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In comparative media research the criteria of difference are mostly ‘national-territorial’: the nation state is taken as the unquestioned starting point. While this makes sense in specific fields (media systems, political economy), it ignores other criteria of difference, which may need to be formulated outside the frame of the ‘national-territorial’: race, gender, ethnicity, and deterritorialized popular cultures. From a critique of such ‘territorial container thinking’ in much comparative media research, the article develops a model of ‘transcultural comparative media research’, which works outside an unquestioned territorial frame. The term ‘transcultural’ indicates that comparing media cultures in times of media globalization must operate on different levels of comparison. On one level, there are still differences in national media cultures, in part stabilised by national political media systems. On another level, there are cultural differences which arise outside the framework of the national. How this analysis can be undertaken will be shown through empirical examples.

Media on the Move provides a critical analysis of the dynamics of the international flow of images and ideas. This comes at a time when the political, economic and technological contexts within which media organisations operate are becoming increasingly global.However, as this book argues, new networks have emerged which buck this trend: Brazilian TV is watched in China, Indian films have a huge following in the Arab world and Al Jazeera has become a household name in the West.