Global branding has become a key strategic option for businesses and organizations to capture growth opportunities beyond national boundaries. In this context, global branding broadly refers to marketing brands across geographic markets. While the essence of branding remains the same—to achieve differentiation and relevance for competitive advantage, the discussions and debates surrounding global branding center on accounting cross-national and cross-cultural commonalities and differences regarding consumers’ brand perception and behavior. Geographic markets continue to be principally defined by the cultural unit of country, even as regionalization of markets and branding is growing. Research on global branding is therefore built on such spatial associations and cultural manifestations. Meanwhile, given the shifting geo-political economy and the onset of a technological age, the relative stability of cultural units in a connected global system is constantly being challenged. Both consumer identity and producer identity are in a state of flux. In this respect, global branding offers a window into who we are and what we aspire to be in an ever-expanding web of cultural mobility. This article highlights the main streams of research in global branding based on the core ideas and perspectives underlying recent studies in select English-language academic publications. It is intended not as a comprehensive survey but to open up analytical possibilities in this area of inquiry. The article begins with a discussion of the general business environment for global branding to contextualize the research endeavors in this space. It then examines the key topical domains and conceptual lenses in the extant literature. It concludes with observations about some of the gaps in current research and implications for future studies.
Article
Sinfree Makoni and Katherine A. Masters
Decolonial scholars are guided by alternative ways of thinking about language and communication that have existed for millennia but have gone unnoticed in scholarship. An approach to communication underwritten by the decolonial approach must be grounded in concepts that expand the repertoires of social emancipation that can constitute alternatives to neoliberalism through emancipatory scripts or social emancipation tropes. There are recent pockets of research in communication studies already working within or advocating decolonial, but such engagement with decoloniality within communication still lies at the fringes of the discipline, even though decolonial approaches can add rich lines of analysis to communication studies.
The decolonial turn has the main goal of not only moving beyond, but also inviting relationality with the Western epistemological tradition, putting the Western canon into dialogue with non-Western epistemologies, and decolonizing the assumption of one single epistemic tradition from which to arrive at truth or universality. The decolonization of knowledge is active scholarship (praxis) that seriously considers subaltern racial, ethnic, gendered, and sexual spaces and bodies from the Global South to stop indigenous and subaltern epistemicide. To clarify, decolonial scholars of language and communication do not propose a decolonial universal truth against a modern/colonial one, nor do they adopt varying epistemologies and ontologies into theirs. Instead, they have the goal of building understanding across geopolitical relations. A non-ethnocentric decolonization of communication, then, would require engaging with the processes and products of globalization as entry points into acknowledging the communicative integrity of all positions held by humans within these processes.
Article
Doug Ashwell and Stephen M. Croucher
The Global South–North divide has been conceptualized in political, cultural, economic, and developmental terms. When conceptualizing this divide, issues of economic growth/progress, technology, political and press freedom, and industrialization have all been used as indicators to delineate between the “North” and the “South.” The North has traditionally been seen as more economically, technologically, politically, and socially developed, as well as more industrialized and having more press freedom, for example; the South has been linked with poverty, disease, political tyranny, and overall lack of development. This conceptualization privileges development efforts in the Global South based on democratic government, capitalist economic structures with their attendant neoliberal agenda and processes of globalization. This negative view of the South is a site of contest with people of the South offering alternative and more positive views of the situation in the South and alternatives to globalization strategies. While there may be some identifiable difference between some of the countries in the identified Global South and Global North, globalization (economic, political, technological, etc.) is changing how the very Global South–North divide is understood. To best understand the implications of this divide, and the inequalities that it perpetuates, we scrutinize the Global South, detailing the background of the term “Global South,” and examine the effect of globalization upon subaltern groups in the Global South. We also discuss how academic research using frameworks of the Global North can exacerbate the problems faced by subaltern groups rather than offer them alternative development trajectories by empowering such groups to represent themselves and their own development needs. The culture-centred approach to such research is offered as alternative to overcome such problems. The terms usage in the communication discipline is also explained and the complexity of the term and its future is explored.
Article
Hans J. Ladegaard
Although there is no exact definition of globalization, and relatively little empirical evidence on how it affects people’s lives, most scholars argue that it reflects an increasingly mobile and interconnected world. People travel for pleasure or work, or they migrate to other parts of the world. They also communicate with linguistic and cultural others, either face-to-face or via modern communication technologies, which requires them to use a global lingua franca (English). This leads to greater interdependence and a sense of sharedness, but also to more intergroup conflicts. Thus, the world has become more interconnected, but also more fragmented, and social and economic inequality both within and across nation-states has become more visible.
The importance of culture as an analytical concept in (intercultural) communication research is another pertinent topic in the literature. Some scholars have argued that culture has lost its potency as a meaningful analytical concept and therefore should no longer take center stage in communication research. Others claim that culture will always be salient and influence behavior. How and to what extent globalization changes culture has also been discussed extensively in recent years. Some scholars argue that globalization leads to sameness and uniformity, and ultimately to the end of the nation-state. Others disagree and posit that globalization leads to a strengthening of the nation-state and of the cultural values we associate with it.
A meaningful way to test theoretical assumptions about globalization and culture is to analyze communication and work practices in global organizations. Research from these contexts suggests that globalization has not led to cultural assimilation and uniformity. Employees in the global workplace and student sojourners use national stereotypes as a frame of reference when they communicate with cultural others, and they demonstrate high awareness of cultural differences and how they impact their communication, study, and work practices.
Recent research on cultural change and globalization has included a critical dimension that questions a world order where the increase in power and cultural and economic wealth in developed countries happens at the expense of poor people with no voice and little visibility living in developing countries. Critical (intercultural) communication research considers these imbalances and also provides a critique of Anglocentric research paradigms, which do not include the cultural and linguistic experiences of non-Western cultural others.
Article
Shakuntala Rao
The concept of nation-state has historically been defined as peoples having some manner of territorial and political self-determination; cultural, linguistic, or religious affinity; and economic independence. Recent forces of globalization have made the nation-state increasingly vulnerable to and dependent on capital, corporations, and/or more powerful states. Such integration of the nation-state in the global world has also led political actors to reverse course and seek ethno-nationalist agendas where differences in race, ethnicity, religion, gender, caste, and other identity markers are used to inflame fears or defend against economic, cultural, and environmental dislocation among a nation’s citizens. Journalists face critical challenges as the nation-state gets reconfigured. These challenges include the rise of new media technology as a force of division and the rise of ethno-nationalism. Research shows that new media platforms expanded not only the definition of who can create content but also the range of topics covered. Positive opportunities, alternately, are undermined by the reality that non-media factors—historical, political, economic, and social divisions—continue to determine not only the diffusion and adoption of new media but also its influence; each nation has its own cultural equations and socio-historical footprints on which new media gets imposed. Journalists, as part of national media systems, increasingly find themselves operating in an environment where they are competing with non-regulated technologies and supra-national information landscape. A core belief propagated by new ethno-nationalists is an anti-media bias, where all news is perceived to be left leaning or “liberal” in nature and content, and therefore open to criticism and censorship. The reprieve from such narratives of ethno-nationalism is the model of global journalism, which makes possible transnational information sharing.
Article
Stephen J. A. Ward
Global media ethics is the study and application of the norms that should guide the responsible use of informational public media that is now global in content, reach, and impact. Its aim is to define responsible use of the freedom to publish for journalism, online commentary, political advocacy, and social media. Global media ethics proposes aims, principles, and norms for global media work, and pays special attention to coverage of global issues such as climate change, immigration, and terrorism. The primary principles tend to stress media protection and advancement of human rights, human development, and global social justice. However, “global media ethics” does not refer to something clear, singular, or established. There is no one code of global media ethics. Global media ethics is a work in progress, a contested zone where globalists advance rival ideas, while skeptics dismiss global ethics as a dream that can never be realized.
Among the conceptual challenges of constructing a global media ethics is the issue of whether universal values exist in media practice around the world, how an appeal to global values can avoid cultural imperialism, such as imposing Western values on non-Western cultures, and to what extent media practitioners can find common ethical ground. Much theorizing in the field of global media ethics discusses forms of cross-border ethical dialogue that are likely to produce fair and inclusive agreement on principles among practitioners. Ultimately, the main questions for global media ethics are: (1) How should the aims and roles of journalism and informational media be redefined given the fact that media is now global? (2) What are the principles for global media and how do they apply to nonprofessional online writers? (3) How does global media ethics alter existing practice, especially the coverage of global issues? And (4) By what methods would such an ethic be constructed, endorsed, and implemented in practice?
Article
Levi Obijiofor and Folker Hanusch
Two dominant approaches underline the theory, practice, and methodology of global journalism. The first approach captures the various ways that journalism is practiced in different countries. This is reflected in the burgeoning field of comparative journalism studies. The second approach examines the underlying notion of globalization of the interconnected nature of the world and of global journalistic practices that not only relativize the significance of the nation state but also highlight the forces that shape the global village. Each of these perspectives has implications for journalism practice and how the world is understood. Each is influenced by complexities of the existing environment in which journalism is practiced, such as sociocultural practices and barriers, as well as economic, institutional, structural, legal, and political forces that inform journalism at national and international levels. Regardless of the differences, the two approaches are interrelated in various ways. They examine the interlocking relationship between journalism and globalization; factors that influence global news flows and foreign reporting; diverse journalistic practices and modes of education; and global journalism ethics. Altogether these perspectives provide rich analytical insights and background into the past, current, and emerging issues that inform global journalism.
Article
Juan Llamas-Rodriguez and Viviane Saglier
The postcolonial intellectual tradition has proved crucial to articulating cultural, film, and media formations from the geographical and theoretical perspective of (formerly) colonized people and countries. The object of media studies has expanded significantly beyond the screen in the past decades, including a renewed attention to non-visual media and an emerging attention to the material conditions of possibility for media representations. In this new mediascape, postcolonial theories and concepts potentially repoliticize media theory by questioning Western assumptions about technological progress and innovation. Postcolonial theories of media force a rethink of the tenets of traditional media theories while, at the same time, media theories demonstrate the centrality of media, in all its forms, to understanding the postcolonial condition.
Article
el-Sayed el-Aswad, M. Joseph Sirgy, Richard J. Estes, and Don R. Rahtz
Globalization and international media are potent contributors to the rise of the Islamist global jihad. Widespread digital communication technologies that connect people all over the world are a substantial component of globalization. Over the past three decades, “virtual jihad” has emerged as a potent disseminator of radical religious-political ideologies, instilling fear and fostering instability worldwide. Western and global media, while often misrepresenting Islam and Muslims, have played a significant role in disseminating jihadist ideologies. The involvement of global jihadists (mujāhidīn) across myriad media outlets and platforms has allowed them to promote their agenda around the world. Using the Internet and media outlets, global jihadists are able to attract and recruit people to their ranks in an accelerated manner. Jihadists have engaged in media activities that have empowered and expanded the global jihad movement, even in the face of increased mitigation efforts.
Article
Aimei Yang
The typology of nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations (NGOs) classifies them according to their orientations and levels of operations. The type of ties associated with NGOs and related networks are complex and pervasive. To help readers understand the structural features of these networks, several theoretical frameworks and theories (i.e., world system theory, world polity theory, organizational ecology theory, and issue niche theory) are offered as different explanations for the antecedents and consequences of NGO networks.
Article
Joshua F. Hoops and Jolanta A. Drzewiecka
Critical perspectives toward culture and communication address how power and macro historical, institutional, and economic structures shape and constrain interpersonal, intergroup, and mediated communication. Scholars critique forms of domination and examine how oppressed communities resist and subvert power structures to identify possibilities for change and emancipation; some strive to become public intellectuals engaged in activism in solidarity with disadvantaged communities. Analyses uncover multiplicity and fluidity of meanings and dislodge essentialist and ideological closures in interactions and discourses. This approach has been shaped by critical theory of the Frankfurt School, European poststructural and critical theories, British cultural studies, and postcolonial theories. Critical scholarship is diverse, interdisciplinary, and multimethodological. Critical scholars are self-reflexive of their own social positioning in relation to research topics and participants.
Culture, the key concept, is conceptualized as a site of multiple meanings and differences that are loci of power struggles and contestations amidst daily practices and power structures. Culture is a site of mixing and fusions across borders as groups struggling for power attempt to restrict meanings, categories, and practices. Identity and its categories, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc., have multiple and shifting meanings that are nevertheless contingently fixed within structures supporting domination of some groups. Concepts such as diaspora, hybridity, and intersectionality address indeterminacy of belonging. Other main concepts include difference, articulation, ideology, hegemony, interpellation, and articulation.
Article
André Lemos
Globalization should be understood as a new economic, political, and cultural dynamic in what is now a global space. It is diagnosed based on a description of the different phases in its development, as an abstract, modern narrative reinforced by cyberculture, the information and communications technologies (ICTs) culture that emerged in the 1970s. Communications media have enabled the constraints and limits of space and time to be overcome, expanding human agency and connecting people and objects. Globalization is linked to the development of cyberculture precisely because this increases the number of different types of connections between people, products, and information all around the planet. It is constructed abstractly, as it does not pay the price of the connections and connectors that locate social relations. At the same time as it helps to create the fiction of “global globalization,” cyberculture reveals mediators that always connect objects, processes, people, and places, making a “localized globalization” visible. Rather than being merely deterritorializing, globalization produces connections and situations with the aid of connectors. Like every sociotechnical network, it is involved in the creation of new spatialities. The narrative of globalization ignores the connectors and overlooks the notion of territory, asserting the global nature of globalization when in fact it is the result of concrete mediations performed locally, produced by a specific and material network. It is important to politicize globalization. This requires “relocalization” of the global, that is, identifying specific, material situations. Having an appreciation of this dependence leads us to very concrete political attitudes. Attention is drawn to the need to give visibility to the mediators that anchor experiences, gainsaying the generic nature of globalization and allowing it to be politicized.
Article
Charles Self
The number of formal programs educating and training young people to work in journalism and mass communication media organizations has grown substantially worldwide since the 1920s. Estimates put the number of college and university programs well beyond 2,500, with the United States and China exhibiting the largest numbers. These estimates do not count many of the private training programs offered by for-profit companies. Beyond these programs, media organizations, foundations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), journalist associations, and media unions offer training to help students and journalists update their skills in a field undergoing rapid change.
Much of this growth is because journalism itself has commanded attention from organizations of all kinds in the 21st century: governments, private industry, nonprofits, NGOs, sports organizations—leaders in virtually all forms of human activity have come to believe that media play a powerful role in shaping public opinion.
This attention has led societies around the globe to invest in training journalists and media workers. Some of these investments have been through higher education. Others have been through private training institutes and organizations, NGOs, and private foundations.
New types of media jobs have developed since the 1970s. Strategic communication and promotion industries dedicated to shaping public discourse have expanded around the world.
New media technologies have changed journalism itself, creating new kinds of journalism jobs worldwide. Digital innovation has changed the structure of traditional media industries. As new forms have emerged, these digital innovations have expanded both the types and numbers of media jobs available.
These new types of media jobs have changed how journalism students are educated and trained. Demand for trained workers has increased and skill sets have changed.
This has altered thinking about journalism education around the globe. Journalism educators have introduced new types of training into the curriculum, including entirely new topics and new types of majors in many countries.
Similarities in how journalism is taught, based on shared educational needs and skills, have grown, while historically important ideological differences in teaching journalism have weakened.
Shared challenges include how to teach media technologies, ethics, fact-checking, and coping with disinformation and fake news. They also include preparing journalism students to deal with strategic manipulation, partisan hostility, threats, and shifting concepts of appropriate online media discourse in social media, blogs, tweets, and online comments.
Despite these common challenges and shared approaches, unique circumstances in each society still lead to differences in how journalism is taught around the world. These differences can be quite pronounced. These circumstances include resource shortages, competing training traditions, weak industry support, sociopolitical differences, and censorship.
Across the globe it is clear that education in journalism and media will continue to expand as changing media technologies exert a growing influence on public discourse.
Journalism education is changing in every country as: (1) technologies reshape it, (2) media theories shift teaching techniques, (3) new technologies create newly shared ideas about teaching journalism, (4) unique circumstances in each country still produce different approaches, and (5) it expands in different regions of the world.
Article
Daniel P.S. Goh
Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore are ethnically and religious diverse countries in Southeast Asia that had established postcolonial multiracial compacts to counter the legacies of colonial racism and pursued inclusive nation-building under authoritarian conditions in the early decades after independence. This contained the rise of political Islam among the majority Javanese and Malays in Indonesia and Malaysia, respectively, and secured racial harmony in Singapore despite the political and economic dominance of the Chinese majority.
Political liberalization after the Asian financial crisis and the democratization of the public sphere with the Internet have led to the decline of the multiracial compacts and the emergence of culture wars between conservatives and progressives over the nation’s values and future. Renewed Islamization pits conservative against moderate Muslims in everyday life and new media spaces while putting heavy pressure on Chinese and Christian minorities as well as the secular state in Indonesia and Malaysia. In Singapore, the spread of conservative Christianity among the Chinese and conservative Islam among the Malays pits conservatives against progressives in the growing civil society sector championing secularism and liberalization in racial, gender, and sexual discourse, with all sides using new media for political mobilization. These trends intersect with the politics of race and racism unleashed by the decline of the multiracial compacts, engendering racial culture wars mixing race and religion.
The recent pervasive spread of social media has intensified the conflicts of the racial culture wars, leading to intergroup violence, prosecution of individuals for insulting religious sensitivities, and heated accusations of racism and of religious and racial sensitivities being offended. Social media is also changing the dynamics of the racial culture wars, collapsing the boundary between the offline world of face-to-face interaction and the online world of viral realities, causing casual everyday remarks and actions to become national controversies. Efforts to promote antiracism and multiculturalism need to move into the social media space in creative and relevant ways to counter the racial culture wars.
Article
Marilyn S. Greenwald
For women in international journalism, it is the best and worst of times. Their numbers have grown dramatically in the last 100 years, and more women are being recognized for their journalistic accomplishments and bravery. In the last few decades, women journalists have banded together to form regional and international organizations to monitor coverage by and about women and to study the employment of women in newsrooms. In addition, some women journalists find that their gender allows them to speak to some people that men cannot – women subjects and sources in restrictive nations often feel more comfortable talking to women journalists. Yet their numbers as journalists in most countries are low when compared to those of men, and few women have been named to management positions within media organizations. Global changes, including political upheaval, technological changes, and economic cutbacks, have led to their diminished status in global media. Technological advancements within media organizations may make the dissemination of news easier, but it means reduced access to some poor and rural areas that often cannot afford expensive technology. Also, media concentration worldwide has reduced the number of small and independent media organizations that often employ women. And the elimination of international bureaus by many news outlets translates into many journalists—men and women—losing their jobs.
Article
Superheroes are a global phenomenon. The superhero genre has been proliferated through modern industrial societies by way of movies, television, comics, and other forms of popular media. Although virtually every nation in the world has heroic myths, the modern superhero, as marked by the inception of recent American comics heroes in 1929, is a uniquely Western invention. Superheroes are “Western” insofar as they embody and exhibit Western civic values, such as democracy, humanism, and retributive justice. These characters have been communicatively incorporated into globalization processes by means of diffusion and thereby enact aspects of cultural imperialism. Even so, superhero figures have been in high demand across many populations for their entertainment value. As superheroes have diffused in non-Western cultures, they have not only been absorbed by new cultures but also refigured and adapted. These non-Western adaptations have had a recursive influence, such as the global popularity of Japanese manga. The recursive relationship between Western superheroes and their non-Western adaptations implies superheroes are an important aspect of cultural fusion in global popular culture.
Article
Networks of experts coordinated or orchestrated by international bodies have become so widespread and influential that they are said to shape a new world order. Standards for consumer safety, investor protection, and environmental sustainability are governed by appeals to the epistemic authority of experts. Typically, formal international organizations orchestrate cross-border constellations of public–private collaborations between groups that are deemed to have relevant knowledge. This trend is part of a depoliticization of decision-making; policy issues are framed as technical problems that should be kept at a distance from party politics. The question here is how to conceptualize and assess this development in democratic terms.
In political theory, three kinds of approach have evolved in response to this trend. At one extreme, the argument is that governance beyond the state cannot be legitimate until it has implemented modes of representation and contestation familiar from the domestic context. At the other extreme, the argument is that legitimacy beyond the state should be decoupled from democratic concerns and be legitimated on technocratic grounds. Between these two poles is the argument that democracy does not have to resemble the domestic model in organizational terms and can fruitfully be reconceived or reinterpreted in the international context. Versions of the reinterpretive approach are currently popular under different theoretical labels. It is fruitful to use it as a model for considering questions of democratic legitimacy for the expert networks that constitute or interact with international organizations.
In following the reinterpretive route, a natural starting point is to consider what the key evaluative dimensions of democracy are. At an abstract level, democracy is about three main considerations:
1. Authorization: The people are the rightful principals of public action. It is necessary to consider how people can be empowered to challenge and potentially veto opinions that flow from expert networks.
2. Attitude: Democratically justified institutions express the right kind of concern for people as equals. There are important questions about how the technical rationalities of expert networks can show consideration for a reasonable pluralism of perspectives and how “soft law” can address subjects with appropriate respect for citizens’ claim to justification and rule of law.
3. Area: The authority of democratically legitimate institutions must be matched by a defined sphere of answerability. For the area of expert networks, this issue concerns both the scope of expert mandates and whether there is a fit between mandate and actual practice.
The task for an assessment of the democratic legitimacy of expert networks is to consider more fully what each of these evaluative dimensions imply in the relevant context.
Article
Shinsuke Eguchi
Queer Asia, which critiques the multidimensional flows of power (e.g., globalization, market capitalism, state capitalism, and/or Western queer formation), is a process of reimagining historically specific and culturally saturated nuances of minoritized sexualities and genders in and across Asia and Asian diasporas. This process redirects attention to cultural productions of Queer Asia as disjunctive modernities. By this means, contemporary global capitalism enables a paradoxically contested space of temporality through which new geopolitical imaginaries of minoritized sexualities and genders can emerge. Consequently, Queer Asia troubles, remixes, and remaps how the logic of Whiteness that operates as a global, colonial, imperial, and capitalist power homogenizes culturally heterogeneous paradigms of minoritized sexualities and genders through LGBTQIA+ identities, discourses, and politics. Three topics—identifications and affinities, relationalities and spatialities, and media and popular culture—represent indefinite and unlimited possibilities of Queer Asia. Accordingly, examining these topics in light of the cultural productions of Queer Asia provides possible pathways to expand the current circumferences of queer studies in communication, which is known as a very White, Western, and US-American discipline.
Article
Erica Scharrer and Yuxi Zhou
Media literacy refers to the ability to interact with media from a position of active inquiry, carefully considering media texts, the forces and factors that shape those texts, and the ways in which audiences interpret the texts or otherwise respond. Media access, use, creation, analysis, and evaluation skills are considered essential for citizenship in the contemporary world. Media literacy education encompasses efforts to advance media literacy within a group of individuals and spur their motivation to apply media literacy skills and perspectives in interactions with media. Yet, there are barriers that impede the widespread adoption of media literacy education in various global locations. There is disparity, for instance, in the degree to which local, regional, or national policies support media literacy education in schools as well as in the training, funding, or other resources available to educators.
Considerable variability in the assumptions and objectives that scholars and practitioners bring to media literacy education has been identified. Some of that variability reflects differing emphases in Communication and Media Studies paradigms including whether media literacy education should be considered as a means of protecting children and adolescents from the potential for negative effects of media. Sometimes positioned as an alternative to a more protectionist approach, media literacy education can be viewed as a platform from which to encourage young people’s creative self-expression and to emphasize their (and others’) agency rather than vulnerability. The ways in which media literacy education is carried out and how and what is assessed to determine what such education can achieve differs, as well. In spite of these differences, there are overarching commonalities in media literacy conceptualization and empirical evidence that media literacy education can build skills necessary for citizenship in an increasingly media- and information-rich world.
Article
Radhika Gajjala and Dinah Tetteh
The 1970s brought forth strong movements for the financial empowerment of women and women’s labor rights protections in rural, developing world regions such as India. For instance, 1972 is when the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) was registered as a trade union in India. Its main goals were full employment and self-reliance for women from the unorganized sectors. In the 1970s, several developing world countries saw the rise of microfinance interventions. What started as a public policy strategy and intervention for rural finance in the newly independent India of the 1950s has shaped subsequent patterns for rural credit and microcredit in most of the developing world. For instance, the Bank Dagang Bali (BDB) was established in Bali, Indonesia, in September of 1970, and the Grameen Bank was established in Bangladesh in 1974. Around the same time, the U.S.-based NGO Accion began to give loans in Brazil. The founder of the Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, became a legend and is well known for his belief that women make better borrowers than men because they find ways to repay the loans. As a result, a development model has emerged that focuses on women’s self-empowerment through micro-entrepreneurialism and the promise of microfinance.
Simultaneously, in global settings, there emerged a model of “Development 2.0,” which uses Web 2.0 tools and practices to mobilize connectivity, action at a distance, and relational, interpersonal investments through digital and mobile tools. The resulting model of microfinance therefore occurs through Web 2.0 and mobile phone–based technologies and also works to connect women and girls from the Global North (including immigrants) and women and girls from the Global South through movements such as The Girl Effect. What we see here is a paradigm based in a neoliberal market economy framework that mobilizes women’s labor from the Global North and from the Global South in the service of a global digital financial capitalism. This article maps out a literature review that connects the idea of Development 2.0 with the economic and political visibility of the girl child and of the woman as the one who empowers while also still needing to be empowered.
