GMS is located at the Department of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark.

The goal of GMS is to study the interrelations between media and new ICTs and processes of political, social and cultural change in Global South.

GMS aims to contribute to re-orienting academic attention to glocal dynamics in mediated communication. Specifically, GMS aims to conduct cross-cultural multidisciplinary research which examines the interrelationship between media and new ICTs and current local and national processes of change in the Global South.

In line with mainstream academic discourses GMS considers that free and independent media are a central prerequisite for a genuine democratic process. A rights perspective is central to examine the role of mediated communication in processes of political, social and cultural change in Global South, but reliance upon an exclusively rights perspective has revealed significant shortcomings as well.

Firstly, in all media systems whatever the state of the legal framework governing the media sector, the media will always remain a battlefield for political and financial vested interests. Total transparency and absolute freedom are not attainable.  Further, there are instances where an exclusively rights-based perspective on the media in for instance, fragile and conflict-ridden societies, is both limited analytically and counter-productive in practice.

Secondly, a rights based perspective tends to have an almost obsessive focus on individual political rights (‘First Order’ human rights) and on examining the news media to the detriment of other pertinent new and traditional media genres and their potential role in processes of political, social and cultural change. Furthermore, recent rights-based examinations of new ICTs are both enlightening but they lack extensive multi-disciplinary enrichment, especially as new ICT spread almost throughout the Global South and increasingly permeate all spheres of community life.

Finally, the prevailing rights-based approaches in the study of media and change processes in Global South have tended to be nation-state oriented and thus capture less of the relationship between local processes of media consumption and change and their global dynamics and reverberations in local spheres. Briefly, the recurrent rights-based perspective is being discussed more within a globalization framework instead of the required glocalization framework.

GMS will make use of a variety of theories and methodologies in an often multi-disciplinary approach in examining issues pertaining to the interrelationship between media and ICT and society in Global South. The focus will be on issues like media policy, legislation and self-regulation, media institutions (public service, private and community media), indigenous media, political communication, democratization, citizenship, social movements, migration, and globcalization.

GMS encourages/promotes research in glocal media studies through a range of activities:

• serving as a meeting place for researchers studying glocal media
• organizing internal and external research seminars and conferences
• presenting research in the field through publications, lectures, and teaching
• creating a network for the exchange of knowledge on research in the field of study
• working for the endowment of PhD and post.doc scholarships within the field of research
• collaborating on research projects with other researchers
• hosting national and international visiting scholars