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Global Media Research Center, SIUC: mission and goals
The crucial significance of global media at the present time is directly linked to the dizzying expansion of the global economy. The phrase "global media" designates not only the long-established profession of foreign news reporting, and international sales of television programs and recorded music. It also denotes the global advertising and public relations industries, world cinema, business telecommunications, and other worldwide applications of the internet, including those of arts, environmentalist, religious and other civic groups. It includes small-scale alternative media, those of social movements of all kinds, such as human rights bodies, indigenous peoples, feminist projects or ultra-rightist groups. Not least, it flags the remarkable expansion of very large transnational communication businesses, such as News Corp., Bertelsmann, Sony, Microsoft, and Nokia, whose strategic planning visions simultaneously encompass all continents and the next fifty years (at the least).
Research in this field may address global media activities as such, for example Hollywood's, Bollywood's, Hill & Knowlton's, McCann Erickson's or Samsung's operations across the planet. It may equally engage in comparative media studies, examining other national media systems or aspects of them, for example a study of audience appropriations of television serials in two or more countries, or different governments' policy responses to global copyright issues in the digital era. Media responsibility and ethics are also important topics for comparative study.
The Center's mission thus includes the following: to foster a core group of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students engaged in substantive research initiatives in global media; to establish national and international partnerships for research and creative exchange; to provide an active visiting scholars and artists program; to serve as an impetus for the development of new courses addressing global media issues in the College; to develop international exchange programs for faculty and students; and to work with both the campus and the local community on fostering the discussion of global media topics. Maintaining a dialogue among researchers, artists and media industry professionals on global communication issues will be an important component of the Center's project. |
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