Review(s) of: The 21st century media (r)evolution: Emergent communication practices, 2nd edn, by Macnamara, Jim, Peter Lang, New York, 2014, ISBN 9 7814 3312 351 1, 498 pp., US$ 48.95.
Review(s) of: Slow movies: Countering the cinema of action, by Jaffe, Ira, Columbia University Press, New York, 2014, ISBN 9 7802 3116 9790, 256 pp., US$27.00, Distributor: Footprint Books.
Review(s) of: Selling war: The role of the mass media in hostile conflicts from World War I to the 'war on terror', by Seethaler, Josef, Karmasin, Matthias, Melischek, Gabriele and Wohlert, Romy (eds), Intellect, Bristol, 2013, ISBN 9 7818 4150 6104, 240 pp., $52.95.
Review(s) of: Key concerns in media studies: Public service broadcasting, by Hendy, David, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2013, ISBN 9 7802 3023 8954, 160 pp., US$25.00.
Review(s) of: Media meets climate: The global challenge for journalism, by Eide, Elisabeth and Kunelius, Risto (eds), Goteburg, 2012, ISBN 9 7891 8652 3510, 340 pp., 30.00.
This report addresses a serious gap in the Australian literature on sexting by giving voice to young people – no easy task, given that: ‘Current Australian laws prevent researchers from asking people under 18 years about their personal sexting practices.’ (p. 22) By sexting, the authors refer to the production and sharing of naked or semi-naked photos by phone or social media. Their particular concern is young people aged 16–17 years who are above the legal age of consent in Australia but under the age of 18, and therefore subject to child pornography laws when sexting. These laws, they contend, were never intended to apply to the consensual sharing of images between adolescents involved in intimate relationships. The report aims to ‘inform Australian legal, educational and policy responses to sexting’ (p. 3), and discusses the outcomes of three focus groups involving sixteen young people from Sydney and a workshop attended by stakeholders from a range of government bodies, universities and NGOs...
Sherry B. Ortner’s monograph is an ethnographic study of American independent cinema of the last three decades. In contrast to the multifarious existing publications on the topic – Peter Biskind’s and James Mottram’s insider industry accounts, Sharon Waxman’s celebratory auteurist perspective and the academic works of Geoff King, Jim Hillier and Yannis Tzioumakis – Ortner does not approach the subject from a cinephilic or film theoretical position. Rather, Not Hollywood seeks to analyse the counter-hegemony of American independent cinema in relation to the hegemony of Hollywood by focusing on rhetorical responses in a compilation of interviews with industry professionals and artists across class, race, age and gender...
The mid-1990s saw media organisations around the world embracing – sometimes with enthusiasm, often reluctantly – the opportunities afforded by nascent internet technologies, particularly the web. In many cases, it was public service broadcasters (PSBs) that took the first steps into this new medium, and the histories of this time provide an insight into the various ways in which PSBs defined their public service roles. This edited collection consists of fifteen articles that consider the role of the web in allowing PSBs to better fulfil their remit to provide a public service in an increasingly globalised environment, and at a time when the public funding of PSBs was under pressure...
