Abstract
Media and Power in International Contexts: Perspectives on Agency and Identity is an edited collection of chapters on media, power, agency and identity, which does not have a proper introduction and conclusion so it is difficult to tell what links the essays together apart from the common topic. The introduction is effectively a chapter-by-chapter summary of the book with no attempt to link the chapters together. The authors are scholars of communication, media studies, sociology and cultural studies. The book is split into two main sections: ‘Media, Power, and Agency’, and ‘Media, Power, and Identity’. The first section comprises four chapters. In Chapter 1, ‘Power and Representation: Activist Standing in Broadcast News, 1970–2012’, the authors analyse discourse and representations of activism in 269 broadcast news stories covering five social movements: Women’s Rights, Gay Rights, Immigrant Rights, Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party. In Chapter 2, ‘Learning from a “Teachable Moment”: The Henry Louis Gates Arrest as Media Spectacle and Theorizing Colorblind Racism’, James A. Smith explores the coverage and audiences’ reactions to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates’s arrest. Chapter 3, ‘Economically Challenged but Academically Focussed: the Low-Income Chinese Immigrant Families’ Acculturation, Parental Involvement, and Parental Mediation’, investigates patterns in parental mediation in Chinese-American families. Chapter 4, ‘The Globalization of Facebook: Facebook’s Penetration in Developed and Developing Countries’, argues that there is a process of McDonaldization as a form of cultural hegemony. Section II consists of three chapters. Chapter 5, ‘Hybridizing National Identity: Reflections on the Media Consumption of Middle-Class Catholic Women in Urban India’, explores the relationship between media, identity, power and religion in India. Chapter 6, ‘Reading a Complex Latina Stereotype: An Analysis of Modern Family’s Gloria Pritchett, intersectionality and audiences’, focuses on the Columbian character in the popular US sitcom. The final chapter, ‘Manifestations and Contestations of Hegemony in Video Gaming by Immigrant Youth in Norway’, is based on in-depth interviews with teenage gamers. While there are interesting essays in the book, exploring the relationship between media, power, agency and identity from a range of contexts, it is difficult to see the volume as a coherent collection, given the lack of proper introductory and concluding chapters to tie it all together.