[Commlist] ICA Preconference | Going Global before Satellite and Internet

Going Global before Satellite and Internet:

Electronic Media Production, Distribution, and Consumption, 1920s-1980s



Preconference sponsored by the Communication History and Global 
Communication and Social Change Divisions of the International 
Communication Association



Australian Centre for Public History, University of Technology, Sydney 
Tuesday, 18 June 2024 8:00-17:00





Organizers



Joy Hayes, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, University of 
Iowa (primary) David Goodman, Professor, History, University of Melbourne

Bridget Griffen-Foley, Professor, Media, Communications, Creative Arts, 
Language and Literature, Macquarie University

Susan Smulyan, Professor, American Studies, Brown University

Derek W. Vaillant, Professor, Communication & Media, University of Michigan



Description



This preconference explores the transnational circulation of broadcast 
and electronic media between the 1920s-1980s. Presentations investigate 
industrial infrastructures influencing media flows before satellite and 
Internet, as well as the formal and informal practices of distribution 
and consumption shaping audience experiences.Transnational media 
histories focusing on the Global South (Asia, Africa, Latin America) and 
Australasia are of particular interest.



We invite proposals that address topics such as:

•       Transnational circulation and adaptation of radio program 
recordings, scripts and formats in the 1930s-1970s

•       Formal and informal distribution of foreign television programs 
and their consumption in the 1960s-1980s

•       Technological, cultural and industrial infrastructures and 
global media flows before satellite and Internet

•       The role played by nation states, global institutions and NGOs 
in the transnational circulation of broadcast programming (for example, 
development programs)

•       Studies of transnational media audiences undertaken by 
governmental and non- governmental agencies

•       Insights from the pre-satellite and pre-Internet era for 
contemporary debates over media and globalization



Submission Process and Format



We seek traditional papers but also are interested in a range of 
non-traditional formats including (but not limited to)lightning talks, 
works in progress, and ideas for roundtable discussions. If you are 
interested in attending but won’t be in Australia, please be in touch 
with suggestions on joining. We plan an early morning session for Asia 
and the Americas and a late afternoon session for Europe, Africa, and 
the Middle East. Participants might also want to submit pre- recorded 
contributions.

Abstracts of 350 words (maximum) should be submitted to: 
(goingglobal.precon /at/ gmail.com) no later than January 18, 2024. Please 
include author names, affiliations, contact information of the 
submitter, and a brief sentence on how the submission addresses the CFP. 
Please indicate if you would like to participate in person or remotely; 
also note the presentation format you would like to use. We welcome 
submissions from early career scholars and graduate students.



Timeline



Deadline for abstract submission: 18 January 2024 Acceptance 
notifications: 22 February 2024

Deadline for registration: 22 March 2024

Preconference: 18 June 2024



Please send questions to: (goingglobal.precon /at/ gmail.com) Rationale

We seek research that brings new geographical, cultural, political, and 
theoretical perspectives to bear on thecontinuing “transnational turn” 
in broadcasting and electronic media history. Most early scholarship 
approached broadcasting narrowly as a tool of international politics and 
propaganda reifying “the national” and the “national system” in the 
process. Only in the last 10 years or so have scholars begun to move 
beyond the propaganda framework to examine transnational broadcasting 
within a broader industrial, organizational, and cultural framework.

Current research explores what Michele Hilmes (2012) identifies as the 
dialectic between the national and transnational impulses of 
broadcasting as a multi-locational, reflexive, cultural practice. 
Scholars have further investigated the soundscapes created by global 
broadcasting and electronic media, while paying particular attentionto 
the cultural and political implications of transnational programming and 
listening practices. Current scholarship demonstrates the importance of 
taking an historical perspective on problems animating the field of 
global media studies – such as asymmetries of cultural production and 
circulation, the interaction of local and global frames of meaning, 
power, and questions surrounding the agency of transnational 
audiences/users and consumer publics.



Transnational, comparative, global, and de-Westernized histories of 
media and communication technologies, regimes, developers, and audiences 
offer fresh perspectives on scholarly and public conversations about 
media in everyday life, power, resistance, and processes and prospects 
for social and cultural change. The Going Global preconference seeks 
scholarship that explores historical approaches for global media studies 
and diversifies and decenters (largely U.S- and European-focused) 
debates with research and case studies from the Global South, 
Australasia and other contexts.





Selected Readings



Badenoch, Alexander, Andreas Fickers, and Christian Henrich-Franke. Airy 
Curtains in the European Ether: Broadcasting and the Cold War. Nomos, 2013.



Chalaby, Jean K. "The making of an entertainment revolution: How the TV 
format trade became a global industry." European Journal of 
Communication 26, no. 4 (2011): 293-309.

Ehrick, Christine. Radio and the Gendered Soundscape: Women and 
Broadcasting in Argentina and Uruguay, 1930-1950. Cambridge University 
Press, 2015.



Föllmer, Golo, and Alexander Badenoch. Transnationalizing radio 
research: New approaches to an old medium. transcript Verlag, 2018.



Goodman, David, and Susan Smulyan. "Portia Faces the World: Re-Writing 
and Re-Voicing American Radio for anInternational Market." In Radio's 
New Wave, 163-179. Routledge, 2013.



Herman, Edward S., and Robert McChesney. "The Rise of the Global Media." 
In Planet TV a Global Television Reader, edited by Lisa Parks and Shanti 
Kumar, 21-37. New York University Press, 2003.



Hilmes, Michele. Network nations: A transnational history of British and 
American broadcasting.

Routledge, 2012.



Punathambekar, Aswin. From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global 
Media Industry.

New York University Press, 2013.



Straubhaar, Joseph D. "Beyond media imperialism: Assymetrical 
interdependence and cultural proximity." Critical Studies in media 
communication 8, no. 1 (1991): 39-59.



Vaillant, Derek. Across the Waves : How the United States and France 
Shaped the International Age of Radio. University of Illinois Press, 2017.
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