The globalization team of the Center for Communication Research presented a panel, “Media role in the local-national-global nexus: comparing Chinese societies,” at the annual conference of the International Association for Media Communication Research, held in Stockholm, Sweden from 20 to 25 July 2008. This is a part of continuing analysis of a large-scale survey study conducted in the four mainland cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Xian and Chengdu) and Hong Kong to explore the role of the media in constructing local, national, and global realities. We define “globalization” in terms of its political, economic, cultural, and environmental dimensions. The perceived impact of globalization can be gauged at the individual, city, national, and world levels. The random samples from five cities represent different social systems as well as different level of economic development and global contact, thus offering many possibilities for doing various levels of comparison. This panel aimed first to present comparative analysis of media role in influencing citizens' attitudes toward globalization. We compared “globlists” versus “locals” among audiences, and profiled the characteristics of “global discontents”. Further, we analyzed how the media mediate the way nationalist sentiments affect the way of seeing the United States as an “ambivalent other.” Finally, we extrapolated from the dataset to construct an index of glocality, which will illuminate the current global-local debate.