Glocalization and the Media

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In August 2013, Al Jazeera, a Doha-based broadcasting company, partly funded by the ruling family of Qatar, started its American service amidst resistance from some quarters in the United States. While hyper-nationalists and some lobbies saw it as an infiltration of their airspace by ‘anti-Americans’, ‘anti-Semites’ and ‘pro-terrorists’, it also brought the debate over globalization full circle. Leaders of most Third World countries, comprising the Global South, in the past, vehemently opposed the advent of satellite channels, calling it ‘an attack from the sky’. With the passage of time, however, Asians Tigers as also India, Turkey and some of the Gulf countries economically benefited too in the long run and this reflected in the media-space as well. The Indian film industry has emerged as favourite destination for artistes from South Asia, while in the field of news, Al Jazeera is today posing a challenge to the traditional Western information leaders, like British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Cable News Network (CNN). This paper explores the counter perspectives from the South in the public sphere, taking examples from West Asia (Al Jazeera) and South Asia (Indian media); it tries to understand how in an ever-glocalizing world, the global public sphere too is undergoing constant reorganization and realignment, creating a ‘counter space’.