ABSTRACT
As traditional media continue to give way to contexts and sites increasingly shaped by individuals as a result of digitization, media remain a key site of multilingualism and retain a major role in maintaining or challenging existing language regimes, attitudes, and ideologies. This chapter begins by placing the current situation in an historical context, charting the change from monolingual media institutions to hybridized and translingual media spaces using a continuum ranging from media texts (traditional media texts prepared for mass delivery via a media channel) to mediatized texts (individually produced texts which can then be distributed by individuals to a small or wide audience as a result of technological changes). This is followed by an overview of some key issues of theory and method in studying the media as sites of multilingualism, with input from current and recent studies in a range of geopolitical contexts. New research directions, largely driven by the digitization of media, are introduced and the chapter attempts to redress the imbalance in favour of Northern-driven theory and studies to date by using a Global South example as the main case study.
