Communication and Glocalization: Media, Culture, and Society in the 21st Century

The advent of the 21st 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. However, to this day, it remains a relatively underexplored topic in the communication and media literature.

The goal of this Research Topic is to explore the varied themes and multiple techno-social relationships between communication and glocalization. The general trend in the literature is to misread globalization as a force for homogeneity. That is most often rebuked by the evidence. The notion of glocalization has served as the counterpoint in arguments about homogeneity in cross-cultural and international communication. Unlike globalization, 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 main objective of the Research Topic is to showcase the significance and relevance of glocalization for the fields of media studies and communication. There are numerous domains in 21st century social life that offer important opportunities for exploring the entanglements between glocalization and techno-social cultures.

Specific themes to be addressed include, but are not limited, to the following:

- the impact of digitization upon entertainment formats
- the glocalization of TV formats and news production and consumption
- the rise of the post-2005 new media (such as YouTube, Instagram, and related media)
- the gradual articulation of the new techno-social configurations (typically referred to as Web 2.0 and Web 3.0)
- the fragmented regimes of glocal internet governance and the legal aspects of such regulatory regimes
- the rise of geomedia
- digital sports and online gaming
- the popularization of augmented reality technologies that blend global templates and local sites
- digital communication, glocalization, and conflict transformation
- mediating digital religion and culture
- digital cultures, glocalization, and human rights discourse
- theorizing digital communication and social protests
- the role of virtual communities in political polarization.

Focusing on the media-dependent interplay between geographical locales and different articulations of space and place is also quite welcome. Contributions can include theoretical or empirical approaches; they might use either quantitative or qualitative approaches (inclusive of interpretive perspectives); they might address different parts of the globe (inclusive of the South); and they can come from all relevant disciplines and fields of study.

Keywords: culture, glocalization, globalization, digital, media

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.