ABSTRACT
How can, and how should, communication scholars formulate the scope and ambitions of their projects and their field in an age of globalization? How can they address the intellectual, political, and practical problems that ensue from working comparatively across countries and cultures? Once, most researchers formulated a research project appropriate to the media institutions, texts, or audiences of their own country, and shared the findings, in their national language, with their compatriots. Today, such an approach seems parochial, of uncertain relevance to the wider international effort to grasp the contours of a rapidly globalizing and ever more mediated world. Yet although few would question the importance of globalization, the rationale and conduct of the comparative research designed to examine it remains insufficiently understood.
