A Liberal Paradox: Media Developments and ‘Global Civil Society’

Abstract

The research into the way in which developments in news media are evolving across different mediums and types of news organisations, all pertinent to the concept of ‘global civil society’ (GCS), needs to be placed within its proper critical context that also addresses the way in which these have important implications for how we may conceptualise social and political change. This is crucial to bridge the discourses of different fields of inquiry that need to be in much closer dialogue. As has been argued in this book, discussions on the changing nature of democracy and practices of resistance within International Relations (IR) that have centred on the emergence of a ‘global civil society’ invoke a very particular account of how the media, and in particular news media, is understood to operate that, in fact, contributes to the coherence and currency of the concept of GCS itself. In this final chapter, it is important to highlight the findings of the previous chapters that illustrate, in conjunction, the way in which the account of the media in the literature on GCS is based on a misapprehension of how mediated discourses are produced, a lack of appreciation of the power relations manifested within and through news practices, and the way in which developments in media challenge the notion of ‘globality’ as it is commonly discussed.