THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS NETWORKS IN CONSTRUCTING GLOBAL SOUTH IDENTITIES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64013/bbasrjlifess.v2025i1.44Keywords:
International news networks, contemporary production, circulation, Global North, southern-origin broadcastersAbstract
International news networks are central actors in the contemporary production, circulation, and contestation of identities across the global order. This manuscript synthesizes theory and empirical scholarship on how transnational news organisations, primarily those headquartered in the Global North but also emergent southern networks, frame, represent, and thereby help construct collective and individual identities in the Global South. Drawing on scholarship on news values and framing, media imperialism, and contra-flow mediated construction of reality and Global South scholarship, the paper argues that international news networks perform three interrelated functions in identity construction: Agenda-setting and framing that privilege particular problem definitions and storylines. Symbolic positioning that links southern places and peoples to preexisting stereotypes. Provision of arenas for contestation where southern media, publics, and political actors accept, negotiate, or resist external frames. The analysis highlights structural asymmetries in news flows and resources that sustain enduring North-South influence, but also documents contra-flows and southern-origin broadcasters that diversify available narratives. The result is hybrid, contested identity formations in the Global South, shaped by interaction between external mediated imagery and local meaning-making. Implications for research, policy, and media practice include the need for pluralised news infrastructures and audience-centred empirical studies to map how mediated representations translate into lived identity.
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