Editorial: Communication and glocalization: media, culture, and society in the 21st century

Editorial on the Research Topic
Communication and glocalization: media, culture, and society in the 21st century

The advent of the 21^st century ICT revolution has been felt in numerous arenas of social life. One of the main issues in the social sciences concerns the relationship between media-driven globalization and culture or cultures across the world. In cross-cultural communication, sociology, anthropology, and related disciplines, the relationship between globalization and the media has been the focus of considerable scholarly attention. Hybridity is conventionally considered to be a key consequence of globalization's impact upon cultures, but this interpretation fails to account for the novelty of ICT-related phenomena. Glocalization has emerged as a far more precise concept that captures these processes and has been evoked in pioneer work on the media and key publications in the field (Roudometof, 2016; Roudometof and Dessi, 2022).

This Research Topic originated with an invitation addressed to one of the editors to guest edit a Research Topic for the journal. In accordance with the journal's guidelines an additional co-editor was added. The two co-editors never met each other, and all correspondence was done either by email or through the journal's electronic platform. The journal graciously waved the publication fee for a small number of papers. This offered the opportunity to publish accepted papers free of charge; and it thus facilitated overcoming perhaps the most important obstacle in open access publications. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to take full advantage of this incentive, as some potential contributors were overcommitted to other projects and were not able to participate in the Research Topic.

The Research Topic's objective has been to further explore the varied themes and multiple techno-social relationships between communication and glocalization in the 21^st century. The selection of this topic was meant to further the editors past engagements with the problematic of glocalization and communication (see Musa, 2019; Roudometof, 2023). Glocalization explicitly brings forth the significance of the local as a constitutive and active part of the local-global nexus. In numerous domains of techno-social life, the interplay between global forces and local constituencies offers the opportunity to explore the significance of local agency for shaping the outcome of local-global interactions. The significance and relevance of glocalization for media studies and communication had been further amplified as additional work has been published concurrently with this Research Topic (see, for example, Salama and Fawzy, 2023; Chen, 2022).

The editors felt the need to accept only those submissions that are directly linked to the topic and that in turn has meant that the rejection rate for the Research Topic has been over 70%. Despite the editors' own efforts, the ultimate goal of obtaining sufficient number of submissions to turn the Research Topic into an e-book was not met. Moreover, this is partly the reason that this Research Topic contains only five articles.

In her article on the glocalization of death in the digital age (Toplean) explores a fascinating and relatively under-studied topic. Death and dying is a traditional topic for sociologists and anthropologists and Toplean adds a perspective that illustrates how glocalization reconfigures the social understanding of death. Her perspective builds directly on her earlier work on the same topic (see Toplean, 2024). In his article on pre-modern glocalization and ancient texts in the 21^st century Inglis explores the relationship among translations and texts in the world's religious traditions. His contribution extends the notion of “media” far into the past: the focus of attention is how ancient texts have been subjected to glocalizing processes in the context of inter-civilizational encounters. In his article on digital glocalization, Roudometof expands on theorizing the 21^st century ICT revolution as a prime example of glocalization. This article expands on the author's earlier engagement with the problematic of the relationship between glocalization and the ICT revolution (see Roudometof, 2023). In his article on dialect inheritance and youth identity (Mei) explores via an on-line ethnography the multilingual and multicultural dynamics in 21^st century China. The Research Topic concludes with Muraca's book review of the Handbook of Culture and Glocalization (Roudometof and Dessi, 2022).

Regardless of the various difficulties encountered, the articles included in the Research Topic make important contributions to topics that have been thus far insufficiently addressed in the literature. There is still a great deal of work that can be done in examining the relationship between glocalization and communication.

Author contributions

VR: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.

Acknowledgments

The editors encountered some issues with their ability to exercise sufficient oversight over the overall process. Only submissions directly linked to the topic were accepted and obtaining sufficient number of submissions to turn the Research Topic into an e-book was not met. The Editorial is authored by one of the two original co-editors.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

References

Chen, W. (2022). Zoom in and zoom out the glocalized network: when transnationalism meets geopolitics and technopolitics. Inform. Commun. Soc. 16, 2381–2396. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2118545

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Musa, B. (2019). Nollywood in Glocal Perspective. London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-30663-2

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Roudometof, V. (2016). Glocalization; A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315858296

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Roudometof, V. (2023). Globalization, glocalization and the ICT revolution. Global Media Commun. 19, 29–45. doi: 10.1177/17427665231157287

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Roudometof, V., and Dessi, U. (2022). Handbook of Culture and Glocalization. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. doi: 10.4337/9781839109010

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Salama, A. H. Y., and Fawzy, R. M. (2023). The constitution of Dubai's mobile-app-mediated spatiotemporal glocalization: postphenomenology and postdigitality in dialogue. Space Cult. 59:222. doi: 10.1177/12063312231159222

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Toplean, A. (2024). Global digital death and glocal dying: theoretical and possible research directions. Glocalism 1:22342. doi: 10.54103/gjcpi.2023.1.22342

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar