Book review: Zoning China: Online Video, Popular Culture, and the State

Abstract

reader to wonder if perhaps this is why digital platforms have been studiously left out of the global media mix for so long. Another missed chance comes at the end of the book, which does not finish with a concluding chapter. Perhaps a matter of taste for some scholars, but particularly in a textbook that seeks to break new ground, the lack of a concluding chapter is strongly felt. Finally, one wonders if there are not missed opportunities in focus. A fair amount of the book seems to go through the paces of highlighting company ownership and revenues, but it does not venture into the most significant contemporary issues connected with digital platforms, specifically anti-trust, platform wars and competition, relentless freedom of speech issues, etc. Comparing and contrasting ownership issues of digital platforms with “traditional” media companies could bear fruit for the field and bring it to the next level. Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age by Dal Yong Jin represents a more inclusive and realistic approach to a textbook for students of media globalization, global communication, and global media studies by including digital platforms in its scope. However welcome or controversial this may be, the basic template for textbooks in the area of media and globalization survives with this volume. If building on the bedrock of historical background and using quantitative approaches to describe the present—as it was, inevitably—then this title is a strong one. Perhaps the next step, however, is to break with the descriptive quantitative approach to global media, and more actively pursue the “convergence of political economy and cultural studies” that the author sees as being “especially crucial as several digital platforms, including Netflix and Facebook, act as content producer, distributor, and consumer at the same time” (p. 33).