International in scope and interdisciplinary in approach

New Media and Society (NMS) was a long time in the making. It involved several colleagues, not all of whom made it to the finish line as well as several contributors from Sage, the publisher. NMS was gestated in that hopeful season when John Perry Barlow’s (1996) Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace was a subject of conversation and various other utopian dreams were in the air. While referring to Barlow’s definition of cyberspace, the inaugural editorial soberly laid out the state of the field as the coeditors saw it and expressed the hope that the journal would not only be a platform for ongoing research but would also help shape the development of the field (Jankowski et al., 1999). In 1999, the founding co-editors described the field as “international in scope and interdisciplinary in approach.” There is little question that the object of study transcends national borders and poses challenges both for state and industry actors. The issue is whether scholars habituated to national and disciplinary frames are able to keep up with the rapidly changing phenomena they are seeking to understand. An interdisciplinary approach is easy to prescribe but difficult to do. The present reflections focus on the international and policy dimensions. Short-wave radio broadcasts jumped national borders, but for the most part, it was not a mass phenomenon and not an essential feature of the business model. Hindi film songs being released in the 1950s on Sri Lanka’s advertising-supported radio channels that reached into India and quack medicines prohibited in the United States being peddled through high-powered Mexican radio broadcasts even earlier were examples of exceptions. Satellites ratcheted up the concerns about nation-states losing control over what their citizens watched and listened to. Smythe (1960) was among the first to discuss their boundary-spanning capabilities, although at that time ground stations allowed for state control. But even with the very small aperture terminals (VSATs) that were introduced later, it was still possible for punitive action to be taken against those who deviated from state-sanctioned behavior (Dalfen, 1970). With the advent of the Internet and its integration into the everyday functioning of the economy and society, most nation-states have no alternative but to take the international dimensions into account in policy-making related to media and communication. The intertwined issues of data protection, data localization, and cybersecurity illustrate the phenomenon well. 1143428 NMS0010.1177/14614448221143428new media & societyEditorial research-article2022