Criticism in academic terms means to submit a text to a careful hermeneutical reading and evaluate its merits regarding truth, reason and relevance. Criticism also means to rebuke or berate a weak performance. If reality is distorted, or important topics are ignored in science, there must be rebuke. I am a strict critic of my own discipline media studies in Norway and Europe.
Paddy Scannell Polity Press: Cambridge and Malden, MA, 2014 253pp, ISBN 9780745662541 (pbk) Paddy Scannell is a media scholar who started writing about media history and media phenomenology long before the Internet. He has always asked big theoretical questions concerning the media, and his new book contains the most complex so far. The book has […]
John Durham Peters The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, IL, 2015 397pp, ISBN-13: 9780226253831 (pbk) Expectations are high when John Durham Peters publishes a new book. He is an original voice in the media scholarly discourse, and his audience is growing. Peters’ newest book is called a philosophy of elemental media, and the most significant […]
Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp. Cambridge, 2017 278 pp, ISBN 9780745681313, (pbk) This book is written by a formidable team. Nick Couldry is a media professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science in Great Britain, and Andreas Hepp is a media professor at the University of Bremen in Germany. Together, they have […]
Adriana de Souza e Sliva and Mimi Sheller. Routledge, 2015. ISBN: 978-1-138-77813-9 (hardback) Locative media have been on the public agenda since the mid- 2000s when GPS became available in smartphones, spawning applications such as GoogleMaps, Foursquare, Runkeeper, etc. They are becoming increasingly significant in the everyday routines of smartphone users, and in media design […]
NELSON COSTA RIBEIRO Lewinston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2011 510 pp, ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-1487-7 The book is a well-researched, carefully written history of Portuguese media before and during World War II. It compares the propaganda strategies of the fascist Salazar regime and the democratic BBC (and in consequence the Allied powers). The writing style […]
The author is an associate professor at the University of Oslo, and her new book is based on the doctorate thesis that she successfully defended in 2012. Staksrud is a prolific media researcher who publishes internationally with a number of European colleagues, especially in the field of children and online media. Staksrud discusses how organized […]
Media Innovations. A Multidisciplinary Study of Change Editors: Tanja Storsul, Arne H. Krumsvik Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2013, 280 p. The book is the first from the ambitious Centre of Research on Media Innovations (CeRMI) at the University of Oslo. Innovation theory will help established media research to better “understand and explain current developments in the media […]
This is a theoretical monograph about ordinary people’s participation in the media. Carpentier is concerned with the different levels of participation from ordinary people in political decision-making, and the hegemonic role of mass media in this power relationship. He is deeply inspired by the post-structuralist discourse analysis of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, and especially […]
Hugh Chignell, Key Concepts in Radio Studies. London: Sage Key Concepts Series 2009. 185 pp. ISBN 978-1-4129-3516-3 (pbk). Carole Fleming, The Radio Handbook. London: Routledge Media Practice Handbooks. Third Edition 2010 (first edition 1994). xi + 197 pp. ISBN10: 0-415-44508-5 (pbk). Beginning to read these two books, I decided to assess their contribution to the […]
This book takes a smart approach to media studies. The authors have created media set-ups in a laboratory, and investigate what happens when informants use them. Gjedde and Ingemann approach the media using methods from information science, and this is refreshing. Much of media studies stand at a safe distance from the flesh and blood […]