Abstract
Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age, a textbook written by Dal Young Jin, offers a reflective, informative, useful, and, perhaps most important, an updated window in on the complex relations between globalization, media, communication technologies as well as an informed overview of the various media and cultural theories that seek to understand and explain these relations. The book does so through the crucial and contemporary lens of the case of “digital platforms” such as Facebook, YouTube, Netflix and Spotify, which arguably rule not only the digital media-sphere but also, to a large extent, everyday life in the postmodern internet world.
The book does indeed provide an accessible-to-undergraduate-and-graduate students overview of the contemporary state of global media and communication theories in the age of digital platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and Netflix, doing so in an historically and theoretically grounded manner as well as in a way that gives the (graduate) student audience a solid grounding in basic global media studies history and theory. Jin's book is definitely worth a look at for those who teach international communication, global media and/or general media and cultural theory courses that have sections devoted to various dimensions of globalization. You will find many useful chapters. Especially useful, I think, are the first five chapters of Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age. These focus on larger theoretical discussions and debates surrounding globalization, media and communication technologies and culture. The last four chapters of the book concentrate more on specific media industries and/or instances such as the smart phone and global music. These chapters are well-researched and well-written and, as is the first half of the 139-page volume, insightful for, and accessible to, undergraduate and graduate students. Personally, I anticipate using some of the chapters in the first half of the book for undergraduate and graduate global media and communication courses that I regularly teach at in the Department of Media, Film & Journalism studies at the University of Denver.
Chapter 1, “Globalization in the age of digital platforms?” delivers a well-contextualized and theoretically well-grounded overview of, among other things, different approaches to theorizing globalization as well as to theorizing and interrogating the intersections among globalization, media and communication. Jin puts forward a definition of “digital platforms” as well, drawing from van Dijck et al. (2018), among others, to define digital platforms as a combination of computer hardware, software, cultural values and the “corporate sphere” that “code social activities into a computational architecture” (p. 3). Chapter 2, “Media history in the age of globalization,” is a well-crafted and accessible historical overview of the rise of media and communication technologies across human history. In Chapter 3, “Approaches to globalization in the age of digital platforms,” Jin focuses on the long-running and ongoing debate between political economy and cultural studies, grounding his overview and analysis of this debate vis-à-vis globalization and media and communication technologies. He further develops his focus on this debate between political economy-focused global media scholars and cultural studies focused scholars in Chapter 4, “From cultural imperialism to platform imperialism.” These first four chapters of Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age are, to me, the textbook's strongest. They are also the most “timeless” in terms of their content, as they focus less on specific media industries and technologies than the last four chapters of the book, though, of course, all chapters in the book will have to be regularly updated in order for the book and its contents to remain timely vis-à-vis a rapidly shifting global media and communication environment.
Jin makes use of specific examples and case studies throughout, but uses them more frequently in the final chapters of the book after he has laid out the history of and the theories used by scholars to understand and attempt to explain the complex interplay between globalization, media, communication technologies and culture. Following Chapter 5, “The nation-state,” in which Jin outlines the role various media technologies have played in the rise of the modern nation-state, most notably, but not only, print, the Simon Fraser media studies scholar puts forward interesting and detailed case studies of, among other things, what might be called digital platform “major players” -- Jin does not use this term, I put it forward here -- such as Google and Disney in Chapter 6, “The business of global media industries.” Jin constructs Chapter 7, “Smartphones in the era of globalizations” around a biting critique of the hegemony of Apple and Google. U.S.-founded and based Netflix serves as the primary video streaming platform case study for Chapter 8, “Globalization and broadcasting.” In Chapter 9, “The cultural politics of film,” Jin provides an overview of both counter-hegemonic trends and players globally in the film industry, with a look at, in particular, the case of India's Bollywood, as well as a critical take on continued comparative American hegemony -- and insularity -- vis-à-vis film. He closes Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age with Chapter 10, “The culture of global music” which zeroes in both on Western hegemony vis-à-vis global pop music, e.g., Spotify, which is a Swedish company, and the growth of counter-hegemonic national players in the music industry, in particular, South Korea.
Jin's approach organizational approach to constructing Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age -- front-loading the more theoretical and historical chapters and back-loading the more case-study focused chapters -- makes good sense from a pedagogical perspective. It first steeps students in the history and theory before exposing them to more specificity via more case studies. This structure might make keeping the book updated to keep pace with the fast change in global media and communication easier as well. A nice addition to the text book, I think, would be the addition of introduction and conclusion chapters. In an introduction, Jin could outline what the book will cover and provide a “book map” while also providing short previews of each chapter. Ideally, a conclusion chapter would focus on bringing into more clear, and more explicitly reflective, view the many interesting, important, and evolving and shifting connections between the broader points made in the book's 10 chapters and the ways in which these chapters highlight how the rise of digital platforms over the past 15 years has profoundly affected so many aspects of the intersections between globalization, media and communication as well as basic human experience. Another suggestion I would have would be to either foreground “digital platform” more often and in more depth or perhaps to change the title of the book to something broader such as: “Globalization and Media in the Postmodern Digital Media Era” or “Globalization and Media in the Internet Age.” Ultimately, I would advocate doing the former: Accentuating more often in the book the digital platform elements of the book while keeping its current title. While digital platforms are explicitly foregrounded in some chapters, I would like to see the specific role of digital platforms vis-à-vis globalization, media and communication more consistently and directly emphasized across all chapters. Digital platforms are, after all, as Jin himself makes a very persuasive case for, dramatically reshaping the global media and communication environment for cultural producers, distributors, consumers and regulators. They are also an area of deep scholarly expertise for Jin. Simply seeing more frequent explicit references such as “digital platforms fit into this broader change in global media in this way, this way and this way” or “digital platforms are influencing this dynamic in this specific way” would be helpful. These would further establish the unique space Jin is attempting to create via this text book. Finally, more often directly reflecting on digital platforms’ role in (re)shaping the global media and communication theoretical and empirical landscape across the past 15 years would further drive home the many important ways in which digital platforms both do, and do not, change (national) cultural power dynamics.
Indeed, this is one of the great strengths of Jin's analysis of digital media platforms: Jin is able to effectively situate the emergence of digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify and Netflix in relation to power as well as to both cultural imperialist perspectives and cultural globalization perspectives. He thus offers (graduate) student readers a chance to make up their own minds vis-à-vis which perspective they believe offers a more telling analysis of digital platforms and to do so in an informed and historically and theoretically grounded way. This noted, Jin does lean a bit toward a more cultural imperialist perspective and, in my view, rightly so: As Jin himself repeatedly, and correctly, notes, the empirical reality is that American-founded and American-based digital platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, and European-founded and based platforms such as Spotify have, so far, had far wider global reach than some non-American, non-European founded/based digital platforms such as Baidu, WeChat, Sina Weibo and Zee Entertainment, all of which are primarily regional (social media) platforms. Ultimately, the global media environment has continued to be, comparatively speaking, heavily influenced by American (national) political and economic interests. As Jin notes, there is regional difference in terms of what he calls platform imperialism which often “demands other countries to adopt American consumerism, individualism, and democracy” (p. 53). In Asian regional markets, there is tendency to see considerable regional influence by non-American platforms. But, according to Jin, there is little evidence, so far, of much in the way of counter- or “back” flow from those places back to the American/European “center” vis-à-vis digital platforms, at least not on a structural or software level -- there is some evidence of cultural content backflow via phenomenon such as the Korean Wave, Anime, etc. As Jin notes multiple times in Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age, American hegemony is deeply cemented vis-à-vis digital platforms on a global level and shows little sign of much erosion. For example, American hegemony is thoroughly cemented vis-à-vis the operating systems of smart phones globally, where American-established and produced Android and Apple iOS software dominate the global market to the tune of about 98% of that market!
Overall, Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age stands as a very good textbook for, in particular, graduate-level global media and communication courses and/or courses with a global media and communication element to them. Jin's book provides an historically and theoretically grounded as well as informed overview of the dynamic and always shifting interplay between globalization, media, communication technologies and culture and does so from a unique and important perspective: That of digital platforms. These platforms, as Jin correctly points out, are extremely influential globally vis-à-vis the lives of billions of people around the world. Indeed, platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, and operating systems such as Android and Apple iOS, are central to the lives and experiences of so many humans that it is clear that we, as global media and communication scholars, must focus even more attention on them, both in terms of our own scholarship, and in terms of our teaching about globalization, media, communication and culture. Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age allows us to do both of these things.
