Planet Digital: A Global Media Cultures Reader
About this ebook
In the three decades since the rise of the global internet, digitalization has transformed how media are made, circulated, and consumed, reshaping culture on a planetary scale. Yet the story of global media is not one of seamless connection or cultural homogenization. Planet Digital challenges the myth of a “global village,” revealing instead how regional histories, infrastructures, economies, and power relations shape the uneven terrains of our digital world.
Edited by the series editors of Critical Cultural Communication, this field-defining anthology gathers leading scholars to examine the texts, genres, platforms, and industries that define today’s global entertainment landscape. From TikTok to Squid Game, K-Pop to Marvel, Bluey to Nollywood, each chapter offers a focused case study that illuminates how digital media both reflect and remake global cultural life.
Spanning influencer culture, streaming platforms, esports, and beyond, Planet Digital shows how digital technologies and global media flows continually reshape one another, producing hybrid forms of creativity, circulation, and control. Together, these essays provide a vital framework for understanding how the world’s screens, sounds, and networks are rewriting the relationship between culture and power in the twenty-first century.
About the author
Aswin Punathambekar is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and Director of the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC). He has written and co-edited books including From Bombay to Bollywood: The Making of a Global Media Industry, Global Bollywood, Global Digital Cultures: Perspectives from South Asia, Television at Large in South Asia, and Media Industry Studies (with Amanda Lotz and Daniel Herbert).
Adrienne Shaw (Editor)
Adrienne Shaw is Associate Professor at Temple University in the Klein College of Media and Communication, and author of Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (2014) and Rainbow Arcade: Over 30 Years of Queer Video Game History (2019). She serves as editor for the NYU Press series Critical Cultural Communication.
Jonathan Gray (Editor)
Jonathan Gray is Hamel Family Distinguished Chair in Communication Arts, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and author and editor of numerous books, including Dislike-Minded, Show Sold Separately, Planet Digital (with Aswin Punathambekar and Adrienne Shaw), Reading Media (with Daphne Gershon), Fandom, Second Edition (with Cornel Sandvoss and C. Lee Harrington), and Satire TV (with Jeffrey P. Jones and Ethan Thompson).
