Cultural Diversity and Global Media: The Mediation of Difference (2010). Siapera, Eugenia Ames, Iowa: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 222.

A thorough, complete introduction to the major theorists and theories on the complex relationship between mass media and multiculturalism couldn’t be more timely—and Eugenia Siapera provides such a textbook. This is an authoritative reference tool that posits global media as an institutional practice of representation, then sets out to explore key debates and approaches to understanding how they participate in the production and circulation of meaning. “Representation is found at the heart of mediation,” writes Siapera, so “without representation neither production nor consumption would have any meaning” (p. 111). By examining processes of media production, representation, and consumption as they engage with cultural diversity, she explains that “cultural diversity in this particular historical juncture must be seen as mediated, that is, traversing processes of the production, circulation, representation and reception/consumption of meaning that characterize late modern, technologically evolved societies” (p. 75).  [Read more...]