Cosmopolitan Communications: Cultural Diversity in a Globalized World

Societies around the world have experienced a flood of information from diverse channels originating beyond local communities and even national borders, transmitted through the rapid expansion of cosmopolitan communications. For more than half a century, conventional interpretations, Norris and Inglehart argue, have commonly exaggerated the potential threats arising from this process. A series of firewalls protect national cultures. This book develops a new theoretical framework for understanding cosmopolitan communications and uses it to identify the conditions under which global communications are most likely to endanger cultural diversity. The authors analyze empirical evidence from both the societal level and the individual level, examining the outlook and beliefs of people in a wide range of societies. The study draws on evidence from the World Values Survey, covering 90 societies in all major regions worldwide from 1981 to 2007. The conclusion considers the implications of their findings for cultural policies.

• Offers a new theory seeking to explain the impact of cosmopolitan communications, and it tests this against survey evidence derived from multiple countries and contexts • Provides new evidence about the causes and consequences of cosmopolitan communications based on the first release of the 2005-7 wave of the World Values Survey, conducted in almost 60 societies, along with multiple other sources of data • Examines the implications of cosmopolitan communications for national identities, social and economic values, and attitudes towards democracy in a wide range of contexts