The new book, BRICS Media Reshaping the Global Communication Order?, is edited by Daya Thussu and Kaarle Nordenstreng and published by Routledge.
Bringing together distinguished scholars from BRICS nations and those with deep interest and knowledge of these emerging powers, this collection makes a significant intervention in the ongoing debates about comparative communication research and thus contributes to the further internationalization of media and communication studies.
In general, evaluating the implications of globalization of BRICS media on the reshaping of international communication, the book frames this within the contexts of theory-building on media and communication systems, soft power discourses and communication practices, including in cyberspace. Adopting a critical approach in analysing BRICS communication strategies and their effectiveness, the book assesses the role of the BRICS nations in reframing a global communication order for a ‘post-American world’.
TaRC members Iiris Ruoho (Senior Lecturer and Adjunct Professor, Head of the Communication Sciences Unit at Tampere University) and Tatu Laukkanen (Film Scholar and Maker) take the BRICS as an interpretive framework to analyze global screen cultures and entertainment particularly in the emerging and liberalized quintet.
The first part of the article is a specific case study of the massively popular Chinese TV drama Cell Phone (手机). The authors show it is emblematic of the changes brought about by the opening of the economy from the changing role of the intellectual to gender. The chapter then comparatively investigates the politics of the appropriation of Hollywood forms across the BRICS. In the analysis that always keeps in mind the politico-economic position of these countries in a globalized world, the authors call for the use of ‘BRICS as method’ and break ground by thinking through the BRICS as a cultural bloc.
In turn, Svetlana Pasti (Researcher and Adjunct Professor at Tampere University) has co-written a chapter with Jyotika Ramaprasad on BRICS journalism as a new territory for localizing journalism studies. The purpose was to situate interpretations locally, within the historical legacies and current dynamics of journalism, including its imported influences, in these countries.
The chapter selected journalists’ beliefs about professionalism, functions of journalism, and roles of journalists as variables to reconsider in this light because they comprise the essence of news. It also included social media use because they provide a new venue through which journalists practice their profession and deliver functions and roles and is thus a new avenue to journalistic freedom.
Congratulations to Iiris, Tatu and Svetlana on the publications in this timely and critical volume of essays!