Space Wars: The Politics of Games Production in Europe

Abstract

Exploring the relationship between the global and the local in media and communications studies has been a focus for international communication scholars for decades. Scholars have focused on where production takes place, on the ownership and control of corporations, on flows between nations, and on the impact of content on audiences and cultures. Theories of dependency and media imperialism gave way in the 1990s to theories of cultural globalization and hybridity. Empirical studies of production and consumption have developed new insights into what happens on the ground and contemporary scholars have become more interested in concepts that attempt to overcome the dichotomy of the global/local and instead focus on the transnational and the translocal. In related fields, like economic geography, the focus has been on regional and local innovation economies. The relationship between place and cultural production has become more complex with globalization and some scholars have become more attuned to the social and political construction of place as a result.