School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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Start date: 2012 × End date: 2012 × Subject: globalisation ×

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    Marketisation in 'transboundary networks': a comparative study of public service media in Australia and Germany
    MEYERHOFER, TANJA ( 2012)
    Public service media are in a process of change, attempting to balance the challenges of the increasing global interconnectivity of media environments. Digital communications technologies make content available on-demand via various ‘access points’ such as satellite and broadband television, tablet computers, smartphones and video game consoles, multiplying and diversifying content choices. As a result the use of media is no longer a communal but a highly individualised and fragmented activity. Furthermore, the myriads of ‘access points’ created by digital communications technologies empower individuals to directly choose what content they consume when, where and how. Media users’ empowerment significantly challenges the capacity of public service media to strengthen the democratic values and social cohesion of national societies by gathering and engaging civic communities in discourses of shared public interests. To continue to be a relevant fragment in individuals’ relationship with content, public service media organisations are inevitably drawn into multidimensional networks of marketisation involving competition and cooperations with other public service and commercial, national and transnational content providers. Built on Sassen’s (2006) approach of ‘transboundary networks’, this study investigates new models of transnational ‘commercialisation’ of public service media in Australia and Germany. The thesis explores in particular the emerging microsphere of marketisation where ‘national’ public purpose goals and ‘global’ market forces converge. These ‘transboundary’ trajectories are further examined through semi-structured interviews with corporate executives of the ABC and SBS in Australia and ZDF and Deutsche Welle in Germany. Results reveal that while marketisation relates on the surface to strategies implemented to remain competitive, at a deeper level it constitutes a means to protect and reinforce public purpose values. The leveraging of these public purpose values, which are what makes public media services marketable, constitutes a key brand advantage enabling public service media to remain competitive in complex networks of ‘coopetition’ (Küng, Leandros, Picard, Schroeder, & van der Wurff, 2008).
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    Relational 'glocalities': a study of 'cartographies' of media and migration through the approach of 'glocal' cosmopolitanism
    Chin, Ying Wei Esther ( 2012)
    In this thesis, I explore constructions of social spaces in experiences of media and migration. In particular, I focus on the interweaving of the ‘global’ and the 'local' in a distinctive, Singaporean context of contemporary globalised media and migration. This study involves a hermeneutical analysis of phenomenological interviews with twenty-one Singaporeans who are university students in Melbourne, Australia. While this thesis is primarily positioned in media and migration studies, I develop a conceptual framework that draws and builds on related discourses of mediated globalisation and cosmopolitanism, as well as mediated social spaces. In particular, I expand existing conceptions of 'relational space' to a tripartite conception. I conceptualise three dimensions of what I view as 'relational spaces': spaces as constructed through social relations (social spaces), relations between social spaces, and relations to social spaces. I argue that social spaces are constructed in experiences of media and migration as 'cartographies' (see Brah, 1996, p. 145) characterised by 'relational glocalities'. I define 'relational glocalities' as 'glocal' (R. Robertson, 1995) social spaces that are locally and unequally differentiated in relation to one another within 'global fields' (Glick Schiller & Çağlar, 2009; R. Robertson, 1992). Drawing on Beck’s (2006) approach of 'methodological cosmopolitanism' and Robertson’s (1992, 1995) conception of 'glocality' as a 'universalism-particularism nexus', I introduce the concept of 'glocal cosmopolitanism' to examine the construction of 'relational glocalities' through dialectical negotiation between 'universalism' and 'particularism'. The notion of 'relational glocalities' challenges the established approach of 'methodological nationalism' (Beck, 2006; A. Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2003) that informs existing research on media and migration. It contributes to the reconceptualisation of sociospatial experiences of media and migration through the approach of 'methodological cosmopolitanism' (Beck, 2006; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2009; Beck & Grande, 2010; Georgiou, 2007b; Jansson, 2009). This study finds that a multiplicity and diversity of countries and cities of migration are apparent in and across macrostructural constructions of what I describe as 'biographical geographies'. 'Biographical geographies' are differentiated by stages of migration, the relevance of close personal relations for experiences of migration, as well as first-hand and second-hand experiences of migration. Expanding the view of social spaces beyond (particular) countries and cities, this study finds that a much broader variety of 'relational spaces' are relevant in microstructural constructions of 'cartographies'. I identify distinct 'relational spaces' that emerge as configurations of media, social relations, place, and space. In the final chapter, I discuss the broader potential of 'glocal cosmopolitanism' as a framework to examine sociospatial experiences of media and migration in a global environment of networked communication (Castells, 2010).