ABSTRACT
Contemporary mediascapes are characterized more by global flows than containment in national settings, despite the exertions of governments from Washington to Moscow to retain control. The flow is not just of information, but also of images, and over the past decade, audiences across the planet have watched together as people lost their homes and lives in terrorist attacks and natural catastrophes, as a wave of uprisings swept across the Arab world, as political elites blushed then paled in the face of serial Wikileaks disclosures, and as legions of athletes and musicians competed in Olympic games, World Cup football matches and Eurovision song contests. They have gazed at, shared and commented on images such as that of a small red-shirted corpse of a refugee child washed up on a distant shore. Such global mediated communion is a central feature of the process that, according to Beck (2006), is making people cosmopolitans ‘by default’.
