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Keeping up with the Global: Adapting

to Meet a Changing Future

Nishant Shah
(Programme Director and Associate Professor)

The term global had huge resonance in 2005, when A Master of Arts in Global Communication, at that
the Master of Arts in Global Communication was moment, seemed momentous. It was the time
established. It was the year of the blog, where to re-think the geopolitical, economic, cultural,
Web 2.0 platforms were harnessing the power of and indeed, the communicative alignments
crowdsourced creation. The year saw the launch that emerged as a result of changing media,
of YouTube and Reddit, and Baidu was listed technology, and financialization. As the world
on NASDAQ. Facebook dropped the “The” from Internet cleaved into local interpretations and new
its name, Google launched AdSense, Wikipedia voices, languages, communities, and identities
became a thing, Alibaba acquired 40% shares in made themselves known, it was exciting that
Yahoo!, India saw mobile penetration cross the 100 emerging communications and media scholars
million mark, and China marked a similar number accounted for these generation defining shifts as
of Internet users. The Kyoto protocol was signed, we all became global in different ways.
The Chinese great firewall was conceptualized,
and there was an overwhelming sense that we are Emerging Events, Ever-changing Future
witnessing a planetary togetherness as access, In 2012, which stands just in the midst of then
connectivity, and collectivity rise. and now, the United Nations adopted the Global
Sustainable Development Goals which have
defined a pathway to collective futures that we
have to strive for. It was also the year that Web 2.0
died a quiet death and got replaced by a visual
Internet that moved from websites to apps and
platforms. The famous Gangnam style viral video
from South Korea showed the possibility of new