scholarly journals History of Global Media

Communication ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sönke Kunkel

Inspired by the “global turn” in the humanities and social sciences, the history of global media has developed into a burgeoning interdisciplinary field in recent years and now integrates a wide spectrum of diverse approaches and disciplines, ranging from media and communication studies over political science to history. This article reviews particularly the newer historical scholarship which has seen a major rise of output in recent years and has added much new empirical insight to the field. The focus is especially on works covering the 19th and 20th centuries and it concentrates first on newer works on global telegraphy and news agencies as well as on broader overviews. The second part of this article then maps works on the classic mass media in Africa, Asia, and Latin America: print, radio, and television, with a few glimpses toward cinema. It concludes with a section on the Cold War. Global media history means three things in the context of this article: (1) the history of media as global connectors and forces of globalization that enabled and promoted transnational flows of news, texts, pictures, information, ideas, and lifestyles; (2) the history of mass media in regions beyond the United States and Europe; and (3) the history of the ways in which governments and other historical actors used media to promote cross-national and international connections, messages, and interactions. The underlying understanding here, then, is that writing global media history involves as much a specific perspective on entanglements and interconnections as it is a programmatic effort to decenter existing European and US-centered national historiographies and enrich those with Latin American, African, and Asian experiences. The first studies on global media already appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. Mostly written by social scientists and communication scholars under contract by governments or UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), those works mapped the contemporary media environments of African, Asian, and Latin American countries, but usually also touched on historical developments. Common themes of those works were the media policies of the postcolonial state and the charge of cultural imperialism. Genuinely historical works on global mass media only began appearing from the mid-1980s on and initially focused on the interrelationships between diplomacy and global communications. Since the 2000s the historical study of global media has gradually broadened, and now overlaps considerably with other fields such as imperial history, business history, the history of public diplomacy and propaganda, and even ocean studies, making it a highly dynamic and fast-growing field.

Author(s):  
Jessica Stites Mor ◽  
Nicolas Poppe

The field of Argentine cinema studies can be said to have begun in earnest with the publication of film journalist Domingo Di Núbila’s landmark two-volume history of Argentina’s film history in 1959 and 1960, Historia del cine argentino (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Cruz de Malta). A work of tremendous range and scope, Di Núbila’s history not only provided a synopsis and critique of an abundance of individual films but also examined the influence of professional associations and industry, more broadly speaking. Perhaps due to the comprehensiveness of these volumes, minimal scholarly publishing on Argentine cinema followed until the 1970s, when interest in political cinema propelled Argentine cinema into the global spotlight. Scholarly writing about Argentine film in Europe, the United States, and, to a certain extent, Cuba during this period of heightened Cold War tensions tended to focus on questions of the political and the techniques of radical cinema. Writers from outside Argentina focused predominantly on films being made contemporaneously that engaged questions of colonialism, violence, social movements, and revolution. However, by the late 1970s and early 1980s, filmmakers themselves took on the task of building a new media studies that centered on Latin American cinema with interests in questions of industry, cultural imperialism, and consumption at the core of their inquiry. By the 1980s and early 1990s, growing interest in Argentine filmmaking among academic audiences both at home and abroad culminated in the emergence of a local film studies culture in Argentina that was finally dominated by scholars rather than biographers or filmmakers. This wave of scholarship converged around questions related to the 1976–1983 dictatorship and the subsequent democratic opening. Since 2001, a new wave of interest in Argentine film following the financial crisis has pushed scholarship beyond political questions to engage more seriously with aesthetic and conceptual aspects of national films. However, booming grassroots documentary production in the new digital era captured the interest of nontraditional film scholars interested in media politics, social movements, gender and sexuality, and film as a mode of communication more broadly.


2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Reuss

The resolution of international water disputes demands historical analysis. Too often, this analysis is not supplied by professional historians but by policymakers, engineers, and others who may lack the required knowledge and skills. The result inhibits rather than advances sound policy. Fortunately, historians are obtaining increased appreciation for what they bring to the conference table. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which the United States recently rejoined, is attempting to further sound historical study; and the recently formed International Water History Association (IWHA) provides a forum to focus on the history of global water issues. These developments afford historians new and important means to make a difference in resolving some of the most pressing international resource issues.


Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano

This epilogue briefly identifies some of the major changes in Spanish language politics since World War II. These include community shifts in activism. For example, the Chicano Movementreclaimed the language and advocated for culturally affirming bilingual education programs. The epilogue also turns to federal support for Spanish instruction with the 1968 Bilingual Education Act and with the 1975 extension to the Voting Rights Act that provides federal protection for ballots in languages other than English. Spanish is no longer a language of just the Southwest and there are major populations of Spanish speakers in cities like Chicago, New York, and Miami today. In 2013, tens of millions of U.S. residents spoke Spanish in their homes. Spanish language perseverance in the United States is due to a long history of Latin American migration to the country. It began as a language of settlement and power in the nineteenth century and has transformed into a language often deemed as foreign or un-American. Spanish is an American language historically and this book has recovered that history.


2000 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich Katz

In the eyes of many North Americans, Mexico is above all a country of immigration from which hundreds of thousands hope to pass across the border to find the promised land in the United States. What these North Americans do not realize is that for thousands of Latin Americans and for many U.S. intellectuals, Mexico after the revolution of 1910-1920 constituted the promised land. People persecuted for their political or religious beliefs—radicals, revolutionaries but liberals as well—could find refuge in Mexico when repressive regimes took over their country.In the 1920s such radical leaders as Víctor Raúl Haya De La Torre, César Augusto Sandino and Julio Antonio Mella found refuge in Mexico. This policy continued for many years even after the Mexican government turned to the right. Thousands of refugees from Latin American military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay fled to Mexico. The history of that policy of the Mexican government has not yet been written.


2012 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-254
Author(s):  
Susan Schroeder

Over the course of the past half century, the field of colonial Latin American history has been greatly enriched by the contributions of Father Stafford Poole. He has written 14 books and 84 articles and book chapters and has readily shared his knowledge at coundess symposia and other scholarly forums. Renowned as a historian, he was also a seminary administrator and professor of history in Missouri and California. Moreover, his background and formation are surely unique among priests in the United States and his story is certainly worth the telling.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document