Global Media & Communication New Books Network

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.
In this episode, our host Jing Wang discusses the book The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy (Columbia UP, 2023) by Lin Zhang.
You’ll hear about:

A history of the book and Zhang’s entry into the fieldwork through family stories;

How to understand entrepreneurialism as a dominant ideology in the global neoliberal labor economy and China’s positionality in the world;

Why and how the book is organized based on three types of spaces – rural, urban, and transnational – across China and beyond;

The similarities and differences between the elite and the grassroot entrepreneurs in Beijing;

The e-commerce entrepreneurship as “platformized family production” in rural China and the roles played by government and large tech companies like Alibaba play in shaping the new rural production model;

The limit and possibility of reinvention through “shanzhai” (copycat) e-commerce production;

The gendered inequalities of entrepreneurial labor in rural and transnational spaces;

What is “daigou” (personal shopping agents) in transnational e-commerce and the structural challenges entrepreneurs – especially women – face across national borders and digital platforms;

What conversations in global studies of media and communication this book engages with.

About the book
From start-up founders in the Chinese equivalent of Silicon Valley to rural villages experiencing an e-commerce boom to middle-class women reselling luxury goods, the rise of internet-based entrepreneurship has affected every part of China. For many, reinventing oneself as an entrepreneur has appeared to be an appealing way to adapt to a changing economy and society. Yet in practice, digital entrepreneurship has also reinforced traditional Chinese ideas about state power, labor, gender, and identity. Lin Zhang explores how the everyday labor of entrepreneurial reinvention is remaking China amid changing geopolitical currents. She tells the stories of people from diverse class, gender, and age backgrounds across rural, urban, and transnational settings in rich detail, providing a multifaceted and ground-level view of the twenty-first-century Chinese economy. You can find more about the book here by the Columbia University Press.
Author: Lin Zhang is an associate professor of communication and media studies at the University of New Hampshire.
Host: Jing Wang is Senior Research Manager at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC), Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, with an affiliation at the Center of the Study of Contemporary China (CSCC).
Editor & Producer: Jing Wang
Our podcast is part of the multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the very best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.
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In this episode, our host Lucila Rozas discusses the book Latino TV: A History (2022) by Mary Beltrán.
You’ll hear about:

A brief trajectory of the book and the conversations on global studies of media and communication with which this book engages;

The concept of cultural citizenship and its relevance to study Latino TV;

How the author puts together the traces of the history of Latino TV, especially in the cases when it was difficult to find information about the series that were not preserved/archived;

What has changed in the 2000s-2010s that led to the inclusion of more Latinx people in TV roles in front and behind the camera;

How the diversification of latinidad identities in the TV shows is related to race, class, and gender through specific characters or forms of storytelling;

The importance of Latino(a)(x) representation in the US TV industry and the potential limits of representation and visibility;

The role of Latinx activism in the 1960s and 70s and the legacy of public television on today’s media landscape;

Some recent developments on Latino TV after the publication of the book, particularly given the ongoing writers’ strike in streaming television.

About the book
The first-ever account of Latino/a participation and representation in US English-language television, Latino TV: A History offers a sweeping study of key moments of Chicano/a and Latino/a representation and authorship since the 1950s. Drawing on archival research, interviews with dozens of media professionals who worked on or performed in these series, textual analysis of episodes and promotional materials, and analysis of news media coverage, Mary Beltrán examines Latina/o representation in everything from children’s television Westerns of the 1950s, Chicana/o and Puerto Rican activist-led public affairs series of the 1970s, and sitcoms that spanned half a century, to Latina and Latino-led series in the 2000s and 2010s on broadcast, cable, and streaming outlets, including George Lopez, Ugly Betty, One Day at a Time, and Vida. You can find more about the book here by NYU Press.
Author: Mary Beltrán is the Associate Director and former Founding Director of the Moody College of Communication’s Latino Media Arts & Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in critical studies-driven scholarship at the intersections of film and television studies, Latina/Latino and critical race studies, and gender studies. Informed by her prior careers as a journalist and social worker, Dr. Beltrán writes and teaches on ethnic diversity and the U.S. media industries, U.S. television and film history, mixed race and media culture, and feminist media studies, with emphasis on U.S. Latina and Latino representation and media production.
Host: Lucila Rozas is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a doctoral fellow at Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication. She has developed interdisciplinary research in a wide variety of topics, from the strategies of LGBT+ activists to push for the approval of sexual orientation and gender identity policies to the representations of mental health in Peruvian print media. Her most recent academic work focuses on social media and the role it has in identity construction, discourse, activism, and social change.
Editor & Producer: Jing Wang
Keywords: Latino TV, Latinx identity, Cultural citizenship, Public Television, TV industry, Activism
Our podcast is part of the multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the very best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing conte

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.
In this episode, our host Ignatius Suglo discusses the book Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2022) by Thomas Chen.
You’ll hear about:

Author’s intellectual and professional trajectory that led him to the book;

How to study Tiananmen Movement as a media event through a careful selection of literature and film materials;

How to think of the productivity of silence and absence;

The use of “positive energy” in mobilizing censorship;

Human labor and the idea of “workshop” in the work of censorship;

How iconic images such as “Tank Man” have been interpreted and appropriated;

The role played by women in social movements and their representations in post-1989 China;

The emergence of Internet in the 1990s and the paradoxical nature of “Internet sovereignty”;

Author’s positionality and reflection on writing the book.

About the book
The violent suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations is thought to be contemporary China’s most taboo subject. Yet despite sweeping censorship, Chinese culture continues to engage with the history, meaning, and memory of the Tiananmen movement. Made in Censorship examines the surprisingly rich corpus of Tiananmen literature and film produced in mainland China since 1989, both officially sanctioned and unauthorized, contending that censorship does not simply forbid—it also shapes what is created. You can find more about the book here by Columbia University Press.
Author: Thomas Chen graduated with a B.A. in Comparative Literature and English from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA. With a focus on modern Chinese literature and cinema, his research interests include world literature/cinema, translation studies, and historiography. His book Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film is available from Columbia University Press.
Host: Ignatius Suglo is Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication. He completed his Ph.D. in China Studies at the University of Hong Kong. He also has a secondary specialization in African Studies. His research interests
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In this episode, our host Sim Gill discusses the book Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste (2021) by Jonathan Gray.
You’ll hear about:

A brief history of the book and its connection to global studies of media and communication;

The role of media and cultural studies in amplifying the voices of dislikers, and how can scholars in these fields better understand and appreciate the register of dislike;

The method of refractive audience analysis as a way to understand how adaptations of media texts affect people's perceptions of the original texts;

How paratexts can shape audience perceptions and understanding of a media product;

How the gendered norms may hinder women from expressing dislike, and how this relates to larger cultural systems of dislike, including political contexts;

Some recent developments that have added to or changed the initial arguments/findings in the book.


About the book
Dislike-Minded draws from over two-hundred qualitative interviews to probe what the media’s failures, wounds, and sore spots tell us about media culture, taste, identity, representation, meaning, textuality, audiences, and citizenship. The book refuses the simplicity of Pierre Bourdieu’s famous dictum that dislike is (only) snobbery. Instead, Jonathan Gray pushes onward to uncover other explanations for what it ultimately means to dislike specific artifacts of television, film, and other media, and why this dislike matters. You can find the book here by NYU Press.
Author: Jonathan Gray is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work examines how media entertainment and its audiences interact, and examines how and where value and meaning are created. He is now Chief Editor of The International Journal of Cultural Studies, co-editor, with Aswin Punathambekar and Adrienne Shaw, of NYU Press’ Critical Cultural Communication book series, and I was recently nominated as an International Communication Association Fellow.
Host: Sim Gill is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests concern the social and subjective effects of discourse and institutional politics as well as the interrelationships between discourse, epistemology, and subjectivity. Her master's thesis evaluated the meaning-making behind the term BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic), commonly used to describe minority ethnic communities in Britain.
Editor & Producer: Jing Wang
Keywords: Dislike, audience studies, media cultures, identity, representation, citizenship
Our podcast is part of the multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the very best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.
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Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.
In this episode, our host Yuval Katz discusses the book The Ethics of Engagement: Media, Conflict and Democracy in Africa (Oxford UP, 2020) by Herman Wasserman.

You’ll hear about:

The ethical and methodological challenges of studying media in Africa;

Why democratization is not a linear process;

What tools journalists have at their disposal to support processes of democratization;

Reflections on the professional conduct of journalists and what they can do to be more attentive to the needs of ordinary people;

Why conflicts are not necessarily detrimental to democracy;

Some tips and advice for early career scholars studying the Global South.


About the book
The book discusses the relationship between media, conflict, and democratization in Africa from the perspective of media ethics. Despite the commonly held view that conflict is a destructive political force that can destabilize democracies, the argument in this book is that while many conflicts can indeed become violent and destructive, they can also be managed in a way that can render them productive and communicative to democracy. Drawing on theoretical insights from the fields of journalism studies, political studies, and cultural studies, the book discusses the ethics of conflict coverage and proposes a normative model for covering conflict and democratization. The book argues for an “ethics of listening” that would enable the media to help de-escalate violent conflict and contribute to the deepening of an agonistic democratic culture in contexts of high inequality, ethnic and racial polarization, and uneven access to media. This argument is illustrated by examples drawn from recent events in African democracies such as student protests, community activism, struggles for resources, and social media conflicts. The book also scrutinizes the media’s ethical roles and responsibilities in African societies by considering questions regarding journalistic professionalism, ethical codes, and regulation in the context of rising misinformation. The book provides a critical African perspective on global debates about media, politics, and democracy and the media’s ethical commitments in contexts of conflict. You can find the book here.
Author: Herman Wasserman is a Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is the author of several books, has published widely on media, ethics and democracy in Africa. His awards include the Georg Foster Prize from the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a Fulbright Fellowship and the Neva Prize for Journalism Theory from the University of St Petersburg, amongst others.
Host: Yuval Katz is a postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication with a joint appointment at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) and the Center on Digital Culture and Society (CDCS). His work inspects how media help us rethink the relationship between people involved in intractable, violent conflicts. He is currently writing a book titled In Search of a Medium: Palestinian and Jewish Encounters in Media Texts and Industry Practices, where he examines Israeli media spaces in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians collaborate creatively.
Editor & Producer: Jing Wang
Keywords: Africa, Agonism, Democratization, Journalism Studies, Listening, Media Ethics, Peace
Our podcast is part of the multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the very best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.
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Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.
In this episode, our co-hosts Aswin Punathambekar and Jing Wang discusses the book Platforms and Cultural Production (2021) by Thomas Poell, David B. Nieborg, and Brooke Erin Duffy.
You’ll hear about:

How this collaborative project came about, given each of the authors has distinct interests and disciplinary orientations;

Given the two keywords of “platforms” and “cultural production,” how did the authors make sense of these keywords in relation to broader processes of digital infrastructures and imaginaries;

How three key sections – social media, games, and journalism – were identified by the authors to explain the idea of “platformization”;

How the platforms work as multi-sided markets and the approaches to account for the dynamism and lifecycles at work in platform economies;

A discussion of Twitter as a useful case of platformization to grasp the challenges of platform governance;

Why the authors chose to specifically focus on the role and agency of cultural producers;

How to study cultural practices in various platforms across a wide variety of sociopolitical contexts in both Global North and South;

The structural inequalities of platform economies, the precarity of the platform-dependent labor market, and the efforts of cultural producers to face insecurity;

The cultural meanings of “creativity” and “authenticity” and the tension between the profit-driven platform logic and the individual search for belonging in social media such as TikTok;

The relevance of cultural production and platforms to understanding the present and future of democratic governance and civic life in the post-truth era;

The next collaborative project, such as a second volume, conferences, and research networks.

About the book
Poell, Nieborg, and Duffy explore both the processes and the implications of platformization across the cultural industries, identifying key changes in markets, infrastructures, and governance at play in this ongoing transformation, as well as pivotal shifts in the practices of labor, creativity, and democracy. The authors foreground three particular industries – news, gaming, and social media creation – and also draw upon examples from music, advertising, and more. Diverse in its geographic scope, Platforms and Cultural Production builds on the latest research and accounts from across North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to reveal crucial differences and surprising parallels in the trajectories of platformization across the globe. You can find the book from Polity Press HERE.
Authors:
Thomas Poell is Professor of Data, Culture & Institutions at the University of Amsterdam, program director MA Media Studies, and director of the Research Priority Area on Global Digital Cultures.
David B. Nieborg is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough with a graduate appointment at the Faculty of Information.
Brooke Erin Duffy is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University, where she is also a member of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies faculty.
Co-Hosts: Aswin Punathambekar is Professor of Communication and Director of the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Jing Wang is Senior Research Manager at CARGC at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.
Editor & Producer: Jing Wang
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