Entertainment Media, Cultural Power and Post-Globalization: Challenges and Opportunities for China's Media and Creative Industries

The USC U.S.-China Institute presents a talk by Terry Flew from the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. He will examine the case of China's investments in exporting entertainment media as case study of the opportunities and challenges of a changing global media landscape.

Click here to watch a video of this presentation. 

In this presentation, Professor Flew will propose that the concept of "soft power" is burdened by an uncertain understanding of the relationship between culture and power, reflective of unresolved debates between international relations theories on the one hand, and communications and cultural studies theories on the other. At the same time, the substantial investment by governments around the world in international broadcasting and other forms of media-based cultural diplomacy suggests that the relative sanguinity of globalization theories towards questions of cultural power and media influence are worthy of reconsideration. This presentation will consider the case of China's investments in exporting entertainment media as case study of the opportunities and challenges of this changing global media landscape.

Terry Flew is Professor of Media and Communications  and a Chief Investigator with the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.  He is the author of The Creative Industries, Culture and Policy (Sage, 2012), Global Creative Industries (Polity, 2013), New Media: An Introduction (Oxford, 2014) and co-author of Media Economics (Palgrave, 2015). He is the author of 48 book chapters and 78 refereed journal articles, and the founding editor of Communication Research and Practice.  He was a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts for Humanities and Creative Arts from 2013-15, and in 2011-12 he worked for the Australian Law Reform Commission, chairing a review of the National Classification Scheme.