Customer Reviews

Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S. Politics

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The timeliness of Fiske's book is undimmed by this year being 2006. Written in 1996, it discusses seminal cultural events in the US, mostly in the earlier part of the decade. Such as the Rodney King video and the subsequent Los Angeles race riot of 1992. Or the OJ Simpson trial just shortly thereafter.

His analysis seems balanced and commendably dispassionate. Especially when you consider that he wrote this with the riots still fresh in memory, and just after the conclusion of the OJ trial. Of course, it is not just the events, but perhaps equally an analysis of how the media portrayed the happenings, that figure significantly in the book.

Despite "gender" in the title, the book is mostly about race.

John Fiske is a professor at the University of Wisconson-Madison and has done a fair bit of research concerning culture, its portrayal in the media, and its effects. This book, (Media Matters) takes a different perspective and does a good job of exploring what causes political change, how that political change affects people and the role that the media and dominant culture plays in this process. Fiske does a good job of explaining his position and backs up his writings with examples that most poeple can understand and relate to. Fiske has written many books concerning popular culture and the effects of television on culture and many of those same concepts carry over to this book. If you have read and enjoyed his other writings, then I think you'll find that this book follows in the same tradition.