Book review: The Journalism Manifesto by Barbie Zelizer, Pablo J. Boczkowski and C. W. Anderson

Abstract

it, for the sophistication through which this text carries its arguments leaves little room for anything but appreciation. In that sense, it is a genuine tour de force for the field and makes one wonder if anything will be the same after. The writing is comprehensive, convincing and utterly compelling. A rather impressive aspect of this volume is the lack of engagement with popular perspectives of ‘all powerful’ global communication, for example approaches from scholars such as Thussu (2020), Herman and McChesney (1997), Hamelink (2015), Jin (2019) and others. For some, this perhaps equates to a refusal to acknowledge or polemicize, for others, simply taking the discussion elsewhere. Instead, we find carefully traced and described conclusions such as ‘The Internet is far more a localizing than a globalizing medium. The world’s political and cultural boundaries are being reproduced on the internet’ (p. 185). Simple and clearheaded notions, along with related reminders that, for example, news is inherently local and domesticated with very few exceptions, encourage us to consider if we are being honest with ourselves about the real nature of global communication, or whether we remain drunk on possibility that it has never really transformed into reality. With this book, Hafez and Grüne have made a towering contribution to the academy, destined to influence scholarship on global media and communication for some time to come in the foreseeable future. The way we look at cross-border communication desperately needs to change, and by more exactingly considering processes at work in social systems and lifeworlds, we may now have a more realistic empirical footing to stand on. Finally, the student of mine, looking for that global communication job, might now be able to have a clearer understanding of what global communication really is, or isn’t.