Globalization of News

This book overviews and reconsiders media organizations - the news agencies - which report and film the news for the press and broadcast media. Incorporating institutional, historical, political economic and cultural studies perspectives, the book: reviews agency provision of general news, video news and financial news; analyzes agency-state relations through periods of dramatic social upheaval; and critically examines the impact of deregulation and globalization on the news agency business.

Contributors consider how leading players like Reuters and Associated Press help to define the nature of both the Global and the Local as well as focusing on the network of relations between international and national agencies. The book also takes into account the attempts by some national news agencies to establish radically different news agendas. Demonstrating how the news agencies have contributed both to the process of globalization and, simultaneously, to the process of national construction, this book provides an important critical survey of the contemporary international news business.

Dr. Oliver Boyd-Barrett joined Bowling Green State University′s School of Communication Studies as Director in 2005, a position he held for three years before deciding to return to faculty in the Department of Journalism. His current research interests include international and national news agencies, news media and the “war on terror,” and Hollywood representations of the intelligence community. He was previously Professor of Communication at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, California, and has held various appointments at universities in the United Kingdom. Dr. Boyd-Barrett has published extensively on educational and management communications, international news media, and the political economy of mass communication. He is founding chair of the division for Global Communication and Social Change in the International Communication Association. Terhi Rantanen (MSc, LicSc, DocSc, Docent, Helsinki University) is Professor in Global Media and Communications. Her books include When News Was New (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) The Media and Globalization (Sage, 2005), The Global and the National. Media and Communications in Post-Communist Russia (Rowman & Littlefield: 2002), The Globalization of News (with O. Boyd-Barrett, Sage: 1998), ′Maailman ihmeellisin asia′. Johdatus viestinnän oppihistoriaan (′Of All Affairs, Communication is the Most Wonderful.′ An Introduction to the History of Communication Research) in collaboration with M. Ampuja, The Finnish Open University: 1997), Foreign News in Imperial Russia: The Relationship between International and Russian News Agencies, 1856-1914 (Federation of Finnish Scientific Societies: 1990) and ′STT:n uutisia′ sadan vuoden varrelta′ (′News from the Finnish News Agency, STT: One Hundred Years′) (Weilin & Göös: 1987).