Abstract
The terror attack against the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was indeed an attack that ‘matters to everyone in the free world’ (Kicker, 2015 as quoted on p. 2), because it was an assault on freedom of speech – a fundamental human right. Johanna Sumiala, Katja Valaskivi, Minttu Tikka and Jukka Huhtamäki focus their book on the attack. They explain that their choice of case study was a logical continuation of their work on ‘the creation and circulation of attention in a changed media environment’ in which they ‘wanted to understand how things, notions, ideologies and values come into being and how they exercise an impact and influence on the media through circulation’ (p. xvii). The Charlie Hebdo terror attack, in their view, was a global media event, which can be best understood in the context of post-9/11 terrorist incidents and a widespread conceptualisation of terrorism as linked to radical Islam. As they put it, ‘the initial reaction to any and every violent incident is to suspect Islamist terrorism’ (p. 3). The authors note that in each case when the terrorists were not White, they would always be described as outsiders even if they were born and brought up in the Western country in which the attack took place. The main argument Surniala, Valaskivi, Tikka and Huhtamäki put forward is that ‘contemporary media events of terrorist violence play out in the ways they do because of the contemporary hybrid media environment’ (p. 4). They draw upon media anthropology, international communication and political communication as well as ‘recent discussions on media and social theory’ in an attempt to ‘produce a map of the territory of hybrid media events of terrorist violence’ (p. 5). The first chapter, ‘What Are Hybrid Media Events of Terrorist Violence?’, presents the main aims of the study as well as a conceptualisation of the terms hybrid and media event. When defining what they mean by the term hybrid, they draw upon the work of Marwan M. Kraidy, Bruno Latour and Andrew Chadwick. Latour describes hybridity as ‘the seamless fabric of nature-culture that is manifested in our contemporary media environment that intertwines technology, human action and discourses’ (p. 8). Kraidy focuses on the power relations between the West and the rest, especially in the ‘world of international communication and media’ (p. 8). Chadwick predominantly studies the systematic differences between and practices of new media and old media. Surniala, Valaskivi, Tikka and Huhtamäki argue that hybrid media events have five analytical elements: actors, affordances, attention, affect and acceleration. Their study utilises a multi-method model, which includes automated content analysis, computational social network analytics and digital ethnography. The sample consists of a range of traditional and social media – Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, CNN, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, Le Figaro, Le Monde and Libération. The book is split into seven chapters. The first analytical chapter, ‘Creating a Media Event’, explores the main narrative storyline of the event and is mainly based on the ethnographic work. Chapter 3, ‘Actors and Affordances’, then analyses the Twitter data. Chapter 4, ‘Attention’, focuses on the coverage of and the reactions to the death of police officer Ahmed Merabet. Chapter 5, ‘Affect’, explores the ‘mediatized rituals of public solidarity created around the slogan and meme “Je suis Charlie” and its counter-rituals’ (p. 27). Chapter 6, ‘Liveness and Acceleration’, is the last empirical chapter, which is based on digital ethnography of the two hostage situations in the attacks. The final chapter summarises the main contributions of the study and provides a critical reflection upon ‘the ethical consequences of this hybridization of today’s media events’ (p. 27). All in all, the book offers a thorough and thoughtful analysis of one hybrid media event and poses a lot of food for thought in relation to the broader theme.