Identifying the Globality of Global News Outlets: Constructions of Imagined Communities within the Global South

Ample research has been conducted to establish a more comprehensive understanding of how global news outlets such as Al Jazeera English (AJE), British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and Cable News Network (CNN) frame global events. These studies have often explored politically charged events like war, terrorism, or international conflicts, with the revelation that national interests often influence coverage. This literature, however, does not attempt to explain how these outlets frame global events that aren’t politically charged (which should presumably eliminate national bias). Emerging research seeking to better understand the framing of global news to eliminate national bias has identified 'othering' to be the determining factor of news coverage where CNN and BBC preserve colonial ideologies to favour the global North, while AJE counters Western media narratives to favour the global South. These studies are however limited in scope and as a result, the framing is often found to be rooted in colonial narratives. These rising criticisms of global news outlets framing events to preserve the dominant ideologies of their respective societies have raised the need to look beyond geographic localisation and 'othering' to identify if global media frame their stories only to cater to their favoured community. Imagined Communities might act as an alternative method to explore such non-geographical audiences.