Customer Reviews

Global Media Spectacle: News War Over Hong Kong

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This book is drawn from an academic study of the media coverage of the handover of Hong Kong from British rule to China. It is well done and features a very thorough, step-by-step explanation of the dominant news paradigms employed by media from various nations, including the US, Australia, China, Japan and the UK. The authors demonstrate how political power influences point of view in news coverage, using the handover as an illustration of the processes at work.

As might be expected, the text can be dry at times and wordy. However, the book provides the best example I have found of the ways that geopolitical issues impact news coverage and I plan to use this book as a teaching text for a graduate course I am teaching called Media Advocacy in the Global Public Sphere.

The book was written in 2002, so be advised that it does not include an analysis of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, as these formats did not exist at the time of the handover. It is clear to me, however, that connections can easily be drawn between news coverage via traditional media in 1997 (the year of the handover) and the way that news coverage works today, in 2012.

Recommended as a teaching text, whether for yourself only or with others.