Galina V. Sinekopova
The author begins her book by calling the reader’s attention to “an intensifying sense of social, political and economic uncertainty, especially in the western world” (p. 1). Macdonald’s book meets the challenge of dealing with this uncertainty; in that respect, the book follows the tradition of “‘enlightened indeterminacy’ – a willingness to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty as an integral part of everyday life” (Eisenberg, 2001: 534). Specifically, the book under review examines that part of life that deals with “changing modes of configuring the relationship between media texts and the social world” (p. 1). Macdonald defies the view of media as a mere play of image and sound effects in this uncertain world; she defines media as a strong player capable of influencing people’s perceptions of a meaningful reality and emphasizes media’s flexibility and liberating potential.
Macdonald’s view of media as operating discursively rather than simulating or reflecting reality is consistent with the shift from the positivist view of communication to the phenomenological view, which underscores an operative rationality of every mediated act (Smith, 1997: 330). To reveal how media operate discursively, Macdonald chooses the methodology of the critical discourse analysis, noting that her approach differs from the traditional method in a number of ways. For example, “instead of focusing on the detailed structuring of individual texts,” she pays central attention to “the evolving patterns of discourse,” including visual and verbal signification (p. 3). This approach is gaining acceptance in the field of discourse analysis where the study of any communicative practices is related to broader social and cultural frameworks (Phillips, Hardy, 2002). Macdonald believes that this approach to media discourse will help her to avoid “the narrowness of semiotic analysis, with its tendency to focus solely on the text” (p. 2). Anyone familiar with an increasingly diverse scope of semiotic analysis of media (cf., Bignell, 1997; Gottdiener et al., 2003) is likely to disagree with Macdonald’s claim. Interestingly, she herself is receptive to T. van Leeuwen’s idea of “pan-semiotics” and states the need for a semiotic approach to media, based on different modalities of signification. Macdonald’s approach to media discourse and her “attempt to map broader trends and changes over time and across genres” (p. 4) would only have benefited from the conceptual framework and methodologies of semiotics.
The book under review is divided into three sections, moving from a more theoretical discussion of the main conceptual issues to an examination of some internal shifts taking place in media practices to a demonstration of specific discursive patterns.
In the first section (“Mapping key terms”) the author takes up two broad issues: what is discourse, and what is the role of human agency in discourse. Discourse is defined as “a system of communicative practices that are integrally related to wider social and cultural practices, and that help to construct specific frameworks of thinking” (p. 10). Based on this view, the author emphasizes the role of human agency, operationalized in media, in helping to construct versions of reality. Again, semiotics is given only cursory attention as the basic ideas of F. de Saussure, Ch. S. Peirce and R. Barthes are brought together in one paragraph (p. 15). The author analyzes in more depth the relationships between discourse and ideology, power and knowledge. Although the first section is primarily theoretical, several specific cases of media discourse are discussed here as well, e.g., “The Case of Diana’s Death” and “Greenpeace Versus Shell: A Foucauldian Case?”
“The benefit of approaching media through a discursive analysis” (p. 51) finds its fuller manifestation in the second section (“Changing media discourses”). The author begins the second section by rethinking the “personalization” and “infotainment” debate. She notes the need for “an alternative to a critical model that opposes ‘entertainment’ to ‘information’” (p. 60). The binary tradition, however, appears difficult for the author to overcome: she continues to discuss such dichotomies as “hard” and “soft” news, spectacle and identification, public and private. The author seems to transcend this binary thinking later in the section, approaching media discourse as a performative space where discursive contest constantly takes place. In this respect, she resorts to M. Bakhtin’s notion of a “dialogics of truths” (p. 64), but the alternative model, the importance of which was stated at the beginning of the section, never receives a coherent and convincing manifestation. At the same time, the increasingly mediated visibility of public life is exposed in detail, using numerous examples of Western television shows, newspaper articles, etc.
This analysis of media discourse continues in the third section (“A Case of ‘Risk’”). As the title of the section suggests, attention here shifts to the analysis of risk as “a discursive freezing of a range of perceptions of anxiety into a singular frames” (p. 106). The author looks at several such frames, considering media constructions of risks to children, e.g., child abuse, risks perceived to arise from “unsafe” foods, and the globalized risk associated with “Islamic fundamentalism,” including some observations on how this has been influenced by the events of September 11, 2001. The author shows how the discourse of risk emerges as a common discursive theme in today’s society. She warns the reader not to underestimate the significance of media construction of risk and calls for an honest and serious debate, firmly grounded in the public sphere. Such debate is crucial because “discourses of risk have the power to take us on challenging imaginary journeys, but they have their own diversions” (p. 189). By avoiding diversions and making every conscious effort to embrace uncertainty inherent in media discourse, it becomes possible to realize its liberating potential. Macdonald’s book, dedicated to the analysis of changing relationships between media texts and the social world, is an important effort in that direction.
References:
Bignell, J. (1997). Media Semiotics: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Eisenberg, E. (2001). Building a mystery: Toward a new theory of communication and identity // Journal of Communication. Vol. 51, No. 3, pp. 534-552.
Gottdiener. M. et al. (Eds.). Semiotics. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Phillips, N., Hardy, C. (2002). Discourse analysis: Investigating processes of social construction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Smith, A. (1997). The limits of communication: Lyotard and Levinas on otherness. In M. Huspek & G. Radford (Eds.), Transgressing discourses: Communication and the voice of other (pp. 329-352). New York: SUNY Press.
Reviewed by:
Galina V. Sinekopova, Ph. D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Studies
Eastern Washington University
Phone: (509)359-2865
Fax: (509)359-2496
E-mail: gsinekopova@mail.ewu.edu