stuart Cunningham , Professor and Head, School of Media and Journalism, Queensland University of Technology.

James Curran , Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Peter Dahlgren , Professor of Communications, University of Lund.

Terry Flew , Lecturer in Media Studies, Queensland University of Technology.

Daniel C.Hallin , Professor of Communications, University of California, San Diego.

Chang-Nam Kim , Assistant Professor of Communication, Sungkonghoe University.

Raymond Kuhn , Senior Lecturer, Department of Politics, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.

Tawana Kupe , Lecturer, Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University.

Chin-Chuan Lee , Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota.

Colin Leys , Visiting Professor, Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Tamar Liebes , Director of the Smart Institute of Communication, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Eric Kit-wai Ma , Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Brian McNair , Reader in Film and Media Studies, University of Stirling.

Paolo Mancini , Professor, Institute of Social Studies, University of Perugia.

Zaharom Nain , Researcher, Research and Education for Peace Unit, Universiti Sains Malaysia.

James Napoli , Professor, Adham Center for Television Journalism, American University in Cairo.

Myung-Jin Park , Professor of Communications, Seoul National University.

Arvind Rajagopal , Professor, Department of Culture and Communication, New York University.

Helge Rnning , Professor of Communication, University of Oslo.

Byung-Woo Sohn , Assistant Professor of Communication, Chungnam National University.

Colin Sparks , Professor, Centre for Communication and Information Studies, University of Westminister.

Annabelle Sreberny , Professor, Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester.

Mitsunobu Sugiyama , Professor, Institute of Socio-Information and Communication, University of Tokyo.

Keyan G.Tomaselli , Professor of Communications, University of Natal.

Silvio Waisbord , Assistant Professor of Communication, Rutgers University.

Communication and Society

Series Editor: James Curran

Professor of Communications, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Glasnost, Perestroika and the Soviet Media

Brian McNair

Pluralism, Politics and the Marketplace

The regulation of German broadcasting

Vincent Porter and Suzanne Hasselbach

Potboilers

Methods, concepts and case studies in popular fiction

Jerry Palmer

Communication and Citizenship

Journalism and the public sphere

Edited by Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks

Seeing and Believing

The influence of television

Greg Philo

Critical Commmunication Studies

Communication, history and theory in America

Hanno Hardt

Media Moguls

Jeremy Tunstall and Michael Palmer

Fields in Vision

Television sport and cultural transformation

Garry Whannel

Getting the Message

News, truth and power

The Glasgow Media Group

Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion

Its duboius impact on American society

Michael Schudson

Nation, Culture, Text

Australian cultural and media studies

Edited by Graeme Turner

Television Producers

Jeremy Tunstall

News and Journalism in the UK

A textbook, third edition

Brian McNair

Media Cultures

Reappraising transnational media

Edited by Michael Stormand and Kim Christian Schroder

What News?

The market, politics and the local press

Bob Franklin and David Murphy

In Garageland

Rock, youth and modernity

Johan Forns, Ulf Lindberg and Ove Sernhede

The Crisis of Public Communication

Jay G.Blumler and Michael Gurevitch

Glasgow Media Group Reader, Volume 1

News Content, Language and Visuals

Edited by John Eldridge

Glasgow Media Group Reader, Volume 2

Industry, economy, war and politics

Edited by Greg Philo

The Global Jukebox

The international music industry

Robert Burnett

Inside Prime Time

Todd Gitlin

Talk on Television

Audience participation and public debate

Sonia Livingstone and Peter Lunt

An Introduction to Political Communication

Second edition

Brian McNair

Media Effects and Beyond

Culture, socialization and lifestyles

Edited by Karl Erik Rosengren

We Keep America on Top of the World

Television journalism and the public sphere

Daniel C.Hallin

A Journalism Reader

Edited by Michael Bromley and Tom OMalley

Tabloid Television

Popular journalism and the other news

John Langer

International Radio Journalism

History, theory and practice

Tim Crook

Media, Ritual and Identity

Edited by Tamar Liebes and James Curran

James Curran and Myung-Jin Park

This book is part of a growing reaction against the self-absorbtion and parochialism of much Western media theory. It has become routine for universalistic observations about the media to be advanced in English-language books on the basis of evidence derived from a tiny handful of countries. Whether it be middle-range generalization about, for example, the influence of news sources on reporting, or grand theory about the medias relationship to postmodernity, the same few countries keep recurring as if they are a stand-in for the rest of the world. These are nearly always rich Western societies, and the occasional honorary Western country like Australia.

Yet, the universe is changing in a way that makes this narrowness transparently absurd. Globalization, the end of the Cold War, the rise of the Asian economy, the emergence of alternative centers of media production to Hollywood, and the world-wide growth of media studies are just some of the things that seem to invite a different approach.

Indeed, there are growing signs that US- and UK-based media academics are beginning to feel embarrassed about viewing the rest of the world as a forgotten understudy. A recent straw in the wind is the unhappy caveat that Michael Schudson inserted toward the end of an incisive, critical overview of the literature on news production. All three approaches reviewed here, he laments, tend to be indifferent to comparativestudies, weakening their longer-term value as social science (Schudson 1996:156). Similarly, John Downing has recently poured scorn on attempts to universalize the experience of Britain and the United States, as if these affluent, stable democracies with their Protestant histories and imperial entanglements are representative of the world. Like Sparks (1998), he calls for communication theorising to develop itself comparatively (Downing 1996:xi).

However, the principal way unease about Western parochialism has been expressed has been through the recent boom of globalization theory. This is a welcome development, though it is also not without problems rooted in the past. Though most English-language media theory has been geographically confined, there has long been a minority tradition with a global orientation. What can be learned from it?