Abstract
Alexa Robinson’s Media and Politics in a Globalizing World is a textbook par excellence. It is wide-ranging in its topics and lucid in its style. Its sheer breadth and level of detail is noteworthy, as are the moments when the author articulately unpacks theory with reference to everyday experiences. It will doubtless be a valuable resource to many students.
In the preface, the author points out that there is no ‘yellow brick road’ through which the book is to be navigated, adding that there may even be value in getting ‘lost’ (this, she adds, ‘depending on whether one would rather explore Oz or keep close to the ground in Kansas’). Aside from her skill at metaphors, there is perhaps a very practical (and not so romantic) reason for this statement. As already noted, it is, primarily, a textbook; a mode of writing that has, for various reasons, developed into a product that offers students the structure of their essays, so they may secure a passing grade. It is safe to assume that the majority of students will not read the book from cover to cover. They will, rather, find the chapters corresponding to their essay topic, and from there benefit from the author’s excellent overviews, as well as her thorough presentation of relevant references. Students may then choose a few of these references to read in slightly more detail, in order to add a few more quotations, and will then submit their essay with some confidence in its achieving a passing grade.
This is the reality of the academic institution today, dictated as it is by the cycles of knowledge production (including very profitable academic publishing, if not for academics). But the effect, on a reader like myself who does choose, against the grain, to read from cover to cover, is frustration. As wide-ranging and thorough as the book is, there is an inescapable agitation in reading page upon page about what academics call this and what they say about that, without a clear intellectual trajectory that produces what thinking does best: bouts of pleasure; that feeling that all of a sudden, the world is seen anew, more nuanced, more complex, more interesting. If there was an overarching argument to the book, such as the relationship between media and politics, I missed it. The author’s familiarity with the literature is incredible, but I still do not know what I was meant to take away from reading the book.
It could be argued that a textbook is not the place for intellectual curiosity. That the utility of the textbook relates particularly to its functionality for students: it offers them an overview of topics, and relevant references, then leaves the rest up to them. This may be so. But it is also true that media studies as a field continues to face a great deal of denunciation, much of it unjustified. And it is worth stopping for a moment to ponder, as individuals involved in academic institutions, what it is we want to defend, and what it is we are (even if inadvertently) helping to prosper.
A particularly noteworthy aspect of the textbook is the author’s skill at pointing out, across different topics, the double-edged power of media in a globalizing world. Whether discussing activism, information flows, media elites or surveillance, the author continuously reaffirms, with the use of examples, how the same platforms offer possibilities as well as limitations. To refer to but one example, ‘when someone takes their iPhone to the revolution in their pocket, they are increasingly likely to be taking security forces with them’ (p. 98).
Another noteworthy aspect is the discussion of infotainment (Chapter 8, Section 3). This is full of detail and nuance, and approaches the topic through examining infotainment, and reality television in particular, as a collapsing of the public/private binary. It also considers various genres, with political satire offering new counter spaces, dramas fostering the capacity to judge politics, and science fiction offering new political imaginings. The author is convinced infotainment is a weapon of civic self-defence and not only emblematic of enslavement to corporate interests. While these corporate interests could have been afforded a little more space, the argument is presented well.
Strikingly absent are discussions of racism and Orientalism. Although globalization is one of the guiding themes of the book, the literature on de-Westernizing media studies is afforded no space at all. This is in spite of the fact that examples from the world over abound, and particularly examples from the Arab ‘revolutions’. The use of various media platforms by Arab youths is drawn on more than once to illustrate the links between media and politics, but absent is the fact that the Tahrir demonstrations reached their peak on Friday afternoon, a day after the Egyptian regime cut off communication. Having caused enough of a stir, the people trusted that it would be other, older and more traditional forms of congregations (i.e. the weekly Friday prayers) that would bring the people to the streets. At other times, the book draws on examples from the Arab world to illustrate the relationship between infotainment and politics, by mentioning the controversy caused by the introduction of reality television in the Arab world, particularly the reaction of some religious figures, complete (of course!) with fatwas and condemnations. But because the book does not consider the political economy of Arabic language media, such controversies are presented as proof that entertainment is political (on the grounds that it appears controversial to religious figures) without discussing who owns the platforms that hosted the ensuing ‘transnational media wars’ that Star Academy allegedly caused, at what expense to the public sphere and to the benefit of which political elites. Surely, the focus cannot be Star Academy itself, which in this example, because of such framing, appears as a modernizing force.
Nuance is also lost when discussing media platforms that are geographically in Europe. Commenting on the coverage of the 60th celebrations of D-Day that coincided with US President George W. Bush’s declaration of Iraq’s ‘liberation’, the author compares a British press that emphasized the ‘us’ and ‘them’ binary and the theme of sacrifice for freedom, with a German and Swedish press that, in keeping with European values, covered stories about the war through instances of mixed marriage and resolving conflict without violence. The author takes this to indicate that the press were reflecting their own national stakes in the current Iraq war through the D-Day commemoration. Aside from the importance of critically considering what constitutes British media, or indeed European media, there is also an underlying and unexamined notion of ‘values’ related to particular places. She writes, ‘The European way of resolving conflict was no longer the centuries-old resort to arms, but the strategy of getting to know and respect – even love – the Other’ (p. 114). This is one of the few instances in which the condition of alterity appears at all in the book. Throughout, Europe as exemplar is afforded no critical treatment at all. The irony became more apparent as I was reading the book during the unfolding of the refugee crisis, and this proclaimed respect (let alone love) of the Other is in very short supply.
Alexa Robinson’s book is an excellent resource for students; I cannot emphasize that enough. Her sheer ability to draw such an expansive portrayal of academic discussions over an entire field and the confidence and clarity of her examples are commendable. I still find myself hoping that textbooks will one day give way to reading groups of core texts, and insightful, critical discussions over them.