ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for the urgent need to systematically study the city within comparative research frameworks. With a focus on the global city and selective references to empirical evidence, it proposes an ecological, globally oriented, and comparative approach to the relationship between the media and the city. By proposing ecological sensibility, comparative vision, and global orientation in media and communications research, the discussion aims to demonstrate that the city is not only a container of media and communications but also a constitutive actor to their configurations. The case of popular media cultures is particularly revealing of the interconnections between global media networks, between cities, and between the mainstream and the marginal. The globalization of popular culture through the growth of cultural industries, the expansion of the consumption of cultural products across global markets, and the diversification of cultural production as a result of migration have advanced the presence of the forms of cultural production within global cultural markets.
