Global Communication (with InfoTrac) (Wadsworth Series in Mass Communication and Journalism) [Paperback]

Yahya R. Kamalipour (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0534561276 | ISBN-13: 978-0534561277 | Edition: 1

In addition to being comprehensive in its coverage, this edited text brings together some of the foremost scholars in international communication. The book offers diverse perspectives on a wide range of issues and topics, including development of international communication, culture and communication, global news and information flow, theories of international communication, communication and national development, global media corporations, international broadcasting, the politics of global communication, information technologies, global communication law, global advertising and public relations. GLOBAL COMMUNICATION is not only up-to-date, it is supported by a Web site, "Global Media Monitor," that provides a wealth of supplementary information to instructors and teachers.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Yahya R. Kamalipour is professor and head, Department of Communication and Creative Arts, Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, Indiana, U.S.A. His areas of research include globalization, media impact, international communication, stereotyping, and new communication technologies. Kamalipour has 10 published books. He is founder and managing editor of a groundbreaking electronic publication, GLOBAL MEDIA JOURNAL (www.globalmediajournal.com), with editions in Arabic, English, Chinese, and Spanish.

Kamalipour has given presentations in Egypt, Canada, China, Iran, Kenya, Mexico, Slovenia, United States, and taught courses at universities in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Iran, and Oxford (England). In addition to numerous mass media appearances and interviews, his articles have appeared in professional and mainstream publications in the U.S. and abroad.

Kamalipour earned his Ph.D. degree in Communication from University of Missouri-Columbia, M.A. degree in Mass Media from University of Wisconsin-Superior, and B.A. degree in Mass Communication from Minnesota State University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing; 1 edition (October 26, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0534561276
• ISBN-13: 978-0534561277
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,842,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb topical reader, January 13, 2004

By 

Ralph D. Berenger (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Global Communication (with InfoTrac) (Wadsworth Series in Mass Communication and Journalism) (Paperback)

Scholars and teachers in the dynamic field of international communications will find much to recommend in this collection of 13 chapters by academicians from around the world edited by Yahya Kamalipour.

What distinguishes this collection of writings from a growing number on the market about transnational communication is not only the readability of the chapters that address important developments in thinking in the discipline, but the lack of Western media bashing that seems the current flavor of the month in the field.
Global Communication side-steps the conveniently normative trap that snares many writers in a zero-sum game: when global (read Western, particularly American) media come into contact with local media cultures, the local cultures lose every time. This book develops a different, refreshing and perhaps more realistic theme: local media not only can complete and co-exist, it can dominate their local markets to the benefit of their local audiences. Not that there are no pleas for a more level media landscape. There are sufficient numbers of chapters that lean in that direction. The difference is the addition of a realistic voice that does not pine for the good old days of public-that is governmental-control of international broadcasting. This book, on the main, handles the subject more objectively than many of the polemics now causing our bookshelves to sag.

The savvy reader of international communications tomes will recognize the names of many of the authors, but the infusion of ideas from new-or at least unfamiliar-voices gives this collection its freshness.

What readers should find particularly interesting is the book's merging of traditional textbook fare with several contextual chapters not normally found in college texts.

For example, John D.H. Downing provides a perfunctory though concise review of the normative theories of the press and other theoretical constructs concerning global media. But then the author slips into the role of a political economist to argue, commendably, that political and economic power must be considered parts of the global media equation.

Kuldip R. Rampal reviews global news and information flows in a succinct review of international news services and organizations on these, an important and often short-shrifted area in most international communications books. Rampal gives a good overview of the major news agencies well known to Western readers, but suggests, cautiously, that the Internet might mitigate against authoritarian governmental control of news organizations in 54 percent of the world's 191 countries.

While many texts gloss over the increasingly complex area of global communications law, John L. Huffman and Denise M. Trauth's chapter tackles the prickly issues head on, including those countries-mainly authoritarian--where international media codes and standards rub up against contrary, deeply held, cultural, moral, ideological, and religious beliefs. The authors, writing in a language most college students will be able to absorb with ease, tackle a variety of issues affecting global media and review those international organizations that are having an impact on how the global media map is drawn, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the International Telecommunication Union.

In a similar vein, readers will find Richard Gershon's chapter on transnational media corporation and the economics of global competition salient to what is occurring in boardrooms across the planet, and the decisions that ultimately affect what you and I read, view, and listen to. Unlike most hand-wringers who would wish corporatism to some mythical dustbin of history, Gershon takes a more realistic view, and his section on "The Rules of Free Market Trade" is an all-too-short primer for students from countries emerging from command economic systems and opaque markets. He spends an adequate amount of space describing the current transnational landscape--and he paints a far less dreary picture than those usual suspects at the McBride Roundtable whose New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) actually might be developing in a free market environment, not by supra-government fiat.

Adding a contextual layer to the tome, if not to Gershon's chapter that follows, is Harmeet Sawhney's examination of how the world went from eight hegemonic "circuits" in the pre-Renaissance epoch of the 13th century to a single, world system centered on the economic-political-military hegemony of the United States.

Not only Sawhney's chapter is concerned with historical developments of media systems. The opening chapter by Allen Palmer takes the reader on a trip through nearly four millennia of communication development with interesting albeit short side trips though the minds of map makers, inventors, holy men, printers, and scientists.

Cees Hamelink eruditely reviews the politics of global communication by focusing on the interrelationship of the "domains" of telecommunications, intellectual property rights, and mass media. In a series of thumbnails, Hamelink carefully lays out the case for international monitoring of global news and entertainment, favoring a humanitarian agenda-not unlike NWICO-to protect the "commons" from exploitation by the "neo-liberals."

Other contributors include Joseph Straubhaar and Douglas Boyd, who examines international broadcasting and the resultant concerns of propaganda and public diplomacy, taken from the listeners' and viewers' points of view; Vibert Cambridge who looks at broadcasting and national development; Dean Kruckeberg, who breaks new ground dispelling the Western-domination myth of global advertising and public relations, both historically and in modern practice; Christine Ogden writes about the "glocalization" of mass media products and challenges the cultural imperialism myth; M. Medhi Semati ponders the pedagogical uses of international media in the classroom, and finally, Leo Gher, who concludes this book with a challenge to readers to think critically about media and their effects.

This book, which is being translated into the world's most spoken language, Mandarin Chinese, is intended for upper-level undergraduate and beginning level graduate students. However, each chapter stands alone and could make a supplemental reading text for seminars on global communication.

Some critical readers might note that the book was in publication before 9/11 when the international media scene changed-some say forever.