Global Media Studies explores the theoretical and methodological threats that are defining global media studies as a discipline. Emphasising the connection of globalisation to local culture, this collection considers the diversity of modes of reception, reception contexts, uses of media content, and the performative and creative relationships that audiences develop with and through the media. Through ethnographic case studies from Brazil, Denmark, the UK, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey and the United States, the contributors address such questions as: what links media consumption to a lived global culture; what role cultural tradition plays globally in confronting transnational power; how global elements of mediated messages acquire class; and regional and local characteristics.

Contents:
Part 1: Introduction, Chapter 1 Towards an Ethnographic Approach to Global Media Studies, Part 2: Situating Ethnography in Global Media Studies, Chapter 2 The Problem of Textuality in Ethnographic Audience Research, Chapter 3 Passing Ethnographies: Rethinking the Sites of Agency and Reflexivity in a Mediated World, Chapter 4 Where is Audience Ethnographer's Fieldwork?, Chapter 5 Audience letters and letter-writers: Constituting the Audience for Radio in Transnational Contexts, Chapter 6 Rituals in the Modern World: Applying the Concept of Ritual in Media Ethnography, Part 3: Researching the Local, Chapter 7 Negotiation and the Position: On the Need and Difficulty of 'Thicker Description', Chapter 8 'Now that you're going home, are you going to write about the natives you studied?': Telenovela Reception, Adultery and the Dilemmas of Ethnographic Practice, Chapter 9 Methodology as Lived Experience, Chapter 10 On the Border: Reflections on Ethnography and Gender, Chapter 11 Radio's Early Arrival in Rural Appalachia, Part 4: Articulating Globalization Through Ethnography, Chapter 12 Ask the West, Will Dinosaurs Come Back?, Chapter 13 Where the Global Meets the Local: South African Youth and Their Experience of Global Media, Chapter 14 Chasing Echoes: Cultural Reconversion, Self-Representation, and Mediascapes in Mexico, Chapter 15 Globalization avant la lettre? Audience Ethnography, Media Institutions and Local Identity in Lebanon, Part 5: Afterword, Chapter 16 Media Ethnography: Local, Global or Translocal?

The intermingling of people and media from different cultures is a communication-based phenomenon known as hybridity. Drawing on original research from Lebanon to Mexico and analyzing the use of the term in cultural and postcolonial studies (as well as the popular and business media), Marwan Kraidy offers readers a history of the idea and a set of prescriptions for its future use.Kraidy analyzes the use of the concept of cultural mixture from the first century A.D. to its present application in the academy and the commercial press. The book's case studies build an argument for understanding the importance of the dynamics of communication, uneven power relationships, and political economy as well as culture, in situations of hybridity. Kraidy suggests a new framework he developed to study cultural mixtureOCocalled critical transculturalismOCowhich uses hybridity as its core concept, but in addition, provides a practical method for examining how media and communication work in international contexts."

Hybridity, the interaction of people and media from different cultures, is a communication-based phenomenon. Drawing on original research from Lebanon to Mexico and analyzing the use of the term in cultural and postcolonial studies (as well as the popular and business media), Marwan Kraidy offers readers a history of the idea and a set of prescriptions for its future use. Kraidy analyzes the use of the concept of cultural mixture from the first century AD to its present application in the academy and the commercial press. The case studies build an argument for understanding the importance of the dynamics of communication, power, and political-economy as well as culture, in situations of hybridity. Suggesting that such an approach will serve as a useful way to examine how media work in international context, he concludes the book by proposing a new method for studying cultural mixture: critical transculturalism.