Dr. Kundan Aryal

AS China Global Television Network (CGTN) is bringing the stories from China and the world, the people even in the West are receiving non-Western perspective on what is happening in the USA. CGTN and Al Jazeera are using multi-platforms to inform about the events unfolding around the world. There are various options such as websites, live TVs, social channels and mobile apps that are being operated as the medium of contra-flows in global communication scenario. Thus, a new phenomenon of contra-flows of media and communication across the world is evolving.

Digital connectivity
Under digital connectivity and media convergence, the people around the world have been observing the anguish of the protesters hitting the streets across the USA. A person residing at any corner of the world is well aware of how a white police officer killed George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American male, in Minneapolis. Nearly everyone has got every-minute-update on his or her digital device about how the protests have engulfed at least 140 cities of US in a week. They are watching a series of protests, mostly live, on the televisions and YouTube, and online media instantly.
Before the current millennium, say, two-and-a-half decades ago, Cable News Network (CNN) was the world's only global 24-hour news network symbolising the globalisation of American television journalism. Today, what CGTN and Al Jazeera are trying to create a picture of the current situation of the USA in the minds of the general public around the world is the replication of the CNN between the last year of the 1980s, throughout the1990s and the aftermath. From the year 1990, the amount of news programming produced by CNN for international viewers started to escalate significantly which gave birth to the phrase CNN-effect.
Subsequently, it, along with several media outlets from the West, demonstrated influencing news agenda and ability to shape international communication system. Over the years CNN's on-the-spot reporting of global events had established it as unparalleled power to mould international public opinion and even contributed to impacting the actions of people involved in the events that it was covering. Today, the dynamics of the international flow of images and ideas have begun to change. Alternative media flow in juxtaposition of the US-led global media networks is distinctly visible.
The world today is reflecting the spirit of the Many Voices One World, a theme of the report prepared by the MacBride Commission some twenty years ago. By the time of 1970s the world had come to realise that information and communication order had been dominated by the West since the modern age of communication marked by the invention of the printing in the mid-15th century in Europe. Cause of an intense debate over the one-way flow of global information and communication structures was the awakening of the developing nations, with information as a key to power and influence. The flow of information was dominated by the certain most powerful and technologically advanced states. They exercise a form of cultural and ideological domination. The crux of the argument was the identification of the problem of the one-way information flow and the existence of monopolistic and oligopolistic trends in international flows.
Against the backdrop, MacBride Commission was formed in 1976 which brought a comprehensive report after four years. During and even aftermath of the Cold War, its call for exercising a new global information and communication order turned futile in the midst of the rivalry between the then USSR and USA. In the aftermath of the Cold War, the US global media remained pervasive in shaping the global public opinion. Now, akin to the old trend, information on political activities and discourse along with other affairs flow throughout the world instantly. New information technologies are not only ensuring production, consumption and distribution of information in a highly individualised manner but it is also unbounded by the limits of time and space.

Global reach
Today, extensive coverage of nationwide protests in the USA is being presented by CGTN America. It has satellite transmission and video on Twitter and other social media. For the first time in the history of global communication, the US has been presented in such an extent in non-US media. CGTN and Al Jazeera as non-Western media have the enhanced ability to successfully handle the challenges in the global communication industry and international information flows. Although Al Jazeera America was closed down after three years of its launch in 1916, it has continued to offer groundbreaking journalism through the online. The evolution of non-West media with global reach and access will certainly contribute to providing global perspectives to the audience who has become accustomed to the Western media. Consequently, with this emerging trend, the US soft power of the championing human rights has already been challenged. The world is witnessing the instances of counter-hegemonic contra-flow of information.
Contra-flow is born after a long gap from the point when the so-called peripheral developing nations had realised the fact that there exists a huge information imbalance between the North and the South. Better late than never, the world community is the widening up the preceding peripheries of global media industries. So one-way flow of information is no longer exists. This time flow is not from "the west to the rest", but a two-way movement. The contra-flows have emerged because of the presence of new actors in the landscape of global mass media. The new development has begun to reverse the monopoly of the Western media.

(Dr. Aryal is associated with the Central Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of Tribhuvan University.)