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Media De-westernization is the first term that appeared in De-Westernizing Media Studies by James Curran in 2000. The research orientation aims at breaking through Euro-centric media studies to research Media theories or issues outside Anglo-American background. Curran believed that media de-westernization research is more helpful for western scholars to understand the media world outside the Anglo-centered model of the Global South.

Media de-westernization expects to promote intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding. Media studies as a product of the United States, communication research with American characteristics gradually spread to west Europe then diffused to the world to become the dominant view and paradigm. On the one hand, de-westernization studies oppose western cultural hegemony, which displays in western perspectives and social cognition to recognize the world outside the West; on the other hand, the studies should reject narrow cultural nationalism. De-westernization can promote and protect cultural diversity around the world.

However, with the global impact of the pandemic, cultural isolationism leading to cultural polarization may become a significant obstacle to media de-westernization.

Historical Background
The media study has a strong color of ideological confrontation and cultural centralism during the cold war. Four Theories of the Press, born in 1963 as the Euro-centered universal diagram of media systems, has conducted media research for 40 years. Taking advantage of Western standards as the benchmark of modernization, developed countries led by the United States adopted cultural hegemony. They carried out cultural infiltration over developing countries, forming media studies flowing from Global North to Global South. Media research is restricted to U.S.-perceived regional geographic boundaries or a single national boundary.

Globalization increases the possibility of dialogue between different cultures and communities group. Technological advances, improved media infrastructure, and globalization have facilitated the exchange and transmission of information beyond national legal borders and imagined communities. Global capitalism boosts media communication marketization downplaying part of government control on media regulation on transnational communication. Traditional state-based media systems will not disappear but will be reintegrated into the context of globalization under the influence of various social relations such as ‘interactions among media industries, technologies, and users ’.

Application
Two popular areas of current de-westernization research are international communication and social media platforms development in Global South.

De-Westernization and Cosmopolitan on international communication
Silvio R. Waisbord finds that the Latin American media is not only the extension of the American media, and America cultural cannot dominate the Latin American media system.

The integration of cosmopolitanism and de-Westernization based on globalization aims to integrate politics, culture, and economy, multiple elements beyond the regional geographical boundary from the Western perspective.

According to Waisbord, cosmopolitan studies have two advantages:

1. Cosmopolitan as the platform could boost knowledge consideration from multi-perspective and knowledge from multi-direction. 2. Cosmopolitan provides the opportunities to reach equal dialogues to realize global differences and similarities.

Waisbord suggests that analyzing neglected issues, joint problems across the border, and conducting comparative research are three methodologies for de-westernizing cosmopolitanism:

Analyzed neglected issues
Media de-westernization studies consider problems that does not exist in the West but appears in the Global South, extending traditional geographical boundaries. Exploring the world outside the West helps expand the scope of research and challenge the existing Western models and experimental parameters. The Global South examples from non-western perspectives could check the broadness of universal models born in specific cultural contexts.

Media researches address problems from different angles. For example, previous studies focused more on the speech control in authoritarian systems. De-westernization research can cope with news reporting methods from journalists under the control of information flow from authoritarian systems.

Comparative research
Comparison of political communication draws on the journalistic context, avoiding US centrism. Hanusch and Hanitzsch (2019) classify four journalistic cultures: monitorial, advocative developmental, and collaborative culture. Countries with similar news cultures can build consensus through cultural similarities. Established in journalistic culture as context reduces finding large amounts of differences rather than similarities in western and non-Western comparisons. For example, in the context comparison among Asia countries between Malaysia and Singapore, and Singapore and Qatar, both countries are within collaborative cultures. Based on Asian values, countries narrow the gap between Confucian culture and Islamic cultures to build a shared sense of a harmonious society.

Analyzed common problems across the border
This de-westernization approach is to observe the coverage of various media outlets on global topics, such as news coverage of the Olympic games.

Social problems in individual countries, such as the populism and violence of social media, can also be part of the global problem for analysis.

Social media platform
Social media platforms tend to be defined in terms of the US as a universal standard, using user data in a collection of data, the analysis of algorithms, data circulation, and data monetization to enhance user interactions. In other words, US-centered social media platforms regard users’ data as the new market for capital accumulation. People are concerned rights of privacy on social media because social media algorithms collect user privacy as a tool to make a profit for commercial purposes.

Countries in Global South develop on different paths in the social media industry.

China
China's social media platforms treat user data as national property representing public interest rather than private property controlled by private sectors. Unlike the historical basis for the emergence of social media in the United States, China's media infrastructure has not developed equally across the country. China regards the development of the digital industry as improving the governance capacity of the government and building a comprehensive government, driving the national economic growth to separate most Chinese people from poverty to reach China modernization. Social media platforms in China has integrated e-payments, food delivery, bank transfers, and other services on social media. Digital platforms have become a public service system, eliminating the function express and debating public opinions. Social media is part of deepening China's reform and opening up and represents China's soft power on Belt and Road initiatives.

Criticisms and Challenges
De-westernization studies suffer the obstacles from temporary accelerated deglobalization and criticisms of research approaches to cultural polarization.

The decline of globalization
De-westernization research was born at the beginning of globalization and the end of the Cold War. Globalization led by the United States has promoted the extensive flow of capital worldwide, which is the foothold for de-Westernization to promote international communication. Since the Trump administration, US isolationist forces have risen as dominant voices, and the epidemic in 2020 has damaged global production and supply chain. The Russia-Ukrainian war in 2022 may have been the last straw for ending globalization.

Cultural polarization
Norris and Inglehart on Cosmopolitan communications propose that cultural polarization displayed in the rejection of transnational information flows and launching of culture wars between the Global North and Global South, confrontation between West and East to protect local cultures from imported values, ideas, and images. Example: Taliban banned female education in Afghanistan.

Techno-nationalism
China authorities run grand propaganda to overseas Mandarin speakers, such as on WeChat platform, through strict censorship on information circulation and ideology one-direction indoctrination.