Global/Local Media in Local/Global Spaces

(Spring 2009)

The first article in this spring 2009 issue is Gabriel Moreno’s “Viewing Globalization in Transnational, Mexican American Spaces”. Moreno engages theories of reception in order to challenge perspectives that see immigrant communities as solely concerned with news and information related to their places of origin. Through the analysis of personal diaries of Mexican-origin participants and their television news consumption, Moreno suggests that future research should reject the positivist approaches that situate non-native audiences as caught between “sending and receiving” societies. Drawing out the implications from the research, Moreno argues that immigrant communities have complex and multiple identities that “go far beyond the ‘here/there’ frames of understanding traditionally employed for audience research of immigrant groups”. The article calls for a reconceptualization of reception analysis in order to accommodate a deeper understanding of ‘transnational social spaces inhabited by immigrant communities’. The second article is Amani Ismail and Dan Berkowitz’ comparative analysis of leading U.S. and Chinese daily newspapers where they consider the role played by different press systems in the coverage of terrorism. Using examples from the New York Times and China Daily, Ismail and Berkowitz convincingly argue that the mainstream news media tend to stay close to the official government perspective on terrorism across press systems. Using an interpretive approach, the study highlights the centrality of the concept “terrorism” in newspaper articles, the attribution assigned, the specific events that were categorized as terrorist, and the demographic descriptions assigned to the perpetrators. The article concludes with consideration over the similarities and differences associated with the two press systems’ approaches to terrorism. In the third article, Merih Taşkaya draws upon a content analysis of official reports evaluating “surreptitious advertising” (advertiser’s use of media beyond the legally allotted space and time) in Turkey, to evaluate current trends in the Turkish advertising industry in the light of the implementation of neo-liberal policy reforms. Taşkaya sees an increasing threat to the public interest as advertising encroaches increasingly upon media content with new and subtle forms of persuasion.

  Aim and Scope

The Mediterranean Edition publishes scholarship with a focus on communication and media studies from critical and cultural perspectives, gender studies, media and peace communication, and studies in the role of communication and the media in the resolution of conflict and the promotion of peace. The journal welcomes articles from feminist theoretical perspectives, political economy of communication, communication policy and regulation, communication and peace, peace journalism, film, audience studies, media and ethnicity, and discourse. The Mediterranean Edition accepts manuscripts for consideration throughout the year and publishes in both Spring and Fall.

  Abstracting and Indexing Services

The Mediterranean Edition is abstracted and indexed in the ProQuest CSA and EBSCO. Listed in DOAJ and Ulrich.