International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2008

This article examines the ways that the media, and television in particular, represent a particular aspect of the business landscape: entrepreneurship. It looks at the extent to which a more entrepreneurial television industry in the United Kingdom has extended the scale and scope of the range of representations relating to entrepreneurship on the small screen. This research also tries to capture whether such representations are helping to create a climate of opinion within which ideas about entrepreneurial activity are becoming increasingly legitimised and indeed normalised within society. Is this process an example of television reacting to broader cultural, economic and political shifts in society? Or does it tell us more about television's fixation with evolving forms and formats in an increasingly commercial digital environment?

This article examines widely circulating discourses on tabloid newspapers, analyzing what they tell us about dominant models of citizenship and their problems. Drawing on data from a Mass Observation Archive survey of ordinary people's views of media and democracy, the article demonstrates that there are only a limited number of ways to talk about popular journalism. What I here call tabloid talk is informed by a liberal democratic model of citizenship and denounces the sensationalist content of the popular press that is seen to undermine serious and rational public debate. Tabloid talk is used by respondents as a strategy to distance themselves from the newspapers, showing them off as good citizens. It also empowers them to critique the content of the newspapers. However, tabloid talk fails to explain audiences engagement with the popular press and therefore does not account for effective responses to media content.

Contemporary citizen activism, especially street protests and demonstrations, can hardly be imagined without the mass media to amplify and sustain its message as well as mobilise a following and encourage support. The attendance of news media at the site of protest campaigns also exerts a powerful influence on their overall functioning and management and particularly on the performance of protestors. Using empirical data from Jamaica and drawing on aspects of Douglas Kellner's (2003) work on media spectacle, I explore this acute interdependence between popular protest and popular media; the varied and multiple ways in which the news media, particularly television, are integral to the performance of protest in Jamaica, how protestors manoeuvre themselves, and deploy spectacle to secure their interests within the media spotlight. Conversely, I explore the media's coverage and treatment of protest and protestors and what impact, if any, this may have on how protestors are driven to perform them.

While many (popular) cultural studies focus on the discursive construction, and dominant meanings created in and through events, shows and individuals, there has been a relative dearth of studies that examine the production practices of those who create these mediated entities. As such, this project seeks to help fill the relative void left in production practice studies, by critically evaluating the 2003 Little League World Series (LLWS). We will argue that the cultivation of this event was part of a wider (un)spoken social and political project to position the United States as a country which was to be exalted as a space of widespread diversity, acceptance of difference, and to be revered for its inherent greatness (Ferguson 2004). Further, through our critique of the veritable meaning makers for the LLWS, this project aims to illuminate the power they have in reifying particular in this case overwhelmingly positive understandings of those who hold political sway at particular moments in time. This article concludes by looking back at the 2003 American socio-political moment through a 2007 lens, a time when the republic is unquestionably more wary towards the Bush Presidency, the War in Iraq, and the government more generally.

State and community authorities face up to the task of redefining the legal framework affecting European television services, with the challenge of adopting a configuration capable of assimilating the multiple requirements consequent on the complex nature of television. Communitarian Law has participated in this process, proposing a new perspective built on the definition of television services as general economic interest services. European jurisprudence in audiovisual matters has to address the consequences of incorporating this regulation alongside national laws. Competitiveness between operators, control of possible exceptions, the redefinition of the public service mission these are some of the consequences of the Communitarian perspective. Although the Communitarian perspective has benefits and drawbacks, its contributions allow the construction of a more stable television model, producing new market regulation, and, above all, with the aim of protecting citizen interest.

By focusing on the area of women/gender, telecommunications and new ICTs, this article examines the complex interplay between the state, the market and civil society from the Fourth UN World Conference on Women to the World Summit on Information Society. By adopting a feminist political economic perspective, it is asserted that the mainstream approach to civil society falls short of acknowledging unbalanced power relations between the three parties. The UN and the state both endorse a version of the information society that is conducive to neoliberal capitalism. This article argues that civil society should be given more power in future UN international conventions.

Communication Revolution: Critical Junctures and the Future of Media, Robert W. McChesney (2007) New York: The New Press, 301 pp., 9781595582072 (hbk), 25.00

The Pursuit of Public Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism, Tanni Haas (2007) New York and London: Routledge, 193 pp., 0415978246 (hbk), 95; 0415978254 (pbk), 24.95

Knowledge Workers in the Information Society, Edited by Catherine McKercher and Vincent Mosco (2007) Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 350 pp., 9780739117804 (hbk), 68.00; 9780739117811 (pbk), 34.95