Global Digital Culture| Digital Platform as a Double-Edged Sword: How to Interpret Cultural Flows in the Platform Era

Authors

  • Dal Yong Jin Simon Fraser University

Keywords:

digital platforms, cultural flows, globalization, social media, asymmetrical power relations

Abstract

This article critically examines the main characteristics of cultural flows in the era of digital platforms. By focusing on the increasing role of digital platforms during the Korean Wave (referring to the rapid growth of local popular culture and its global penetration starting in the late 1990s), it first analyzes whether digital platforms as new outlets for popular culture have changed traditional notions of cultural flows—the forms of the export and import of popular culture mainly from Western countries to non-Western countries. Second, it maps out whether platform-driven cultural flows have resolved existing global imbalances in cultural flows. Third, it analyzes whether digital platforms themselves have intensified disparities between Western and non-Western countries. In other words, it interprets whether digital platforms have deepened asymmetrical power relations between a few Western countries (in particular, the United States) and non-Western countries.

Author Biography

Dal Yong Jin, Simon Fraser University

Associate Professor.He finished his Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2004. His major research and teaching interests are media industries, new media and convergence, globalization and media, transnational cultural studies, telecommunications policy, and the political economy of media and culture. He is the author of a forthcoming book entitled Hands On/Hands Off: The Korean State and the Market Liberalization of the Communication Industry, and his recent work has appeared in several scholarly journals, including Media, Culture and Society, Games and Culture, Telecommunications Policy, Television and New Media, Information Communication and Society and Javnost-the Public.

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Published

2017-09-29

Issue

Section

Special Sections