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Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 1, n.º 1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 81-91

GLOBAL TELEVISIONS, A SINGLE HISTORY

Francisco Rui Cádima

Associated Professor with Aggregation at the Department of Communication Sciences (DCC) of

Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (FCSH), Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Coordinator of the Master Degree in New Media and Web Practices, and of the Honours Degree,

and member of the Executive Committee of DCC-FCSH.

He is a researcher at Centro de Investigação Media e Jornalismo (CIMJ).

Abstract

We live in a complex and still blurred time of transition from systems of audiovisual

fragmentation, specific to cable and satellite, to web environment hyper-fragmented

systems. In the process, transnational televisions are experiencing some loss but for the

time being, they still hold powerful distribution channels in the main strategic areas of the

globe, with exception of zones where, for totalitarian or censorship reasons, they cannot

always penetrate. This is a model that has several limitations both at the onset and at the

point of arrival, which makes for a critical communication system whose subordination to

local and/or global interests affects its narrative diversity. Finally, it is a model that is

normally characterized by discursive regularities that are alien to political, cultural, and

geographic pluralism, and which is closer to what we may call “single history” than to an

open, pluralistic and participated system.

Keywords

Democracy; Geopolitics; Journalism; Local/Global; Transfrontier Television

How to cite this article

Cádima, Francisco Rui (2010) "Global televisions, a single history". JANUS.NET e-journal of

International Relations, Nº 1, Autumn 2010. Consulted [online] on date of last visit,

observare.ual.pt/janus.net/en_vol1_n1_art7

Article received in May 2010 and accepted for publication in September 2010

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 1, n.º 1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 81-91

Global televisions, a single history

Francisco Rui Cádima

GLOBAL TELEVISIONS, A SINGLE HISTORY

Francisco Rui Cádima

«(...) Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye I

went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I

realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate,

whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in

literature. I started to write about things I recognized.»

Chimamanda Adichi

Like Chimamanda Adichi, who only started to have a vision that stood closer to her

native Nigeria when she started reading African literature – namely Chinua Achebe and

Camara Laye – the Muslim world only started to have a better understanding of its own

television image and recent history following the launch of Qatar’s broadcasting

network, Al Jazeera. However, on this matter, one cannot say this is a diverse,

plethoric and definitive experience.

Al Jazeera, which in Arabic means “the island”, started broadcasting on 1 November

1996, with the aim of becoming a sort of CNN for the Islamic world. However, it was

only after September 11 that it started to be better known in the west, hardly ever for

good reasons by western standards. The new messenger reported facts in function of

the “other one”, which in the past was known as the “infidel”, and that was all it took

for the North to decide the death of that alien being. Bush and Blair agreed on this

matter, as Jeremy Scahill reported in The Nation.1 The Qatar network thus became the

voice of that “other one” and of “evil”.

It is equally true that Israel’s own strategic communication will not cease to occupy

that «demonized» space, whenever it has to. Thus, the «island» keeps living up to the

metaphor, which in this case consists of a whole set of discourses entirely surrounded

by message.

This message, or “massage”, as Marshall McLuhan preferred to call it, is there,

haughty, since the era of the fragmentation of the European and North-American

audiovisual model – which is practically simultaneous and corresponds to the end of

classic generalist television and to the start of the satellite and cable channels multiple

1 Jeremy Scahill, «The War on Al Jazeera», The Nation online, December 1, 2005. Accessed on 2 May

2010: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051219/scahill. This article appeared in the December 19, 2005

edition of The Nation.

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Francisco Rui Cádima

offers. But now, at the end of the first decade of the new century, this era of

fragmentation corresponds to a time of hyper-fragmentation of television systems,

which in Europe translates into 10 thousand television channels, be them generalist,

cable, satellite, local TV, mobile, or other. The issue here is that the diversity of the

offer and quality of contents does not grow in proportion to the exponential growth of

the number of channels and platforms. Quite the opposite: more channels tend to

mean a constant rebroadcasting of the same contents, or of contents that are identical

in everything. Above all, it means a continuing recycling of the message coming from

the centre to the periphery to pacify, standardize or, at least, bring consensus around a

general common plan. What will the major international channels, which were built

around common objectives, internationalization strategies, and language and cultural

dissemination, such as the BBC, RTPi, CNN and others, do to stand out to be different

and diverse? And what alternative at local/global level do these new “islands”, such as

Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, or even BBC Arabic Television, represent to countries in

North Africa and the Middle East?

A report written by Deborah Horan2, as part of CIMA - Center for International Media

Assistance - tells us that, generally speaking, the media in the Middle East and North

Africa presently enjoy more freedom than they did ten years ago.

With the outburst of channels in the first decade of this century, we saw the emergence

of Arabic channels, including in the specific area of information, which are very

attentive to their own reality.

Even in the field of entertainment, the new channels introduced significant changes

which, for most cases, led audiences to relegate official local channels to second place

in the light of the new transborder offer. Conversely, the truth is that we cannot speak

of major changes in that regard, given that the strong hand of power still controls the

local media system, despite all the “opening” brought about by transnational channels.

It is actually channels like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya that hire the best local journalists,

clearly increasing the difference in the final product between satellite channels and

government controlled stations. In that light, “only three Arabic countries were

classified as being ‘partially free’ by Freedom House in its 2009 Index on Freedom of

the Press, the rest staying ‘non-free’. Given that the majority of Arabic countries are

not democratic, even if the media coverage of a particular issue may encourage people

to change, there are few or even no political options to make the change happen.

Nonetheless, the higher the access to more trustworthy news, the higher the chance to

advance the cause of democracy (...)».3

Local/Global

It is a fact that there can be no globalization without the media nor, obviously, without

the new media and communication networks. Given that media systems are central to

the globalization process, it is equally true that a large part of theories in the area of

communication sciences and of theories critical of “cultural imperialism” have

2 Deborah Horan, Shifting Sands: The Impact of Satellite TV on Media in the Arab World. CIMA,

Washington, D.C., March 29, 2010. A Report to the Center for International Media Assistance at the

National Endowment for Democracy. http://cima.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/CIMA-

Arab_Satellite_TV-Report.pdf

3 Deborah Horan, op. cit.: 4-6.

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Francisco Rui Cádima

attempted to see the phenomenon as a homogenization process. However, it is also

true that the issue cannot be reduced to polemics between sceptics and neo-liberals or

any other supporters of globalization. As Appadurai (2004: 32) put it, “globalization

does not necessarily mean, not even frequently, homogenization or Americanization”.

The issues are, naturally, more complex, and there are strong arguments advanced

both by critical theorists and by more favourable views, such as the theses that defend

cultural hybridism, audience and reception studies, cosmopolitan social democracy,

diversity and relocation (Movius, 2010: 6-18), constructivism, etc.

On a different and more anthropological stance, one could talk about the ambivalences

of new technologies and the topic of the digital divide, or about the multiple identities

and identity fantasies described by Appadurai - our own “others” emerging within the

new multicultural contexts, which also have their own roots in the new global processes

- and about global cultural flows, as it is true that new “mediascapes” have become

deterritorialized, disseminating information, events and images through the complex,

albeit centralized, global media system: “These images of the world involve many

complicated inflections, depending on their mode (documentary or entertainment),

their hardware (electronic or pre-electronic), their audience (local, national or

transnational) and the interests of those who own and control them. What is most

important about these mediascapes is that they provide (…) large and complex

repertoires of images, narratives and 'ethnoscapes' to viewers throughout the world, in

which the world of commodities and the world of 'news' and politics are profoundly

mixed” (Appadurai, 2004: 53-54).

Although we support Appadurai’s view that the globalization of culture is not exactly the

same thing as its homogenization, it is a fact that the global cannot be built without

that negative pulsing, so to speak. This means that the main feature of today’s politics

at global level is "the politics of the mutual effort of sameness and difference to

cannibalize one another and thus to proclaim their successful hijacking of the twin

Enlightenment ideas of the triumphantly universal and the resiliently particular”

(Appadurai, 2004: 63).

Others prefer to sustain a critical interpretation of the current model, expressing

growing concern about the negative features of globalization. It is the case of Zygmunt

Bauman, who says that if, on the one hand, symbol makers and manipulators are

becoming increasingly more aggressive and “extraterritorial”, on the other we see a

weakening of sovereignties that are locally circumscribed: “We could prophesize that if

nothing refrains or dominates it, our negative globalization – and its alternative way of

taking away security from those who are free, to offer security in the shape of lack of

freedom – makes catastrophe inescapable” (Bauman, 2007: 227).

The truth is that even among liberal thinkers standing on the opposite side, we find

strong critical arguments, as in the case of German Max Otte, who sees a prevailing

“economy of disinformation” in the current information age, a system of opacities, of

pseudo-events and of media noise. He describes it as a new feudal society subjugated

to predator capitalism, a hijacked democratic experience allied to a growing weakness

of political authorities subordinated to economic pressure groups: «Independent

journalism has fallen into an increasingly deeper crisis. Editors are thankful to receive

prefabricated opinions sent by the public relations departments of companies and

ministries, and so the circle of the driving forces of the society of disinformation comes

to a close (…) the media – for some time seen as the critical (!) “fourth power”,

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Francisco Rui Cádima

together with the legislative, executive and judicial powers – has become, like the

former, a clear multiplier of disinformation” (Otte, 2010: 39-40). Nothing new here…

were not the global media the ones responsible for the dramatic escalation of the

successive crises of the decade, such as the dot-com bubble, the lies about Iraq, the

real estate bubble, the easy credit, toxic products and so on? Not to forget other crises,

like the climate change crisis, the crisis of the paradigm of progress, the belief in the

consumer and abundance society etc. But over that decisive cultural fracture and the

much worn out models of deferred gratification, nowadays, in the new context of

instantaneous information on a global scale and under the spectrum of that “first

State”, where the impatient capital has become king, we indeed face a different crisis,

one of the “triumph of superficiality at work, schools and politics”. As Richard Sennett

(2006: 133) stated: “Perhaps indeed, revolt against this enfeebled culture will

constitute our next fresh page”.

This superficiality affecting global information has long reached the actual cultural

dimension of the television phenomenon. The ultimate example is that provided by the

Iberian-American market, where the Portuguese example is depressing. The flow of

fiction in the Iberian-American space does not escape from the global model of a

certain cultural homogenization. According to Lorenzo Vilches, the standardization of

contents appears to be the rule in the television industry, and the fact is that this type

of specific production is not alien to the current globalization process, being

characterized by the following aspects: «i) standardization of contents by adapting

national and Iberian-American fiction formats; ii) confirmation that economics is the

guiding principle in the process; iii) once the decadence or weakness of the public

sector has been demonstrated (...) the market takes precedence in all the decisions

regarding formats and contents and iv) confirmation of the existence of a incipient and

unequal in magnitude globalizing philosophy in the whole of Iberian-American national

fiction industries towards international markets.” (Lopes and Vilches, 2008: 23-24). The

same study also refers that the differentiation in consumption and genres in the context

of the Iberian-American market is increasingly smaller, with a high concentration of

soaps and series at prime time, and there is equally little difference between public and

private offer in those markets. This empirical study is not dissimilar to what is

happening in Portugal (Cádima, 2009), which makes us reflect seriously about the

consequences of a typically third-world model in our television, which finds no parallel

in Europe: “Portugal is the country that offers premiere national fiction (soap operas)

during the primetime evening schedule”4. On this matter, we can also say that with

regard European regulations, we have a clear lack of monitoring of this type of

situations (Cádima, 2007).

RTP Internacional

In the beginning of 2010, socialist MP Paulo Pisco questioned in Parliament the utility of

the television’s public service, and presented a petition criticizing the programming of

RTPi and RTP Africa. In the case of RTPi, he believed there was not “a journalism of and

4 Maria Immacolata Vassallo de Lopes and Lorenzo Vilches (Coords.), Anuário Obitel 2008 - Mercados

globais, histórias nacionais, Rio de Janeiro: GloboUniversidade, 2008: 35-36. This «national fiction» refers

mostly to soap operas, a negative sign considering that it is a study carried out mostly in Latin American

countries including: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and also Spain and the USA

(television broadcasted in Castilian Spanish).

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Francisco Rui Cádima

for the communities, and that the promotion and recognition of the many values that

exist in the communities was not perceptible”. In addition, the public channel failed to

attract the “interest of the new generations of Portuguese around the world”, and “the

fundamental civic and political dimensions for the affirmation of our communities”5 was

missing. As for RTP Africa, he found there was still no «clear promotion of the

cooperation and historical and cultural ties” between Portugal and Portuguese speaking

African countries.

RTPi was launched in June 1992, aimed at Europe and broadcasting for just six hours a

day. RTP África was founded in 1997. Currently, RTPi is a global network present in

several digital systems, cable and other platforms, with an audience of about 20 million

viewers. It is constantly criticized for forgetting the vital rhythm of the actual

communities, for showing little Portuguese cultural heritage, which contradicts its

concession contract, and for showing difficulty in co-existing with countries where there

is a marked lack of pluralism. SIC Internacional emerged in 1998, and in 2010 the

Media Regulating Authority (ERC) approved the project TVI Internacional.

Following the major waves of the Portuguese diaspora up to the 1960s, the launch of

an international channel for Portuguese culture three decades later was, at the very

least, blatantly overdue. This explains why it was up to local means, often organized by

the Portuguese community themselves, namely in France, to take up the role that had

long been postponed by the Portuguese public operator. Examples include Jorge Reis’

radio broadcast in the public station Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française

(ORTF) in 1966, the famous free radios, the programmes in Portuguese at Radio France

Internationale (RFI), the broadcasting of the Mosaïques television (FR3, 1976-1987),

etc. A bit closer to us stood the Portuguese Language Channel CLP TV (2006-2009), a

project developed by the Portuguese community which unfortunately went bust, and

also Lusopress.tv, a Web TV Project which, due to the fact it is less costly, may have its

future assured in the new model of communication in a digital environment.

The work Les Portugais de France face à leur télévision. Médias, migrations et enjeux

identitaires, by Manuel Antunes da Cunha6, focused on several of the topics mentioned

above. This is a comprehensive study of the Portuguese diaspora and the media system

encompassing it, namely in France and particularly on RTPi which, as the author writes,

started by re-framing it, including from the perspective of identity within the diaspora

and in terms of participation and integration within a community that lived at a

distance from its origins and in that new social networ: «the programme’s grid, the

visual environment and the nature of its objectives attracted me in a way that the

Portuguese audiovisual medium failed to do (Cunha, 2009: 16).

In the end, the author describes very clearly what he believes to be the “discursive

identity of RTPi: Tradition and modernity, scholarly and popular culture shape the

enunciative tone of the chain of sovereignty. (…) The programmes about tourism,

nature, language, gastronomy and popular culture, amongst others, present a more

traditional representation of what is Portuguese. In this quest for origins, historical

fiction evokes the founding archetypes and tales, whereas the programmes on football,

5 «Deputado socialista questiona estratégia da RTPi e RTP África», Público online/Lusa, 6 January 2010.

Accessed on 25 May 2010: http://www.publico.pt/Media/deputado-socialista-questiona-estrategia-da-rtpi-

e-rtp-africa_1416566

6 Manuel Antunes da Cunha (2009). Les Portugais de France face à leur télévision. Médias, migrations et

enjeux identitaires, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

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Francisco Rui Cádima

fado and religion offer a more modern picture of the Portuguese way of being in the

world” (Cunha, 2009: 329).

However, as MP Paulo Pisco reminded us, there are other critical issues that must be

taken into account, such as the shortage of political and cultural pluralism, amongst

others, particularly in the context of programmes targeted at more complex geopolitical

areas, and, in our own case, especially at relations with Africa. One situation in

particular must be remembered, amongst many others concerning RTP África, which

had to close down its delegation in Bissau on 1 December 2002. The reason was a

dispatch issued by Guinea’s Secretary of State for Information suspending broadcasts,

which led to the expulsion of journalist João Pereira da Silva, RTP Africa’s delegate. This

situation was allegedly provoked by references made to Amnesty International, which

demanded an enquiry on the circumstances of the death of General Ansumane Mané on

30 November 2000.

With regard to Angola, Vicente Pinto de Andrade7 clearly touched a sore spot: «(...)

There is still a long way to go towards a full establishment of a democratic regime. The

governmentalization and partisanship of public media constitute the most negative

facet of the current political regime. It is not by chance that restrictions on widening

the bandwidth of Rádio Ecclésia (Catholic Broadcaster of Angola) continue. Angola is

the only country in Africa’s Portuguese speaking countries where the images and

sounds of RTP Africa and RDP Africa do not reach our homes “directly” (...)».

Another researcher has also referred to this deficit in his recent PhD thesis8, which

addresses the pulsing of diaspora communities and its almost total absence in RTP

Internacional. His research focused on the way the media builds and expands the

identity of a community of immigrants, their integration and identity ties. It analyses

the influence of the media and the role of RTP Internacional in building that reality and

identity. This poses various questions, starting with the fact that the pulsing and

experiences of those communities are not generally shown on international channels –

and, in the case of RTPi, the Portuguese cultural, patrimonial and identity heritage is

equally forgotten. It is interesting to note that this work on the identity problem of that

community, and on the problem of the media and its interactions, focuses particularly

on the television as a medium, and on the majority of members of that community who

left Portugal in the 1950s and 1960s, including some who left even prior to the first

television broadcasts in Portugal.

RTPi is, thus, perceived as the privileged means to reinforce the identity link, both

within the community, and in its link to its origins. The effective contribution of the

media for strengthening identity is more difficult to define, although it is argued that

identity is a construction, a collective conscience and a common perception. Hence the

new social responsibility of the media and journalists.

Given the lack of synchronization between supply and demand in terms of global

television, the question of adapting programming to specific needs of particular

7 Vicente Pinto de Andrade, «A futura Constituição angolana», Correio do Patriota online, 5/8/2008:

http://www.correiodopatriota.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=339 Accessed on 25

May 2010.

8 Fernando Carlos Moura (2010). «A Construção da identidade de uma comunidade imigrante portuguesa

na Argentina (Escobar) e a Comunicação Social». PhD Dissertation in Communication Sciences.

Department of Communication Sciences - FCSH/UNL, May.

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Francisco Rui Cádima

communities makes even more sense, and so does the need to listen to those same

communities, and, accordingly, produce programmes locally. This would avoid the

tendency to show the official discourse, somehow hegemonic and uncharacteristic,

made for the “global” masses which public channels show in their international

broadcasting.

To that effect, interesting approaches can be made, such as rethinking global

televisions, with their somewhat ethnocentric and, to a lesser or greater extent, official

local/national realities or histories (from the origin). This is precisely the opposite of

what happens with local and regional media, as they tend to adopt national/global

editorial strategies. However, the fact that global televisions may have, generally

speaking, their single histories as a result of introverted editorial approaches becomes

even more complex, since they focus on the same topics and not on different ones

related to the experiences of the diaspora, and focus even less on fringe communities

and corresponding voices: those are the diaspora within the diaspora, who can only find

an alternative in those “virtual neighbourhoods”. Appadurai (2006) talked about,

despite the fact that those fringes have earned new inclusion areas, mostly thanks to

the new media rather than traditional media. The production of locality and

deterritorialized cultural reproduction in the new ethnoscapes cannot be made, of

course, without contradictions and impasses, due to the disjuncture between these

processes and the discourse and practices that are mass-mediated by the mass media”

(Appadurai, 2004: 263).

CNN

Currently CNN is spread over several CNNs, each focusing on specific geopolitical

regions of the world. An interesting way to start reflecting on the “massage” conveyed

by CNN is to know the experience of former journalist Rebecca MacKinnon.9 This

experience became the naked image of the system, something that CBS journalist Lara

Logan described at an interview at Jon Stewart’s Daily Show in June 2008, when she

stated that if she had to watch the news about Iraq that are published in the USA, she

would “shoot herself on the head”…

Rebecca MacKinnon is currently a lecturer at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre

of the University of Hong Kong, and a co-founder of Global Voices. She joined CNN in

1992, and headed the Beijing delegation in 1997. In 2001 she became chief of the

Tokyo Bureau. In the preface of the essay we refer to later on and of which we

reproduce a large excerpt given its importance, MacKinnon clearly states her intentions,

and what she has to tell us is so clear cut that it leaves no room for doubt as to what

the “CNN system” is about: «After working for CNN in Asia for over a decade, I stopped

to take stock. I asked myself: Did my job as a TV news correspondent remain

consistent with the reasons I went into journalism in the first place? My answer was

“no”» (MacKinnon, 2004: 1).

In the beginning of the 1990s, when she was still in her early twenties, Rebecca had all

the dreams in the world, and her idealism made her believe that there was a public-

service oriented journalism awaiting her…«I believed that a democratic nation such as

9 Rebecca MacKinnon (2004). «The World-Wide Conversation - Online participatory media and international

news». Shorenstein Center Working Paper Series, Spring. Accessed on 2 May 2010.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/blogs/gems/techjournalism/WORLDWIDECONVERSATION.pdf

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the United States could only have responsible foreign policies that truly served the

people’s interests – and intentions – if the public received quality, objective

international news. I wanted to make a difference. To say that I made no difference

covering China, Japan, Korea, and other parts of Asia to viewers in the United States

and around the world would be overly cynical. But by early 2004 I concluded that my

ability to make a difference on issues that I felt were important was diminishing. In

November 2003 I interviewed Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, focusing

primarily on his decision to send Japanese non-combat forces to Iraq despite

widespread public opposition. Despite being a close ally of U.S. President Bush, Koizumi

said Bush should be doing more to cooperate with the international community. While

this interview was broadcast repeatedly on CNN International, not a single sound-bite

ran on CNN USA» (MacKinnon, 2004: 2).

Editors at the CNN headquarters in Atlanta kept telling Rebecca there had been no time

to show the interview on the national broadcast. However, the truth is that it had been

an excessively quiet day for CNN in America. Editors’ top priority had not been Prime

Minister Koizumi, but rather Michael Jackson, Jessica Lynch, an interview with the then

Secretary of State Colin Powell, a legal decision on homosexual marriages, and so on.

As Rebecca MacKinnon put it: «I understood the CNN USA producers’ perspective: they

are not paid to serve the public policy interest. They are paid to boost the ratings of

their shows, and thus make choices every day in favor of news stories they feel will

keep viewers from changing the channel to competitors such as Fox News. (...) I was

told that the priority of all internationally-based correspondents should be to find ways

to get more stories aired on CNNUSA’s prime time shows. We needed to “serve their

needs” better in order to continue to justify our existence financially. I was told that the

main “problem” with my recent reporting was that my depth of knowledge about

Northeast Asia was “getting in the way” of doing the kind of stories that CNNUSA is

likely to run. It was after this conversation that I began to wonder whether I should

return to the job that was so generously being held for me. (...) I did not feel that the

job remained consistent with my reasons for becoming a journalist in the first place.

Nor were my concerns limited to CNN exclusively; in fact, most TV journalists I knew at

other U.S. networks harbored similar sentiments. Having no debt or dependents of any

kind, I was in a better position than most people to take risks. In March, I took a deep

breath and resigned. I have gone from being a well-compensated foreign

correspondent to being an independent writer, researcher, and blogger» (MacKinnon,

2004: 2).

Rebecca MacKinnon’s story is by all means enlightening, albeit for the opposite reason

of what is going on with transnational channels that attempt to spread their message to

the four corners of the world and which, in this specific case of CNN USDA, comes

alight in the fact that some messages edited in some “remote place” in the world, only

with difficulty could be shown internally in the USA. This is because what matters at

national level is the preservation of the good image and “unblemished” politics. As

Sheldon Rampton put it: «Any serious contemplation of the process by which the

United States went to war in Iraq tells us that propaganda is still a powerful force in

shaping public opinion.»10 Despite Obama and his new communication cycle, the truth

is that broadcasting continues to be, still today, the main communication medium,

10 Sheldon Rampton, «Has the Internet Changed the Propaganda Model?» Center for Media and Democracy

– PR Watch.org, 22/05/2007. Accessed on 24 May 2010: http://www.prwatch.org/node/6068.

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which also means that the old propaganda strategies of the decades of the great wars

remain alive in the regional wars of the beginning of the new century. This also means

that not even in the long term, in the longue durée; will the problems of “single

history” and of the new and old geopolitical ethnocentrisms find a solution.

References

Antunes da Cunha, Manuel (2009). Les Portugais de France face à leur télévision.

Médias, migrations et enjeux identitaires. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes

Appadurai, Arjun (2004). Dimensões Culturais da Globalização. A modernidade sem

peias. Lisboa: Teorema

Bauman, Zygmunt (2007). Miedo Líquido. La sociedad contemporánea y sus temores.

Madrid: Paidós

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