There is no single definition of global challenges. According to Cambridge Dictionary global means relating to the whole world, challenge means something that needs great mental or physical effort in order to be done successfully and therefore tests a person's ability. Consequently, global challenges are something that needs some effort at global level to be solved. It differs from global issues as to deal with them it is not enough to talk and think about them when trying to solve them, but it requires certain effort. Kirsten Gelsdorf makes it a little less complicated when she writes in her policy brief for UN OCHA that global challenges are defined as any major trend, shock, or development that has the potential for serious global impacts.

Imagination as such refers to the capacity of our minds to form images and concepts of something that is absent. Global imagination is then the ability to at first reflect on the existence of diverse, interconnected and interrelated social, political, economic, ecological, cultural and other contexts and power structures. In the second row it enables us to fill in the gaps. Understand and/or anticipate unknown parts of the stories and relations, understand and/or anticipate how those contexts and structures interact and influence each other and relations between them. To have a global imagination, a person must be able to pull away from the situation and own context, and think from an alternative point of view, especially when covering culturally and/or geographically distant contexts.

The 'global outlook' in journalism aims to connect issues and stories from many continents into one concrete local reality - making the global local. It connects seemingly unrelated stories from different continents, taking place in a range of contexts, into a single coherent global story. The emphasis is on power structures and their influence on issues such as migration or climate change. The value of the global outlook is that it widens the focus of the lens we use to view and understand the world, connecting rather than fragmenting the world, while making the omnipresent but often unseen forces of globalization visible.

The ‘global south’ (or ‘Global South’) is a term used by international organizations such as the World Bank and as well as many NGOs to identify countries on the southern side of the so-called North/South divide. The term is, however, not defined by geography: most of the global south countries actually lie in the northern hemisphere. The concept was introduced into development discourse in the 1980s following the publication of the Brandt Report. Willy Brandt, a former chancellor of West Germany, led the working group that prepared this report, and it is still considered one of the most comprehensive analysis of global development issues. The term was intended as a more value free alternative to terms like ‘developing country’ or ‘third world’: there are various other alternatives, for example ‘minority vs. majority worlds’, but they are not as widely used and understood.

Term coined by Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan in the 60s (for the first time in his essay Gutenberg Galaxy). McLuhan even predicted the existence of the internet. His term describes the phenomenon of the entire world becoming more interconnected as the result of the propagation of media technologies. All parts of the world are being brought together by the internet and communication forms such as Skype, which allow us to communicate and connect with others around the globe. All those stories, messages, opinions, posts and videos sent around the global village can, however, cause also miscommunication and misinterpretations in various cultural contexts.

This describes something that is both global and local at the same time. 'Glocalization' refers to the interconnectedness of the two and how, for example, local spaces and identities may also be shaped by global forces. (See more in Encyclopaedia Britannica)