Global internets: media research in the New World

The rise and rise of the Internet since the early 1990s has seen fundamental changes in the very nature, social function, significance, and meanings attached to media. Rightly the Internet is often regarded as the pre-eminent global technology, and taken to be the obvious example of transnational media. Yet how the Internet is understood, and in turn how global media is interpreted, still revolves around a very limited notion of this technology. While it is true that the Internet, with all its dynamic innovation and widespread diffusion, does pose real challenges to media research agenda, theories, concepts, and methods, this chapter argues that we are only at the beginning of appreciating how profound such shifts really are.