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"Thussu brings to this project the passion for news of a socially committed former journalist, the political economy of his international relations education and a formidable assembly of global detail, examining the recent explosion of 'infotainment'." - John Downing, Southern Illinois University "Thussu's account of war as infotainment, the Bollywoodization of news and the emergence of a global infotainment sphere is as compelling as it is alarming. This is a significant and essential book for anyone interested in exploring the connections between news journalism, informed citizenship and democracy." - Bob Franklin, The Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies Richly detailed and empirically grounded, this first book-length study of infotainment and its globalization by a leading scholar of global communication, offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of this emerging phenomenon. Going beyond - both geographically and theoretically - the 'dumbing down' discourse, largely confined to the Anglo-American media, the book argues that infotainment may have an important ideological role, a diversion in which 'soft news' masks the hard realities of neo-liberal imperialism. Chapters include a historical appraisal of infotainment; the infrastructure for its globalization as well as coverage of recent wars on television news as high-tech infotainment and the growing synergies between Hollywood and Bollywood-originated infotainment. A 'global infotainment sphere' is emerging, the book argues, within which competing versions of news - from 24/7 news networks to bloggers - coexist. Accessible, engagingly written and robustly argued, the book combines analyses of theoretical debates on infotainment with extensive and up-to-date comparative data.

"Thussu brings to this project the passion for news of a socially committed former journalist, the political economy of his international relations education and a formidable assembly of global detail, examining the recent explosion of 'infotainment'." - John Downing, Southern Illinois University "Thussu's account of war as infotainment, the Bollywoodization of news and the emergence of a global infotainment sphere is as compelling as it is alarming. This is a significant and essential book for anyone interested in exploring the connections between news journalism, informed citizenship and democracy." - Bob Franklin, The Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies Richly detailed and empirically grounded, this first book-length study of infotainment and its globalization by a leading scholar of global communication, offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of this emerging phenomenon. Going beyond - both geographically and theoretically - the 'dumbing down' discourse, largely confined to the Anglo-American media, the book argues that infotainment may have an important ideological role, a diversion in which 'soft news' masks the hard realities of neo-liberal imperialism. Chapters include a historical appraisal of infotainment; the infrastructure for its globalization as well as coverage of recent wars on television news as high-tech infotainment and the growing synergies between Hollywood and Bollywood-originated infotainment. A 'global infotainment sphere' is emerging, the book argues, within which competing versions of news - from 24/7 news networks to bloggers - coexist. Accessible, engagingly written and robustly argued, the book combines analyses of theoretical debates on infotainment with extensive and up-to-date comparative data.

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.