The International Politics of Communication: Representing Community in a Globalizing World - Softcover

Chong, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472057316 ISBN 13: 9780472057313

Publisher: The University of Michigan Press, 2025

Synopsis

In an era of globalization, international communication constantly takes place across borders, defying sovereign control as it influences opinion. While diplomacy between states is the visible face of international relations, this “informal diplomacy” is usually less visible but no less powerful. Information politics can be found in propaganda, Internet politics, educational exchanges, tourism, and even popular film.

The International Politics of Communication examines this informational dimension of international politics, investigating how information is generated, conveyed through channels, and directed specifically at audiences. While citizens are often portrayed as faithfully loyal supporters and beneficiaries of the modern nation-state—a fiction supported by passports, identification papers, and other notarized credentials—they are subject to the pulls of loyalty from transnational tribal affiliations, mythological and historical narratives of ethnicity, as well as the transcendental claims of religion and philosophy. Increasingly, social media also enchants non-state individuals, providing new virtual communities as the center of loyalties rather than national affiliations. By reinterpreting taken-for-granted concepts in journalism, media, political economy, nationalism, development, and propaganda as information politics, this book prepares serious-minded scholars, citizens, politicians, and social activists everywhere to understand the power plays in international communication and use alternatives to begin transforming power relations.

About this title

About the Author

Alan Chong is Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472057316
• ISBN 13: 9780472057313
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464