An at least implicit common feature to almost all of the aforementioned topics is their general interest in answering the question to what extent nationally, culturally or otherwise defined media systems influence each other, converge or whether they can pertain distinct identities under conditions of mediated cross-border communication.
Throughout the time, technological innovations such as satellite television or the Internet and the expansion of media markets across national borders have further stimulated research interest in mediated cross-border communication.
The propaganda operations of the great powers in the twentieth century's two world wars are often considered to have been the initiating driving forces for sustained scholarly interest into mediated cross-border research.
Although cross-border communication activities have been set in place by national governments since ancient history (Melissen, 2005, p. 3)[11] it was not until the early twentieth century that such international propaganda efforts were followed by systematic academic research (McQuail, 2010).
[12] Literature reviews show that this trend continued far into the aftermath of World War II until development and modernization became leading research themes in the 1960s (see Smith, 1956; Mowlana, 1973).
[16] Important proponents of the modernism paradigm later admitted its limitations and shortcomings, especially with regard to the application of the Western model of development to Third World countries (Schramm, 1979; Rogers, 1976).
With regard to varying degrees of state interventionism, the authors described four ideal types of how media were ought to be organized (authoritarian, libertarian, Soviet communism, and social responsibility).
Despite the fact that the book received widespread scholarly attention, it is today commonly criticized for its ideological bias, lack of empirical concern and universal approach (Nerone, 2004).
[26][27] Indeed, empirical studies on international information flows found an "unbalanced one-way traffic" (Nordenstreng & Varis, 1974)[28] from big exporting countries to the rest of the world.
The work has been stimulating a great number of subsequent studies that try to adopt and modify the models and analytical dimensions (e.g., Political parallelism) of “Comparing media systems” to other parts of the world.
The rationale behind this second approach is that causes of intercultural or international differences are thought to be easier to interpret when the cases under study share many similarities (e.g., Hallin and Mancini (2012, p. 288)[45] said that one of the main reasons for focusing on Western media systems in their seminal work from 2004 was to reduce the number and complexity of variables).
For example, during the Arab Spring, a Libyan musician fueled the rebellion with his anti-government songs, connecting typical US rap music with local lyrics and issues.
On a methodological level, the criticism mentioned above has often been accompanied by a call for a shift of focus from the sheer quantitative supply to the particular consumption and use of media contents in order to adequately analyze their impact on, for example, the potential loss or homogenization of cultural identities (e.g., Liebes & Katz, 1990;[54] Sepstrup, 1989.
[55]) For instance, in a seminal study by Liebes and Katz (1990)[56] the authors found that globally exported US entertainment products such as the TV series Dallas encounter local contexts of interpretations formed by the particular cultural backgrounds of their recipients, thus showing that identical media contents may be read and adapted in very diverse ways.
Today, the more advanced concepts of hybridization and glocalisation[59][60][61] have gained increased attention by scholars as a way of conceptualizing the transformation, convergence and divergence of media systems.
The increasingly multilinguistic character of the Internet may even further the fragmentation of the World Wide Web into separate public spheres (Hafez, 2002, p. 90)[64] Such notions concerned with the use of media correspond to insights on the level of media contents gained by an international comparative study of online-news websites conducted by Quandt (2008),[65] who found that in most cases coverage is much limited by the traditional, national context, concluding that online-news may not be as "global" as one might expect.
According to Brüggemann, Sifft, Kleinen-von-Königslöw, Peters, and Wimmel (2006, p. 304),[69] this specific kind of transnationalization can empirically be measured in media coverage by the following dimensions: A number of case- and longitudinal studies (e.g., Wessler, Peters, Brüggemann, Kleinen-von-Königslöw, & Sifft (2008);[70] for a similar approach: Koopmans & Meyer, 2010[71]), could show an intensifying observation of EU institutions and issues by national media, high but constant numbers of references to other European countries since the early 1980s, with powerful countries ranking on top.
Furthermore, a shared history of interdependency as well as population size respectively the corresponding political power showed to be valid predictors of the number of references to a given country (Wessler, Skorek, Kleinen-von-Königslöw, Held, Dobreva, & Adolphsen, 2008[72]).