international media — AEJMC Hot Topics

Book Review – International Blogging: Identity, Politics, and Networked Publics

October 25, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

International Blogging: Identity, Politics, and Networked Publics. Adrienne Russell and Nabil Echchaibi, eds. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2009. 205 pp.

Everybody (or so it seems) writes them and presumes that somebody beyond family and close friends just might read them. Blogs have become the most democratic of media, with their low entry costs and widespread free distribution, although our understanding of their audiences and impact is a mite constricted.

This new study approaches blogs globally, and explores the way blogging is being conceptualized across and within different countries. Russell teaches digital media studies at the University of Denver, while Echchaibi is at the University of Colorado-Boulder. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: Adrienne Russell, aejmc quarterly, Blogging, international media, Nabil Echchaibi, new media book reviews, quarterly autumn 2011

Book Review – Identity Games: Globalization and the Transformation of Media Cultures in the New Europe

October 25, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Identity Games: Globalization and the Transformation of Media Cultures in the New Europe. Anikó Imre. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. 257 pp.

Though it has now been more than two decades since the fall of the Iron Curtain, many of us still have little knowledge about life or media in Central or Eastern Europe—let alone experience. Identity Games should help fill that gap, as author Anikó Imre examines the corporate transformation of the post-communist media landscape in the region.

Avoiding both uncritical techno-euphoria and the nostalgic projections (by some) of a simpler and thus better media world under communism, Imre, a faculty member at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema Arts, argues that the demise of Soviet-backed regimes and the transition to transnational capitalism have had crucial implications for understanding the relationships among growing nationalist pride, media globalization, and identity. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: aejmc quarterly, Anikó Imre, cultural book reviews, international media, Media industry book reviews, political book reviews, quarterly autumn 2011

Book Review – Explaining News

October 25, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Explaining News. Cristina Archetti. New York, NY: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2010. 257 pp.

Cristina Archetti is a British political scientist with teaching experience in Washington and Amsterdam and an interest in international news. Explaining News is her ambitious study of eight newspapers in four countries that explores what shapes the news. The book, based on her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Leeds, is a tough read. It is clearly written, but densely packed with data, hypotheses, and theories. Advanced graduate students and faculty can perhaps fully appreciate it, especially for its wealth of data. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: aejmc quarterly, Cristina Archetti, international media, Media industry book reviews, News, political book reviews, quarterly autumn 2011, scholarship book reviews

Book Review – Envisioning Media Power: On Capital and Geographies of Television

October 25, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

Envisioning Media Power: On Capital and Geographies of Television. Brett Christophers. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2009. 467 pp.

In a sometimes quite complex book, Brett Christophers develops an original geographical perspective on the nature and exercise of power in the international television economy, essentially a study of programming trade.

He applies theories of political economy as the basis for a comparative empirical examination of the television markets in both Britain and New Zealand, while considering those markets’ respective relationships with the far larger American market and its globally influential media corporations. That power is often expressed in terms of money accumulation is made clear. Sharing a common (well, largely common) language across the three nations makes for ready comparisons. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: aejmc quarterly, Brett Christophers, international media, quarterly autumn 2011, television book reviews

Book Review[s] – International Media Communication in a Global Age & Negotiating in the Press

May 16, 2011 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

International Media Communication in a Global Age. Guy J. Golan, Thomas J. Johnson, and Wayne Wanta, eds. New York and London: Routledge, 2010. 480 pp.

Negotiating in the Press: American Journalism and Diplomacy, 1918-1919. Joseph R. Hayden. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2010. 320 pp.

These texts present two opposite but equally important foci of research in the growing field of international communication—the edited collection takes a macro view, tackling news flow theories, international journalism, and strategic communication in a globalized world, while the monograph delves in depth on a very narrow episode, the peace negotiations after World War I. Both introduce fruitful research avenues about concerns as different as the role of the news media in diplomacy and strategies for global branding. While two of the three parts of Golan, Johnson, and Wanta’s volume are valuable enough that the book could be used as textbook in an introductory class on international communication, Hayden’s work is most helpful as a spur to further research on the important issues it raises.