On Oct. 30, the School of Media and Communication welcomed Terry Flew, President-elect of International Communication Association and professor of media and communication in the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology, to share his views on globalization and the challenges for global communication studies.

In his lecture, Flew said the three dimensions of media are technologies, institutions, and cultures. In terms of technology, Flew said, we have changed our medium from paper to smartphones. Following the popular use of smart technology, many companies transformed into media institutions. For example, Disney and Warner Bros. are now all major media institutions when they weren’t before. Flew also mentioned the “FANG”, the acronym for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google — he said that although these companies do not describe themselves as a company, there is a debate on whether they are just a platform for media or should also be considered distributors of content. Flew said that as we move from one medium to another, Tensions are rising between copyright based media industries and platform based companies. Towards the end of the lecture, Flew talked about the global cultural movement. He provided the example of the #metoo movement, which started from Hollywood, as celebrities opened up on their experience of being sexually harassed by an American film producer, but has now globalized and expanded worldwide.

Terry Flew is President-elect of the ICA, currently working as a professor and assistant dean in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology. He has produced award-winning research in creative industries, media and communication, and online journalism.

(Written by Mercy Tee, edited by Lutong Zhang)