Mediated cross-border communication

Mediated cross-border communication is a scholarly field in communication studies and refers to any mediated form of communication in the course of which nation state or cultural borders are crossed or even get transgressed and undermined (e.g., world news, satellite television, transnational media events).The expression serves as an umbrella term that encompasses different research approaches (e.g., international communication, transnational communication) that can heuristically be differentiated by their specific use of research perspectives, as well as particular levels and objects of analysis (see dimensions of analysis).Thematically, research is often concerned with the political dimension of mediated cross-border communication. Examples include studies on the impact of mediated cross-border communication on foreign policy (CNN effect), political change (media and democratization, zapatista effect, boomerang effect), research on official government communication targeting foreign audiences (e.g., certain kinds of International broadcasting, Public diplomacy) and questions on media representations of the developing world (e.g., New World Information and Communication Order). Apart from that, global mass communication ethics and the globalization of entertainment constitute further important topics.An at least implicit common feature to almost all of the aforementioned topics is their general interest in answering the question to what extent nationally, culturally or otherwise defined media systems influence each other, converge or whether they can pertain distinct identities under conditions of mediated cross-border communication.Mediated cross-border communication is considered as becoming increasingly important both as a real world phenomenon and field of research as there has been a steady strengthening of the conditions of globalization and media innovations that offer fast and low-cost forms of cross-border communication since the second half of the twentieth century. However, critics argue that the importance of the nation state remains high; for example, most online communication still takes place between citizens of the same nation state. Also, the responsibility for most broadcasting and press legislation usually rests with individual national states.