Introduction: Australia in the field of trans-Asian media flows (original) (raw)

Global Media Journal - Australian Edition - 6:1 2012

2012

The increasing complexity of the multilingual environment, in large part resulting from globalising media trends, is creating new challenges for multilingual media. This article explores forms of citizenship, issues of ‘community’ and transnational media use through the case study of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), Australia’s multilingual and multicultural national public broadcaster. SBS was developed as an element of Australian multicultural policy in a response to political pressures of a diverse society. It now needs to engage with contemporary forms of identity and increasingly sophisticated media use trends to maintain its relevance.

Transnational Audiences: Media Reception on a Global Scale

In an interactive and densely connected world, transnational communication has become a central feature of everyday life. Taking account of a variety of media formats and different regions of the world, Adrian Athique provides a much-needed critical exploration of conceptual approaches to media reception on a global scale. Engaging both the historical foundations and contemporary concerns of audience research, Athique prompts us to reconsider our contemporary media experience within a transnational frame. In the process, he provides valuable insights on culture and belonging, power and imagination. ‘In Transnational Audiences Athique develops a sophisticated and layered analysis of the complexities of studying media audiences. He does so while presenting an epistemology of the field and its theoretical developments that helps the reader understand audiences in an increasingly internet-dependent, trans-national media environment. This book is an important contribution for students attempting to grasp the several decades of audience research and the important and necessary move from national to transnational analysis.’ Antonio C. La Pastina, Texas A&M University ‘Athique’s lucidly written book introduces us to the major authors, key theoretical concepts and fascinating case studies, offering a panoramic view of the growing field of research on transnational audiences.’ S. V. Srinivas, Azim Prenji University 'The fundamental questions discussed throughout this highly informative and well-structured book are the ontology and epistemology of transnational audiences, which makes it very useful to researchers and graduate students in their efforts to conceptualize the object of study. It is inspiring to read Athique’s discussions of outstanding scholarly work in the field. It sounds like a 2016 echo of the foundational writers of liberalism when Athique writes, “everyone’s worldview matters. Not because we are individuated subjects living under our own cloud, but because our relative perception of the world shapes our social actions at every scale.” Teachers in subjects like public diplomacy, international communication, corporate communication, and media reception will probably find this book useful when preparing their lectures. I will bring it around campus the coming semester for that same reason.' Kirsten Mogensen, Roskilde University 'If you were in a search for a book that covers the historical context, core theories and ongoing debates in the studies of transnational audiences, look no further. Athique’s Transnational audiences: Media reception on a global scale does exactly that...Divided into 3 sections, this 10-chapter book provides a succinct, yet comprehensive overview of the trajectories that theories and scholars have taken, and the directions toward which transnational audience studies are heading, with particular attention paid to the impact of digitalisation.' Yinyi Luo, University of Leeds

Transnational Audiences: Geocultural Approaches

The exchange of information, discourse and meaning across a bewildering array of cultural, geographic and political barriers has become a central concern for a broad range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. As such, there is a growing body of empirical work in academic journals and doctoral theses that addresses particular instances of transnational reception. It is nonetheless fair to say that as a field of study, our knowledge of transnational audiences remains highly fragmented and lacks a common conceptual or comparative framework. In the main, overarching theories of global media flows and markets continue to rest upon theoretical understandings of media reception that are largely derived from a previous epoch where media mobility and intercultural communication was not a primary focus. As a consequence, contemporary studies of transnational media reception still require a coherent geography capable of addressing the unique demands of this kind of work. There is a pressing need, therefore, to articulate the theoretical work on the transnational itself with a technologically and politically updated configuration of media reception in the twenty-first century. Ambitious as this proposition might sound, defining this terrain in a comprehensive and accessible fashion has become a necessary step in furthering critical debates in this exciting and important field. This article will not achieve this goal, naturally, but will instead seek to lay out some of the conceptual terrain from which we might proceed.