Mediated cross-border communication is a scholarly field in communication studies and refers to any mediated form of communication in the course of which nation state or cultural borders are crossed or even get transgressed and undermined (e.g., world news, satellite television, transnational media events).
The expression serves as an umbrella term that encompasses different research approaches (e.g., international communication, transnational communication) that can heuristically be differentiated by their specific use of research perspectives, as well as particular levels and objects of analysis (see dimensions of analysis).
Thematically, research is often concerned with the political dimension of mediated cross-border communication. Examples include studies on the impact of mediated cross-border communication on foreign policy (CNN effect,) political change (media and democratization, zapatista effect, boomerang effect,) research on official government communication targeting foreign audiences (e.g., certain kinds of International broadcasting, Public diplomacy) and questions on media representations of the developing world (e.g., New World Information and Communication Order). Apart from that, global mass communication ethics and the globalization of entertainment constitute further important topics. An at least implicit common feature to almost all of the aforementioned topics is their general interest in answering the question to what extent nationally, culturally or otherwise defined media systems influence each other, converge or whether they can pertain distinct identities under conditions of mediated cross-border communication.
Mediated cross-border communication is considered as becoming increasingly important both as a real world phenomenon and field of research as there has been a steady strengthening of the conditions of globalization and media innovations that offer fast and low-cost forms of cross-border communication since the second half of the twentieth century. However, critics argue that the importance of the nation state remains high; for example, most online communication still takes place between citizens of the same nation state. Also, the responsibility for most broadcasting and press legislation usually rests with individual national states.
History of research The history of mediated cross-border communication research is closely related to the three major decades of the 20th century, which stimulated and influenced this field of research in terms of themes, funding sources as well as ideologies: The two world wars in the first half of the 20th century, the Cold War decade, and finally the era of globalization after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the former Soviet Union in 1991. Throughout the time, technological innovations such as satellite television or the Internet and the expansion of media markets across national borders have further stimulated research interest in mediated cross-border communication.
1930–1950: As psychological warfare (propaganda paradigm) The propaganda operations of the great powers in the twentieth century's two world wars are often considered to have been the initiating driving forces for sustained scholarly interest into mediated cross-border research. Although cross-border communication activities have been set in place by national governments since ancient history, it was not until the early twentieth century that such international propaganda efforts were followed by systematic academic research. Literature reviews show that this trend continued far into the aftermath of World War II until development and modernization became leading research themes in the 1960s
1950–1970: As development prompter (modernization paradigm) In the 1950s, studies on mediated cross-border communication started to increasingly stress its assumed function as development and modernization prompter (development communication), not least due to the dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, and South America who gained their political independence at that time. US government interests to "modernize" these countries paralleled with sustained research efforts regarding the role of (mediated cross-border) mass media in this context. At that time, the latter was predominantly conceptualized as one-way flow of communication from government development agencies to people in Third World nations. Typically, strong media effects were assumed that would change attitudes and behavior of individuals, thus supporting the modernization of countries
Important proponents of the modernism paradigm later admitted its limitations and shortcomings, especially with regard to the application of the Western model of development to Third World countries. The reduction of development and modernization to economic growth (poverty as equivalent to underdevelopment), overestimation of strong media effects and the ethnocentric promotion of adopting a Western model of society are today commonly viewed as the central reasons why modernization theory was subverted by early 1970.
The 1950s also showed early studies of international news flows, with assumingly the first one conducted by the International Press Institute in 1953, which was followed by more systematic analyses in the early 1960s by Wilbur Schramm (1960), thus initiating research concerned with the "balance" of news exchanges between developed and developing nations (Hur, 1984, p. 365). Furthermore, the then newly established UNESCO started to function as an important funding source and research agenda setter, sponsoring field-related studies on foreign news coverage and international news flows (for early examples see Kaiser, 1953; Williams, 1953).
Another landmark study in this phase of research was the “Four theories of the press” put forward by Siebert, Peterson and Schramm (1956), which offered a framework for comparative media system research. With regard to varying degrees of state interventionism, the authors described four ideal types of how media were ought to be organized (authoritarian, libertarian, Soviet communism, and social responsibility). Despite the fact that the book received widespread scholarly attention, it is today commonly criticized for its ideological bias, lack of empirical concern and universal approach.
1970–1990: As media imperialism (dependency paradigm) Between the 1970s and early 1980s, research was characterized by an unprecedented amount of critical assessments of news and entertainment flows between developed and developing nations, framed by dependency theories and notions of media imperialism (see also cultural imperialism). Proponents of the latter criticized the dominance of Western mass media in the evolving global media market as being a threat to the cultural identity of developing nations Indeed, empirical studies on international information flows found an "unbalanced one-way traffic" (Nordenstreng & Varis, 1974) from big exporting countries to the rest of the world.
Again, UNESCO played an important role in this context that is shown by guest contributions from top representatives to major scholarly journals, its function as funding source for international comparative research projects, and especially through the publication of the so-called MacBride report, which synthesized the controversial debate on imbalances and inequalities in international flows of communication that by then was coined by the term "New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO)". The report was echoed by extensive academic attention ranging from hailing the report's call for a democratization of mediated cross-border communication to criticizing it for its alleged technological determinism and led to a dramatic growth of empirical studies in this field in the beginning 1980s However, most inquiries remained rather descriptive with additional normative considerations, whereas explanatory approaches were largely missing. For instance, Hur reported after a review of 80 studies from 1970 to 1982, that key questions such as whether international news flow or coverage is influenced by news events themselves or relationships between nations, or by the media involved remained largely unexplained.
After the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the former Soviet Union in 1991, dependency theory and the media imperialism thesis became largely abandoned from research agenda, to be replaced by concepts of media globalisation and perspectives of transnational communication. While some say this happened in tune with the neo-liberal climate of the time, the passing of the then prevailing paradigm is also to be attributed to its inability to explain forms of hybrid media systems as it rather focused on the quantitative supply as opposed to the particular use of media contents (for details see section on Media imperialism: the evolution of an influence perspective). Thus, scholars argued that the plain notion of Western domination failed to account for the complex and multidirectional nature of mediated cross-border communication Yet, the paradigm's inherent influence perspective and other central questions of the debate keep re-emerging under different headings and more advanced concepts such as hybridization and glocalisation.
1990–today: As transnationalization and hybridization of national public spheres (globalization paradigm) From the 1990s on, another shift of paradigm took place with the emergence of globalization as the new key term of the field. Whereas previous decades of research for most of the part followed an influence perspective, the 1990s and especially from 2000 on saw a rise of transnational approaches that applied transgression perspective on mediated cross-border communication. According to Hafez, two different types of globalization theorems can be differentiated, which are coined by the terms of conversion and domestication. The idea of conversion is represented in works such as McLuhan's “global village”-approach, that expects the emergence of a global consciousness. The second type is coined by the term of glocalisation.
A third major stimulus to the field of study was set into place in 2004 with the publication of “Comparing media systems” (see Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Unlike the “Four theories of the press”, an emphasis was put on the synthesis of empirical findings. Furthermore, the authors tried to avoid the universal approach put forward by Siebert et al., focusing themselves on North America and Western Europe countries. The work has been stimulating a great number of subsequent studies that try to adopt and modify the models and analytical dimensions (e.g., Political parallelism) of “Comparing media systems” to other parts of the world.
Dimensions of analysis Research approaches to mediated cross-border communication can be categorized with regard to the respective dimensions of analysis. Wessler and Brüggemann propose three dimensions of analysis: (1) research perspectives, (2) levels of analysis and (3) objects of analysis. Most entities discussed below are considered to be convergent by nature, thus being open for combination and parallel use.
Research perspectives Three different research perspectives are commonly applied to the field of mediated cross-border communication the “comparative perspective” the “influence perspective” the “transgression perspective”
As a “meta-method”, the comparative perspective is common to the vast majority of studies in this academic field and can be combined with all subsequent methods, perspectives, levels and objects of analysis.
(1) The “comparative perspective” (Comparative research) seeks for similarities and differences as well as processes of convergence and divergence (see transformation processes of media systems) between different entities such as national media systems or organizations.