Global Public Sphere Research Articles

Testing the Possibilities and Limits of Global and National Public Spheres: Lessons Learned from the Campaign to Stop a Military Base in South Korea

This article examines the civil society campaign to stop the construction of a military base in South Korea as a case study in both the promises and limits of global advocacy networks in the digital media age. First the article traces the historical and political contexts leading up to the 2007 decision by the South Korean government to locate the naval base on the coastline of Jeju Island, despite strong objections from residents of the targeted village. Then the article illustrates how local activists fighting the base gained support in the global peace, justice, and environmental movements, even if the larger protest campaign and the international media coverage it generated did not stop the project. The case illustrates how the notion of the ‘global public sphere’ remains highly contingent upon the readiness of local and global political actors to anticipate and overcome the persuasive and coercive powers of national governments as well as national political cultures that can enable authoritarian tactics to stifle public debate. It also illustrates how activists in the global justice movement often run into formidable obstacles when confronted by centralized political and economic power in specific national settings.

Tuning in or turning off: performing emotion and building cosmopolitan solidarity in international music competitions

This article suggests that international classical music competitions are becoming sites of the global cultural public sphere. Like post-traditional festivals, they have previously served as arenas where nations compete for supremacy. But as these events become more globalized, they create opportunities to foster cosmopolitan sociability and cultivate global values. Through a discourse analysis of media coverage and online commentary from a selected case, I examine how difference is constructed in the competition context and how these categories complicate attempts to relate musically across differences. This analysis highlights the central role of emotion in the process of cultural inclusion, both as a discursive trope in evaluations of musical authenticity and as a signifier of value justifying the incorporation of a wider range of people into the circle of great musicians.

Social Networks and Transnationalism: A Content Analysis of Selected Filipino Migrant Workerss Facebook Posts as a Transnational Engagement Tool

This paper used quantitative-qualitative mixed methods via content analysis, observing the present-day transnational ties of Filipino migrants in the cyber-space. It specifically employed Facebook as a leading social network through which the subjects’ transnational engagements took shape. Using social networks, particularly Facebook, as emerging tools to carry out ethnographic studies, this paper aimed to identify and establish a pattern of transnational involvements Filipino migrants in this study had. This study first used a quantitative approach by way of tabulations, noting down the transnational posts of the subjects and their reaction/s and/ or behavior in relation to varying issues they engage in. The tabulations were used to (1) identify the different transnational activities the subjects have via Facebook, and (2) establish a pattern of Transnationalism they manifest. This paper sought to produce baseline data from which future research can be based. It also sought to underpin the emerging importance of social networks as a data-collection instrument. An issue that is currently under-researched in the regional and international academic discussions and the global public sphere, this paper used the quantitative design to qualitative, as content analysis of the subjects’ posts on their Facebook walls was ultimately done.

Neojihadism and Muslim–Christian Relations in the Mindanao Resistance Movement: A Study of Facebook Digital Narratives

Religion is surely not the most important factor in explaining the conflict in the Southern Philippines. Economic, political and criminal issues also contribute to explaining the violence in the country. Yet the religious narrative influences the narration of the conflict, impacting on its frame of understanding both within the country and from the perspective of global audiences. This study presents the results of field research on three Facebook pages in English (and therefore addressed to global audiences) related to resistance movements in Southern Philippines, notably BIFF and MNLF, which openly include neojihadist symbols and contents in their narratives. How do these narratives depict and affect Christian–Muslim relations within the local movement and the local society in Mindanao? And how does the local version of the global neojihadist narrative contribute to shaping Christian–Muslim relations in the global Muslim public sphere? This article shows the potential impact of the neojihadist ideology on the narration of the resistance movement, highlighting the consequences for the negotiation of Christian and Muslim identities.

Travestis brasileiras e exotismo sexual

Currently, Brazil seems to be fashion in the new global public sphere. This has apparently given a new global dimension to Brazil’s traditional image of being a generous and pacific country in which social conflicts are preferably settled within the scope of artistic creativity and sexual freedom. It is in this sense that the femininity of Brazilian trannies is able to enter the already vast field of the global imaginary on Brazilian eroticism. At the same time, this femininity is also able to tension many social difference markers (such as class, race/ethnicity and nationality) and to create for Brazilian trannies specific characteristics that are increasingly competitive in the transnational sex market.Keywords: transgender, exoticism, colonialism.

Reinforcing global legitimacy and efficiency: the case fοr strategic discursive public diplomacy

Although we have gone a long way from old to new public diplomacy, it is widely accepted that it underperforms. We thus aim to offer strong grounds for the term strategic discursive public diplomacy and to show how taking this path can fundamentally refocus and improve the practice of public diplomacy. Strategic refers to the need to refocus the thematic orientation of public diplomacy: instead of working predominantly on issues of culture and education, public diplomacy should focus on the mounting threats common for all. The discursive element boils down to a shift of public diplomacy towards fully explaining one's policies and showing how they contribute to the delivery of global public goods. Strategic discursive public diplomacy, then, focuses on the principal issues of global politics and engages foreign publics in an open debate with the aim to communicate standpoints, but also listen and reply to potential counter-arguments. This becomes an important means in dealing with the accountability, transparency and legitimacy deficits of global politics. This reconceptualization is applied in a number of cases, such as the (a) debate on growth and development, (b) climate change and (c) Iran and nuclear proliferation. Taking the strategic discursive path bears particularly significant implications for diplomacy and world politics since it renders public diplomacy more profoundly political and shall facilitate the delivery of foreign policy goals within a more developed and aware global public sphere. Opening venues with foreign publics can be seen as a form of foreign intervention. In some cases, this may sideline or even go against a government's entrenched position, thus potentially creating friction between governments. At the same time, however, it carries the potential of reshuffling political alignments at a global level and changing the contours of the global political environment.

Jung, Dietrich. Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere: A Genealogy of the Modern Essentialist Image of Islam. Sheffield: Equinox, 2011. xx+336 pp. $99.95 (cloth); $34.95 (paper).

Previous articleNext article No AccessJung, Dietrich. Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere: A Genealogy of the Modern Essentialist Image of Islam. Sheffield: Equinox, 2011. xx+336 pp. $99.95 (cloth); $34.95 (paper).Ruchama Johnston-BloomRuchama Johnston-BloomChicago. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 93, Number 3July 2013 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/672233 Views: 40Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Glocalization and the Media

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’.

Images of the child and environmental risk: Australian news photography of children and natural disasters, 2010–2011

Images of children appeared frequently in Australian metropolitan news reporting on the series of extreme weather events and natural disasters that occurred in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region between September 2010 and April 2011. This article examines these photographs and pictures as a case study through which to comment on relationships between public image worlds of children and globalised visual cultures of risk in late modernity. The author discusses the Australian news coverage of these events alongside the public uncertainty generated by discourses on global climate change. She draws attention to the frequent emphasis on children in this news reporting to narrate the stories of families and communities, and considers the historical relationship between images of the child and natural disasters in news journalism. Drawing on theories of risk, the author then examines the global networks of images of risk within which these pictures of children circulate. This is contextualised alongside Western post-industrial sentiment towards the child, and the ways in which frequent images of children today saturate the market in unprecedented forms. Two case studies from the Australian context are analysed to illustrate how such representations have become emblematic of deeply held public anxieties towards Australia's uncertain environmental future. In conclusion, the author argues that these images bring forth the intimate relationship in the global public sphere between visual cultures of children and risk in the 21st century.

The Regional Dimension: How Regional Media Systems Condition Global Climate-Change Communication

Global perspectives and national approaches have dominated studies of climate-change communication, reflecting the global nature of climate change as well as the traditional research focus on national media systems. In the absence of a global public sphere, however, transnational issue attention is largely dependent on regional media systems, yet the role this regional dimension plays has been largely overlooked. This article presents a comparative study of climate-change coverage in three geo-cultural regions, The Middle East, Scandinavia, and North America, and explores the link between global climate-change communication and regional media systems. It finds that regional variations in climate-change communication carry important communicative implications concerning perceptions of climate change's relevance and urgency.

International Public Opinion on China’s Climate Change Policies

With the emergence of a global public sphere and the revolution of global media, international public opinion has gained an intrinsic importance for effective multilateral cooperation. Global governance initiatives are subject to international public opinion, and climate change is the single most important global governance issue of our time. Tackling climate change requires a fundamental transformation of the global economy, with an emphasis on sustainable development. Due to its political and economic weight, China can push forward UN climate change negotiations, and can do so without compromising its national development goals (China’s National Climate Change Programme, 2007). China’s national policies are beyond what is required from developing nations, but international public opinion often perceives a different message. This paper holds that a national branding strategy will help convey China’s current efforts, allowing a better understanding among nations in order to break the climate change negotiations deadlock. This research merged perception analysis and public opinion surveys with mass media qualitative and quantitative analysis to gain a full insight into what the international climate change decision-makers, opinion-leaders and general public think about China’s position at the UNFCCC negotiations. As seen in the findings of the present research, the climate of opinion is unfavorable to China. Overall, the results show that China is perceived as a negative influence in the negotiations. China’s climate change efforts are being overlooked by international public opinion. But the reason lies in China’s current discourse, where climate change and the environment are always downplayed by the right to develop (D’Hooghe, 2011). According to China’s 12th Five Year Plan, the new path for the country is marked by its commitment to achieve growth through low carbon development, with a strong focus on addressing climate change and energy challenges (Shealy & Dorian, 2007). The results of this study show that the positive intentions and actions of the Chinese government aren’t being accurately perceived by public opinion. The empirical findings in this study provide a new understanding of one specific part of the overall image that the world has about China. Whilst this study did not confirm unequivocally that international public opinion directly determines the outcomes of international negotiations and foreign policy, it did partially substantiate the concept that there’s a correlation between China’s public declarations and actions, the negotiators declarations to the press, press coverage in general, the attitude of experts towards China, and the attitudes and perceptions of uninformed public towards China. The study concludes that China requires a country rebranding strategy, and presents solid data as to which areas China has to tackle. This paper can be a working base for the national branding strategy, but by no means intends to be a complete evaluation of China’s brand.

Global communication, the environment, and world risk society

Global environmental risks are set to play an increasingly prominent role in world affairs. As detailed by Ulrich Beck in his theory of the World Risk Society, such risks are an inevitable outcome of an increasingly globalized world, while their existence can also serve to deepen processes of global interconnectedness and cosmopolitanization. Global communication flows are integral to the construction and understanding of risk. While Beck acknowledges the centrality of media and communication, his analysis is largely at the level of broad social theory. This article critically examines some of his concepts in light of empirical work in communications scholarship, in particular his notions of ‘risk cultures’ and the ‘global public sphere’.

Refocusing Public Diplomacy: The Need for Strategic Discursive Public Diplomacy

This article concerns itself with the agenda, the instruments, and the goals of public diplomacy (PD). Taking into account the current state of PD that concentrates predominantly on forging cultural and educational links and promoting values, but not policies, it refocuses PD in two substantial ways: driving it, first, to focus on the most significant global issues and, second, to employ profound discursive processes. The emphasis then shifts to how PD can strengthen the global public sphere with regard to the profoundly political and critical issues of the present era. It argues in favour of strategic discursive PD and suggests ways to enhance both the legitimacy and efficiency of states' foreign policies on the handling of the Greek economic crisis and the issue of economic governance.

Editorial

Editorial

Preparing Students to Join the Global Public Sphere

Just as public policy was once debated over newspapers in Parisian cafes, today's global policy debates take place in the blogosphere and on social networks. Admission to the lettered city of the twenty-first century demands not just constant connectivity but also rapid comprehension and succinct writing. Preparing students to participate in the global public sphere requires supplementing their directed research skills with monitoring skills, then showing them how to communicate in public debate. In selected undergraduate International Relations courses at San Francisco State University, students hone monitoring skills by following news feeds in RSS feed readers and course management systems. Textbooks then become a source of context for understanding the latest developments in regional issues. Suggested Web sites and a Facebook forum provide students with access and encouragement to communicate with experts on course topics. By engaging online, students repurpose technologies and social skills from their daily lives for educational ends. Examination questions cover relevant current events, briefing papers replace term papers, and course assessment measures reward students for experimenting and improving throughout the semester. Because this approach to online participation and current events monitoring may be unfamiliar to students, the course design and simulation activities encourage students to draw on small group support while developing their individual skills and confidence.

Introduction: World state futures

In some contrast to the traditional and ongoing normative discussions about the desirability of a world state, new and more explicitly geo-historical questions about world political integration are being posed, especially (i) whether elements of world statehood are in existence already, (ii) whether a world state is in some sense inevitable, and (iii) whether, and under what conditions, a world state would be sustainable? For instance, the existing and emerging structures of global governance, of a global public sphere and global constitutionalism can be argued to converge to form at least nascent forms of world statehood. Building on and complementing such diagnoses of existing forms of world statehood, the question arises about whether there are possible and likely, or even inevitable, futures in which the emergence of more ‘thick’ forms of a world state, understood as a more tightly and substantially integrated expression of political community, could evolve. This possibility raises further questions about the legitimacy, viability and sustainability of such a state form. After a brief overview of these issues, the Introduction provides a preview of the following contributions of this special issue as well as the distinction between the ‘global’ and the ‘world’ as one possible future research trajectory in the present context.

In Babel's Shadow: Multilingual literatures, Monolingual States

In Babel's Shadow: Multilingual literatures, Monolingual States

Do You Want to Know a Secret? Wikileaks. Freedom. Democracy

This article examines Wikileaks under reference to Habermasian democratic theory, using an analysis of Jonathan Franzen’s novel “Freedom” (2010) to support its argument. The author argues that Wikileaks is significant in two ways. Firstly, it may strengthen democracy as it attempts to facilitate a global public sphere that is transparent. Secondly, it addresses feelings of frustration that arise out of an inability to hold certain agents legally accountable for their policies and acts. The article concludes with observations on the legitimacy of Wikileaks itself as a ‘global watchdog.’

The Googlization of everything: (and why we should worry)

Preface Introduction: The Gospel of Google 1. Render unto Caesar: How Google Came to Rule the Web 2. Google's Ways and Means: Faith in Aptitude and Technology 3. The Googlization of Us: Universal Surveillance and Infrastructural Imperialism 4. The Googlization of the World: Prospects for a Global Public Sphere 5. The Googlization of Knowledge: The Future of Books 6. The Googlization of Memory: Information Overload, Filters, and the Fracturing of Knowledge Conclusion: The Human Knowledge Project Acknowledgments Notes Index

The Conceptual and Constitutional Challenge of Transnational Private Regulation

Transnational private regulation (TPR) is a key aspect of contemporary governance. At first glance TPR regimes raise significant problems of legitimacy because of a degree of detachment from traditional government mechanisms. A variety of models have emerged engaging businesses, associations of firms, and NGOs, sometimes in hybrid form and often including governmental actors. Whilst the linkage to electoral politics is a central mechanism of legitimating governance activity, we note there are also other mechanisms including proceduralization and potentially also judicial accountability. But these public law forms do not exhaust the set of such mechanisms, and we consider also the contribution of private law forms and social and competitive structures which may support forms of legitimation. The central challenge identified concerns the possibility of reconceptualizing the global public sphere so as better to embrace TPR regimes in their myriad forms, so that they are recognized as having similar potential for legitimacy as national and international governmental bodies and regulation.