‘Global Civil Society’ and the Media

Abstract

Global civil society (GCS) has flourished as a concept over the last two decades. This is evident, not least, by the vast — and varied — amount of literature that concerns itself with the notion most predominantly within the discipline of International Relations (IR). Within this field, GCS has come to occupy a firm position in the analysis of social and political transformations and the development of democratic theory. However, as part of this debate, there has been curiously little critical attention paid to the role the media plays within this concept of GCS and what this means for how the concept is used. The role of the media in the literature has predominantly been confined to minimal and apolitical accounts of technological developments in general that have facilitated the seemingly ubiquitous process of globalisation. The critical relationship between GCS and the media has hardly been scrutinised at all. This is, perhaps, largely to do with the fact that questions of social and political transformations and questions of the media have been approached within separate disciplines that have had very little dialogue with each other. Although both essentially concerned with the nature of democracy in a global age, IR and media studies are still operating in parallel discourses. It is a significant omission, however, as this chapter will argue that a critical examination of GCS reveals a crucial and contentious understanding of the nature and role of the media that provides the concept with its currency and coherence.