Three theoretical concepts underpin the analysis of the relationships between globalisation and educational media in this research area. Each of the research projects draws to a different extent on these central concepts which focus our understanding of globalisation and also act as heuristic devices to help create novel research questions.

1. Globalisation as a cognitive shift

Armin Nassehi describes globalisation as a shift in cognitive schema, thereby adopting a constructivist perspective. In this view, what is new about the configuration flagged by the term globalisation is not primarily the altered material properties of the real world. Instead, he focuses on the changing perceptions of the world. Given the intensification of global social relations, Nassehi is primarily interested in the consequences of a heightened awareness of these interdependencies for ways of understanding the world.

This concept stimulates a novel approach to analysing educational media and globalisation. Rather than identifying globalisation as a set of previously defined characteristics, it allows us to investigate if and how globalisation is defined and constructed in various localities. Educational media become a kind of seismograph. Analysing these media enables us to map the cognitive shifts which have been set in motion by globalisation. This mapping can also entail a normative component. Studies can ask, for instance, if and how educational media display or facilitate a reflective awareness of the global diversity of perspectives and of the contingency of one’s own view of the world. Analyses can trace if and how geographically distant (dominant) perspectives become points of reference for locally situated narratives. They can investigate which perspectives leave their mark on local knowledges.

By drawing on the cognitive shift concept, educational media and globalisation can be analysed along the following lines:

• How is globalisation constituted in diverse local contexts and by diverse actors? Is it primarily seen as a threat or an opportunity? Are threats or opportunities defined as cultural, political or social?
• Which globalisation discourses do local actors draw on?
• Within which normative frames are they acting?
• Which future (social, political, cultural, economic, geographic) practices do particular constructions of globalisation prioritise?
• Which experiences (of schooling, family, business, migration) and perspectives feed into these constructions?
• Which potential conflicts could arise if or when different perceptions of the world encounter one another?

2. Globalisation as the expansion of relevancy spaces

Rudolf Stichweh has analysed globalisation as a process which leads to the development of global ‘relevancy spaces’, i.e. a global expansion of what can be considered the relevant context of a given meaning event. His point of departure is, similar to Nassehi, that globalisation is primarily realized through communication, or to be precise, through the linking of local communication processes. The heuristic value of Stichweh’s concept is that it enables us to conceive of issues which do not yet emerge from Nassehi’s more general understanding of globalisation as cognitive shift.

• Firstly, the notion of global relevancy spaces allows us to overcome the slightly too narrow constructivist perspective. Stichweh’s approach emphasises the fact that the establishment of global relevancy spaces can result from extremely diverse processes. Local communication systems can be networked with one another either on an organisational level according to their structure or on an ideational level according to their contents. In the former, specific nameable translocal actors exert direct influence on local communication processes – whether in the form of transnational media corporations which buy property rights or in the form of transnational organisations which draft mandatory standards. In the latter, global selection horizons impact less directly on local communication. Here, the issue is local actors’ desire to avoid exclusion and irrelevance and to thus create communication which is relevant to other parts of the world. This motivates them to observe communication in those other parts of the world when they consider their own communicative strategies.
• Secondly, Stichweh provides us with a more nuanced gauge to map the transformation processes triggered by globalisation. He argues that globalisation will not simply, and certainly not inevitably, lead to global homogeneity or the standardisation of values, knowledges, institutions, products and practices. Quite the opposite – local communications’ observation of one another can also intensify processes of fragmentation. Demands for the recognition of cultural, ethnic or religious difference can also be analysed as a result of expanding global selection horizons. On the one hand, the apparent naturalness of arguing in ethnic or religious categories could be the result of reflective observation of similar processes occurring in other localities. On the other hand, the sharp articulation of difference could result from the radical modification of globally circulating ideas and concepts as they are adapted to local contexts. Intimate insights into the knowledges and identifications of other localities, or the inundation of images and symbols from the hegemonic centres of symbolic power can lead individuals to try to draw definitive boundaries around what is ‘their own’. This also – in Stichweh’s concept – indicates the existence of global relevancy spaces.

This conceptual work opens up a range of research questions for the analysis of the production, dissemination and use of educational media in contexts of globalisation:

• Which transnational institutions and organisations influence the content of local education media in which ways?
• How are national representations of the self and the other changing as they adapt to global relevancy spaces?
• Which fragments of global discourses are locally articulated?
• How are global discourses transformed and/or contested as they are locally articulated?

3. Globalisation and the discursive production of subjectivity

The approach to globalisation outlined so far conceptualises globalisation as a discursive phenomenon in two ways. It not only suggests that globalisation is produced through discourse, it also argues that globalisation is itself a discourse. In this second sense, globalisation interpellates (Louis Althusser) individuals as particular subjects. Yes, ‘globalisation is what we make of it’ (Garrett Brown) but the ‘we’ who are making it can no longer be understood as entirely autonomous agents. The constructivist approach still holds, but is qualified by the acknowledgement that subjects are thoroughly embedded in discursive configurations.

This insight into the interdependence of discourse and subject is increasingly relevant within the contexts of globalisation. An important aspect of globalisation is that it creates new forms of subjectivation. Analyses of what has been called the ‘entrepreneurial self’ (Ulrich Bröckling, Nikolas Rose), for instance, demonstrate how today’s western society expects its subjects to become entrepreneurs of our selves. We are expected to be enterprising, motivated, creative, flexible, adventurous, independent, client-oriented and enthusiastic in all settings of our lives, whether at work or in school, at the gym or in relationships. The success of an individual’s life is measured in the same efficiency criteria as the success of a corporation. The demands and expectations of this discourse have become so strong that it is almost impossible to ignore them. Even someone who rejects these demands must first engage with them in order to formulate their rejection. The most hostile position still affirms the hegemony of the discourse.

The term ‘discourse’, as used here, refers not simply to language but also to a wider range of practices, institutions and artifacts (Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe). This has far-reaching implications for the analysis of educational media in the contexts of globalisation, leading to a four-fold locus of interest:

• How do local educational materials and particular situated classroom interactions construct hegemonic discourses? Which traces of global selection horizons can be found in these discourses?
• Which fissures and contradictions are visible in these discourses? Which alternative (marginal) discourses manage to break into the hegemonic configurations through the fissures and contradictions? Are they consonant with other global discourses?
• How are users (readers, viewers, interactants, students, teachers) interpellated by these discourses, i.e., which forms of subjectivation are offered? Which new (global) demands become common sense to learners and teachers? Is there resistance? If so, where and why?
• How do the media users affirm the forms of subjectivation on offer? What effect does this have on the construction of social reality in their lifeworlds?