Vital to the emergence of the cosmopolitan outlook, from Beck’s perspective, are media that both represent and service the cultural needs of transnationals (Beck 2006): “the framework of the nation is not overcome. But the foundations of the industries and cultures of the mass media have changed dramatically and concomitantly all kinds of transnational connections and confrontations have emerged” (Beck 2006, pp. 6-7). Beck believes that, because transnationals are both native and non-native (Beck 2006, p. 65), media attention to their presence can help populations overcome “us and them” dichotomies (2006, p. 63) by conceptualising difference in terms of “both/and” rather than “either/or” (Beck 2006, p. 62) – both German and Jewish, for example. “What is new,” he contends, “is not forced mixing but awareness of it, its self-conscious political affirmation, its reflection and recognition before a global public via the mass media” (Beck 2006, p. 21). Beck includes tourists in his definition of
transnationals (2006, p. 90) and asks whether they and other transnationals such as migrants and members of nongovernment organisations are merely tolerated by local communities or may ultimately be encouraged to participate in local politics, thereby contributing to a culture of openness (2006, pp.90-91). Perhaps most tantalisingly of all, from the perspective of tourism stakeholders, he asks whether there might actually be marketing advantages to localities in being represented as politically cosmopolitan.
Could one in this sense even say that the extension of local politics by transnational subpolitics, in particular the cooperation with non-governmental organizations, entails an enrichment of city politics because it fosters global connections and is an effective global advertisement? (Beck 2006, p. 91)
In addition to servicing the cultural needs of transnationals and bringing attention to their presence, it is possible that some sectors of the media may themselves be considered transnational cultures. Hannerz includes journalism among the occupational cultures he describes as such, thereby attributing to some of its practitioners privileged access to the meanings of cultures other than their own and an associated role as cultural mediators:
These cultures become transnational both as the individuals involved make quick forays from a home base to many other places – for a few hours or days in a week, for a few weeks here and there in a year – and as they shift their bases for longer periods within their lives…The real significance of the growth of the transnational cultures, however, is often not the new cultural experience that they themselves can offer people – for it is frequently rather restricted in scope – but their mediating possibilities. The transnational cultures are bridgeheads for entry into other territorial cultures. Instead of remaining within them, one can use the mobility connected with them to make contact with the meanings of other rounds of life and gradually incorporate this experience into one’s personal perspective. (1996, pp. 107-08)
Here, then, is scope for something more than banal cosmopolitanism, whereby journalists make their contribution by mediating diverse cultures and global threats with greater depth and competence than may be inherent in the more consumer-oriented global vernacular. In Cosmopolitan Vision (2006) Beck invests the media with a key role in facilitating social reflexivity by unveiling manufactured global hazards and risks (hazards and risks that are unintended by-
ubiquitous the threat as represented in the mass media,” he writes, “the greater the political power to explode borders generated by the perception of risk” (2006, p. 35).
There are, of course, counterarguments to Beck’s faith in media coverage to contribute to cosmopolitanisation, including a lack of evidence that there is a connection between journalistic representations of political, social or
environmental problems and public action (especially sustained action) related to those problems. Research (Livingstone and Markham 2008, p. 367) indicates that news consumption and news engagement, while positively influencing an individual’s propensity to vote, make virtually no difference to the likelihood that he or she will take any other action on a matter of concern (cf. Cottle and Lester 2011). Compassion fatigue is an acknowledged risk of saturation
coverage of human misery (Moeller 1999), while dramatic reports of conflict in distant lands or global environmental threats can provoke an anxious withdrawal into nationalism and isolationism (Beck 2006; Bourdieu 1998, p. 8; Hannerz 2004b, p. 29). Harvey (2009) finds that in response to the globalisation of trade, communications and threats, “[p]olitical struggles have been displaced from the fixed territorialities of the absolute to unstable relational realms that cannot easily be controlled, patrolled, and disciplined. Deterritorialization and reterritorialization within the global economy have resulted” (2009, p. 275). Indeed two additional indicators of Beck’s own dialectical cosmopolitanisation are recognition of “the cosmopolitan conflict character” and a “compulsion to redraw old boundaries” (2006, p. 7) – tendencies elsewhere described as “anti- cosmopolitanism” (Woodward, Skrbis and Bean 2008, p. 210).
Beck acknowledges that media representations of the side-effects of industrialisation and globalisation may result in a backlash against
cosmopolitanism, but he also believes that representations demonstrating cosmopolitan values present opportunities for “cosmopolitan pioneers” to “exploit the growing perception of global risks in their efforts to promote more extensive…cooperation and integration” (Smith 2008, p. 257). In contrast to those who engage in lengthy debate about the mass media’s capacity for cultural homogenisation, in Cosmopolitan Vision Beck draws attention to the media’s pluralist potential. As such, he differs from those who see plurality resulting from postmodern attributes of the mass media (for example, Mowforth and Munt 1998, p. 27): for Beck, postmodern culture is only a shallow imitation of the cosmopolitan outlook because, as montage, it cannot adequately accommodate the historical depth and specificity of different cultures (2006, p. 29). Here he appears to be challenging journalists to do more than merely extend global connectedness through the “brands, icons and narratives” (Szerszynski and Urry 2006, p. 477) so characteristic of banal globalism. Hannerz seems to agree, noting that some foreign correspondents believe that more portrayals of everyday life in the communities to which they are assigned can help counter the
possibility of an anti-cosmopolitan backlash to media representations of distant conflict, trauma and catastrophe (Hannerz 2004b, p. 29). In arguing in favour of foreign correspondents writing features to complement their news reports, he warns against trivialising other cultures:
societies elsewhere, as a complement to hard news. But if we should measure news media foreign reporting against the higher standard of cultivating
cosmopolitanism, making audiences feel more realistically at home in the world, it becomes a more noteworthy matter when we identify biases, gaps, and misrepresentations. We should then consider how such weaknesses may have come to be built into the structure of reporting. (2004b, pp. 36-37)
Though Hannerz here is referring to news journalists reporting on distant cultures, it seems reasonable to ask the converse – that is, whether travel
journalists might not be expected to avoid “biases, gaps and misrepresentations” in their reporting of relevant political issues in tourist destinations. Whatever else might motivate travel journalists to take up this challenge, engagement with “place” is likely to be central.