ABSTRACT
A consideration of theories of global media requires an understanding of the ways in which capitalist market forces, changes in audience behaviour, new technologies, data and algorithms combine to increase international media production, distribution and reception. Examples of an international perspective are, of course, almost infinite. Media exchange in and between Arab nations is of great contemporary interest to the media student. One problem with theories of globalisation, which critical students of media need to carefully sidestep, is that they have tended to polarise the debate. Globalization divides as much as it unites; it divides as it unites – the causes of division being identical with those which promote the uniformity of the globe. Global media is best understood in terms of tensions, complexities, flow and counter-flow, hybridity and the construction of highly specific ‘glocal’ meanings which are best understood through ethnographic research.
