Comparing Communication Systems

Emphasizing the perspective of ordinary users, this book compares the current uses of the internet in three centers of the global economy and world politics: China, Europe, and the United States. It examines the internet as the current centerpiece of communication systems encompassing interpersonal communication, mass communication, as well as social networking.

The internet is unique as a medium in that it hosts both "old" media such as press and television as well as "new" media such as streaming services and social network sites. As such, it also integrates the prototypes of one-to-one (interpersonal) and one-to-many (broadcast) along with many-to-many (social media) and many-to-one (surveillance) communication. This book considers how all these media and communicative practices are embedded in social structures, cultural traditions, and historical legacies of place. Comparing conditions in China, Europe, and the US, the chapters provide an overview of the distinctive regulatory regimes framing the internet and its local uses, the place of the internet in everyday life in each setting, and how the internet serves as a resource for political, economic, and cultural actions and interactions. The authors combine detailed quantitative and qualitative evidence to demonstrate how users flow across different media types and engage in diverse communicative practices, new and old.

Linking comparative analysis of media and social systems with ethnographic studies of internet usage on the ground, this book will be of particular interest to students and scholars working in global media, intercultural communication, and internet studies.