Palgrave Global Media Policy and Business Series Editors: Professor Petros Iosifidis, Professor Jeanette Steemers and Professor Gerald Sussman Editorial Board: Sandra Braman, Peter Dahlgren, Terry Flew, Charles Fombad, Manuel Alejandro Guerrero, Alison Harcourt, Robin Mansell, Richard Maxwell, Toby Miller, Zizi Papacharissi, Stylianos Papathanassopoulos, Caroline Pauwels, Robert Picard, Kiran Prasad, Marc Raboy, Chang Yong Son, Miklos Suksod, Kenton T. Wilkinson, Sugmin Youn This innovative series examines the wider social, political, economic, and technological changes arising from the globalization of the media and communications industries and assesses their impact on matters of business practice, regulation and policy. Considering media convergence, industry concentration, and new communications practices, the series makes reference to the paradigmatic shift from a system based on national decision-making and the traditions of public service in broadcast and telecommunications delivery to one that is demarcated by commercialization, privatization, and monopolization. Bearing in mind this shift, and based on a multidisciplinary approach, the series tackles three key questions: To what extent do new media developments require changes in regulatory philosophy and objectives? To what extent do new technologies and changing media consumption require changes in business practices and models? And to what extent does privatization alter the creative freedom and public accountability of media enterprises? Titles include: Steven Barnett & Judith Townend (editors) MEDIA POWER AND PLURALITY From Hyperlocal to High-Level Policy Abu Bhuiyan INTERNET GOVERNANCE AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH Demand for a New Framework Benedetta Brevini PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING ONLINE A Comparative European Policy Study of PSB 2.0 Karen Donders, Caroline Pauwels and Jan Loisen (editors) PRIVATE TELEVISION IN WESTERN EUROPE Content, Markets, Policies Tom Evens, Petros Iosifidis and Paul Smith THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF TELEVISION SPORTS RIGHTS Manuel Guerrero and Mireya Márquez-Ramírez (editor) MEDIA SYSTEMS AND COMMUNICATION POLICIES IN LATIN AMERICA Petros Iosifidis GLOBAL MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION POLICY An International Perspective

John A. Lent and Michelle A. Amazeen KEY THINKERS IN CRITICAL COMMUNICATION SCHOLARSHIP From the Pioneers to the Next Generation Michael Starks THE DIGITAL TELEVISION REVOLUTION Origins to Outcomes Peggy Valcke, Miklos Sükösd, Robert Picard MEDIA PLURALISM AND DIVERSITY Concepts, Risks and Global Trends

Palgrave Global Media Policy and Business Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–137–27329–1 (hardback) 978–1–137–36718–1 (paperback) (outside North America only) y You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Key Thinkers in Critical Communication Scholarship From the Pioneers to the Next Generation Edited by

John A. Lent International Journal of Comic Art, USA

Michelle A. Amazeen Rider University, USA

Selection, introduction and editorial matter © John A. Lent & Michelle A. Amazeen 2015 Individual chapters © Respective authors 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-56468-2 ISBN 978-1-137-46341-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137463418

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

For those who took a firm stance, and those who never had a chance JAL For TR and JC: Look beyond the glitter, and never stop asking questions MAA

Contents

List of Figures

viii

Preface

ix

Background

xi

1 Noam Chomsky

1

2 Christian Fuchs

13

3 Edward S. Herman

38

4 John A. Lent

59

5 Robert W. McChesney

80

6 Eileen R. Meehan

102

7 Vincent Mosco

124

8 Graham Murdock

146

9 Manjunath Pendakur

166

10 Gerald Sussman

189

11 Janet Wasko

205

12 Yuezhi Zhao

224

Index

249

vii

Figures 1.1 Noam Chomsky, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 2013 (photo by John A. Lent) 2.1 Christian Fuchs, London, UK, 2014 (photo by Michelle A. Amazeen) 3.1 Edward S. Herman, Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, USA, 2013 (photo by John A. Lent) 4.1 John A. Lent, Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, 2015 (photo by Michelle A. Amazeen) 5.1 Robert W. McChesney, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, April, 2007 (photo by Brent Nicastro) 6.1 Eileen R. Meehan, San Francisco, California, USA, 2013 (photo by John A. Lent) 7.1 Vincent Mosco, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 2014 (photo by Bing Wen) 8.1 Graham Murdock, Shanghai, China, 2014 (photo courtesy of Graham Murdock) 9.1 Manjunath Pendakur, Boca Raton, Florida, USA, 2013 (photo by Michelle A. Amazeen) 10.1 Gerald Sussman, Portland, Oregon, USA, 2014 (photo by John A. Lent) 11.1 Janet Wasko, Lisbon, Portugal, 2014 (photo by Christian Agbobli) 12.1 Yuezhi Zhao, San Francisco, California, USA, 2013 (photo by John A. Lent)

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1 13 38 59 80 102 124 146 166 189 205 224

Preface

As we finalize the manuscript for this book in early 2015, institutions throughout the United States are reeling from the reverberations following the hack into Sony Pictures’ computer systems, allegedly by the North Korean Government. The cyber-terrorists were intent on suppressing the release of the movie The Interview, because it depicted the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (Auerbach, 2014). Just a few weeks later a satirical cartoon of the Islamic prophet Mohammed resulted in the actual assassination of nearly a dozen cartoonists, journalists, and others at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France (Bilefsky and de la Baume, 2015). In the wake of these tragedies, a global conversation about freedom of speech and censorship has been revisited. A contentious issue up for debate is the advisability of silencing those who have political or religious views that are not congenial to one’s own. Both of these situations exemplify the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). When confronted with information that is threatening to one’s belief system, people attempt to relieve the tension in some manner. In these cases, extreme forms of censorship were employed. Nonetheless, they are pulled from the same quiver as the death threats, harassment, and precarious employment that the scholars who are the focus of this book have varyingly endured. This volume profiles a dozen critical scholars who have withstood differing attempts to silence them over the years because they dared to challenge the status quo of communication, economic, and/or political institutions. What makes one critical? According to the scholars profiled in this book, it’s a reluctance to accept the way things are. John A. Lent has previously defined critical communication scholarship as “an in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of dominant communication institutions, processes, and artifacts, with the intention of arriving at solutions, guidelines, and policies that benefit the masses, not the power brokers” (1995, p. 2). As we shall see, this critical orientation is problematic when academic institutions take on the role of vocational training rather than encouraging an understanding of how communication industries can be used for public good. Before sharing an overview of the scholars whom we interviewed, we first provide context on the ix

x

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origins of this book, followed by a discussion of its objectives and the methods used to collect data.

References Auerbach, D. (2014). The Sony hackers are terrorists. Slate, December 17. http:// www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/12/sony_pictures_hack_ why_its_perpetrators_should_be_called_cyberterrorists.html. Bilefsky, D. and De la Baume, M. (2015). Terrorists strike Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris, leaving 12 dead. New York Times, January 7. http://www.nytimes.com/ 2015/01/08/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-paris-shooting.html?_r=0. Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. CA: Stanford University Press. Lent, J. A. (1995). A Different Road Taken: Profiles in Critical Communication. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Background Only a year after the Lent-edited A Different Road Taken: Profiles in Critical Communication was published (1995), there were calls for a sequel. The editor recognized that some important critical scholars (e.g. Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, and Armand Mattelart) were omitted from A Different Road Taken. This resulted from the structure of the book, which concentrated on the lives and careers of Dallas W. Smythe, George Gerbner, Herbert I. Schiller, James D. Halloran, and Kaarle Nordenstreng, with commentaries by ten other critical scholars who were chosen by the interviewees. The first serious thrust for an expanded edition came out of an International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) plenary session which Lent chaired when the group met in Sydney in late August 1996. The plenary, called Critical Communication: Past Dreams, Future Options, included A Different Road Taken interviewees Gerbner, Halloran, and Nordenstreng, and commentators Wolfgang Kleinwachter, Manju Pendakur, Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi, and Janet Wasko. In his plenary introduction, Lent explained the genesis, format, and dimensions of his book, before discussing the theme of the plenary. For comparative purposes, perhaps it is worth repeating what he felt about the dreams and options of critical scholarship in media and communication in 1996: I believe some dreams have been realized. Obviously, critical research in communication has made its presence felt since the 1970s. More researchers now acknowledge that there can be other ways of looking at the world other than through the eyes of the “empiricists.” Qualitatively executed, communicator-targeted, and policy-oriented research studies have found favor in some quarters, as have theoretical notions such as media/cultural imperialism, dependency, perils of globalization, or political economy. The past generation has witnessed critical studies linking up with social movements (unfortunately, still too rarely), forming alternative organizations (for example, Union for Democratic Communication in North America), and feeding publishing outlets that opened up to their views. xi

xii Background

As for what he called “promises unfulfilled,” Lent said: 1. In an effort to justify its existence, critical communication scholarship sometimes sets up barriers to admission and the “coining of a different vocabulary of often incomprehensible and irrelevant gobbledygook.” 2. While organizing themselves, critical communication scholars sometimes follow the highly structured, institutionalized, and bureaucratic route that they meant to replace or modify in the first place. He also encouraged critical (and mainstream) communication scholars to be aware of the rich tradition of critical journalistic work by Upton Sinclair, George Seldes, Heywood Broun, and A. J. Liebling, who, in the first half of the twentieth century, wrote about concentration of power in journalism, the big business-oriented press, publishers’ coverups to serve their or advertisers’ interests, and exploitation of reportorial labor. During the plenary, Gerbner and Nordenstreng suggested that the session transcript should be published. Gerbner went a step further: after the plenary, he took Lent to meet Barbara Bernstein, president of Hampton Press, to whom he suggested that her company should buy the rights to A Different Road Taken, sell the remaining copies, and then publish a sequel based on the IAMCR panel. Apparently, Gerbner liked the book, or at least the entries about him, because he listed it, along with two others, as recommended books on 3,500 copies of a flyer that he distributed to Cultural Environment Movement members. Lent embraced the idea of keeping the A Different Road Taken project alive, though he was not sure which direction to take: add a few interviews to expand the original book, or publish the IAMCR plenary proceedings, or create a new book of different critical scholars. He had some leanings toward the latter because a week after IAMCR, when Ed Herman visited his home to borrow a few books, Lent asked him to be interviewed for a sequel. Herman agreed and said that he would help to get Noam Chomsky to participate, which proved to be unnecessary. The uncertainty was compounded by what seemed like a diminishing relationship between Westview Press, publisher of A Different Road Taken, and Lent. In 1995, the year of the book’s appearance, Westview became a division of HarperCollins, which itself was a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. After 15 months, Lent was informed that the book was already out of print. When, in February

Background

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1997, he questioned why it went out of print so quickly at the time of the press’s new ownership, Westview executive Marcus Boggs said that it was just a “matter of timing,” insinuating that it had nothing to do with Murdoch, that it would actually go out of print in a “month or so” or when the stock was depleted. On the day of this conversation the figures indicated that, of the 1,000 copies of the book printed, 262 were sold, 100 were distributed as exam or review copies, and 259 remained in stock. Boggs said that he did not know where the 380 unaccountedfor copies were. He also said that the rights to the book would revert to the editor, who, with or without Hampton Press, could do whatever he wished with it. Though communication between Hampton Press and Lent continued for years (until the press discontinued publication), the project was put on the back burner. It was revived when Lent was encouraged to proceed by Michelle A. Amazeen, then a PhD candidate on whose dissertation committee he served. Amazeen was asked to co-edit Key Thinkers in Critical Communication Scholarship, and after spring 2013 the project swiftly moved along.

Objectives and Dimensions The primary objective of Key Thinkers in Critical Communication Scholarship, as was that of its predecessor volume, is to shed light on the lives and careers of critical communication scholars, both of earlier generations and more recent ones, not just to applaud them but also to learn from them. Through these interviews, patches of the history of critical communication scholarship are sewn together. At the same time, instruction is given (particularly for new scholars) concerning pitfalls to avoid, research topics to explore, and the relevance of critical studies in personal, academic, and societal contexts. Another key purpose is to recognize, through what these interviewees relate, the significant changes that have transformed the communication industry since 1995. Technology has revolutionized the way in which the public consumes information. Traditional mass media are being overtaken by the digital technology of the Internet. The conventional, one-to-many communication process flow increasingly competes with one-to-one distributed network communication processes. As such, the public no longer have to rely upon media elites to provide content; they can now curate their own, unfortunately sometimes inaccurately, or in poor taste. The Internet, we were told, was going to be a democratizing force, leveling the playing field between the information haves

xiv

Background

and have nots. But it has not turned out to be the panacea that it was predicted to be. Like other media before it, the Internet has been co-opted by commercial interests, largely restraining its power as a public sphere (Turow, 2011; West, 2013). Other changes that have affected communication are the replacement of the fear of communism by the fear of terrorism, the collapse of journalism (particularly in the United States) – a form of communication that is integral to the functioning of a democratic society (McChesney, 1993; McChesney and Pickard, 2011) – and the tightening stranglehold of the media by a few mammoth corporations worldwide (Bagdikian, 2004). Similarly, we learn from these interviews that the status of critical scholars in communication has also changed. For example, 7 of the 12 profiled scholars (Chomsky, Lent, McChesney, Meehan, Mosco, Wasko, and Zhao) hold, or have held, endowed professorships, whereas none of those featured in A Different Road Taken had such honors. Also, academic environments for most of these scholars are more acceptable now than they were 20 or more years ago, as are some major book publishers who are willing to bring out critical work because it sells. But these scholars face, or have endured, their share of academic harassment because of their critical work, being denied tenure and promotion, threatened by parts of society, and smeared via the Internet and other means by fellow faculty members. In choosing the scholars to be profiled, we tried to plug some shortcomings of A Different Road Taken by including three women scholars and two researchers who hail from non-Euro-American countries. The countries that the 12 interviewees were molded in are Austria, Canada, China, India, the UK, and the United States. Placed alphabetically in the book, the scholars are Noam Chomsky, Christian Fuchs, Edward S. Herman, John A. Lent, Robert W. McChesney, Eileen R. Meehan, Vincent Mosco, Graham Murdock, Manjunath Pendakur, Gerald Sussman, Janet Wasko, and Yuezhi Zhao. Lent was included at the insistence of Amazeen and Sussman, both of whom interviewed him separately. We recognize that other important critical scholars are not profiled, including (but not limited to) Jörg Becker, Nicholas Garnham, Thomas Guback, and Armand Mattelart. Attempts were made to invite their participation, but two did not respond; Mattelart sent a Frenchlanguage interview carried out with him by a Japanese researcher, and Becker consented but we could not meet. One of the conditions for setting up interviews was that they had to be conducted live in real time and place, and not electronically by Skype or other

Background

xv

virtual media. This necessitated Lent having to travel to San Francisco, California, to interview Eileen Meehan, Janet Wasko, and Yuezhi Zhao; to Portland, Oregon, to obtain Gerald Sussman’s views; and to Ottawa, Canada, for those of Vincent Mosco. Amazeen traveled to Boca Raton, Florida, to interview Manjunath Pendakur; to Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, for Robert W. McChesney’s comments; and to London, UK, for those of Graham Murdock and Christian Fuchs. Both of us interviewed Noam Chomsky in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Edward Herman in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania. John A. Lent was interviewed by Amazeen in his Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, home and by Sussman in his Portland apartment. This project was not funded by grants; travel, transcription, typing, and other expenses were borne by the editors. Questions were posed using a semistructured discussion guide, which allowed interviewees flexibility in their answers. The interviews varied in length, ranging from about half an hour with Chomsky, because of his very strict schedule, to slightly more than two hours; most hovered around one-and-a-half hours. The interviews were recorded and then transcribed by professional transcriptionists, after which they were edited by Lent and Amazeen, as well as the specific interviewee, whose feedback was solicited at several stages. The interviews were loosely based upon a dozen or so open-ended questions. Because of individual interviewees’ research interests or specific challenges, some questions that were not on the discussion guide were asked. Generally the interview questions were variations of the following: 1. How and why did you decide to take the route of the critical researcher in communication? What personal and professional experiences influenced you? 2. What are the impediments to carrying out critical research in communication at governmental, institutional (including your own), funding agency, professional organization, or other levels? Tell me about occasions when you paid a price for being radical or progressive (or critical). 3. What do you think your contributions have been to the world of scholarship? What changes have resulted from your work? 4. How has critical research in communication changed since it was conceived about two generations ago? What has changed/stayed the same concerning research problems and issues, theories, and research techniques/approaches?

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Background

5. Do you believe that critical research in communication has advanced during the past generation, and, if you do, what has brought about those advances? 6. If you had a second chance, what, if anything, would you do differently? 7. Where is critical research in communication heading? What do you think are the major issues that critical researchers in communication must consider? 8. How is technology affecting the work of critical communication scholars? 9. What advice would you give to PhD students or other emerging critical scholars? 10. Have you played the role of an activist? When? How? 11. Is, or has, your research been funded? If yes, by whom and under what circumstances? If not, why? 12. Do you think critical communication research has made a difference in the academy, corporate America, or the political arena? 13. How do you think your work has been used, abused, or misused?

Overview of the Interviews Noam Chomsky: From Chomsky we learn that growing up during the Depression in one of the only Jewish families in his neighborhood influenced his early worldview. Entering college at the age of 16, he nearly dropped out until he met one of the leading linguists in the United States who challenged and motivated him. The disconnect between what Chomsky was observing around him and how it was represented in the media inspired his investigations into the institutional structures that constrain what we see and hear in the media. While he fears that the most advanced societies are racing toward self-destruction, it is critical scholarship that has brought awareness to topics that previously received little attention. Going forward, says Chomsky, critical research needs to return to good, old-fashioned simple virtues such as truth, honesty, seriousness, and significance. Christian Fuchs: Fuchs attributes his anti-fascist, anti-racist, and anticapitalist views to the rise of right-wing extremism in Austria, the country where he was raised. He describes a climate of repression in the German-speaking world against Marxist media and communications scholars. However, since the 2008 crisis of capitalism with rising social inequality, precarious labor, and stagnating wages, he has found a growing audience for critical political economy in general and in the works of

Background

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Marx in particular. He believes that it is imperative for us to understand what the media world looks like today and how the media are shaped by the logic of capitalism, exploitation and domination, and what the alternatives are to this. Edward S. Herman: Herman’s critical scholarship involves media analysis based upon a structural model rooted in industrial organization theory. He contends that media are not institutions offering objective truth, but rather are shaped by ownership views and market factors regarding news and opinion fit to print. He discusses how this structural model of the media along with the use of pairing analysis has held up over time, exposing some strikingly politicized media work and a very efficient propaganda system. Herman shares his concerns about the new Internet-based giants that spend substantial resources not in providing journalism but in identifying users and their interests. Thus the advertising money that once was used to fund journalism is now going to access Google’s and Facebook’s vast networks for their own profit. John A. Lent: Coming from a tiny coal-mining town, Lent saw the repeated exploitation of people by the coal companies. After receiving a Newhouse Research Assistantship at Syracuse University, New York, he endured a lot of flak for writing a book that critiqued the relationships that the Newhouse family had with its newspaper unions, which ingrained in him the importance of having his future research remain independently funded. Lent’s political activism translated into research on communication in support of social change, on cultural imperialism, on media shortcomings in covering foreign news, on the dangers of technological reliance, and on press freedom (or the lack thereof) in various countries in Asia. His critical perspective informs his research regarding some of the problems in comic art, such as commercialization, commodification, and digitalization of the comic-book industry. Robert W. McChesney: Growing up in the 1960s, McChesney had social justice, peace, and living in a humane society wired into him as issues of great importance. He learned early on that when doing critical research, a level playing field in academia does not exist. Despite having a wellpublished, award-winning academic record, he barely achieved tenure. Through his efforts with Free Press, he has attempted to put his research into practice and organize the public to be more involved in media policy-making. McChesney recounts how he has been the target of a smear campaign because of his efforts to maintain net neutrality. He encourages us to question some of the assumptions that we make about what a media system looks like, how it is created, what it does, and with what effects.

xviii Background

Eileen R. Meehan: Denied tenure at one institution, Meehan was told by its president that anyone who does critical research would never get tenure on his watch. She was denied full professorship at another institution when the rules were changed so that edited books no longer counted toward promotion. After she left, the rules were changed back. Meehan sees critical communication research as challenging the attitude that “Everything is as it is, it’s the best way it could possibly be, and how could it be any different?” Critical research provides an alternate understanding to the official story and teaches people how to do the work to discover reality for themselves – an incredible skill to provide students, which they are free to reject. Vincent Mosco: For Mosco, critical scholarship is a way of life. He understood what it meant to be outside the mainstream from the beginning, never living in a place that had a bath or shower until he was 17 years old. He’s given up tenure twice in his life, once from an elite university in order to pursue the political work that he felt was essential in life. He understands that getting critical research published is a constant tightrope walk – scholars want to stay true to values of social justice without falling off the tightrope and losing all opportunity to teach students and get one’s work out. He hopes that the transition to a more democratic and egalitarian world takes place before capitalism has destroyed the planet. Graham Murdock: As an early teen seeing a record cover of Elvis Presley in a gold lamé suit, Murdock recognized the tension between the seductions of personal consumption and the social obligations of citizenship. His work strives to demonstrate how critical political economy is indispensable to understanding not only the organization and operation of communication industries, but also the dynamics of everyday consumption and the structure of expressive life. Murdock explains how consumerism is the master ideology of capitalism, promising people that they can only be truly happy and fulfilled through what they buy. By thinking of ourselves as consumers, he argues, we are not encouraged to think of ourselves in other ways nor to acknowledge our responsibilities to all those people who made these commodities for us and the ecological costs that are incurred as a result. Manjunath Pendakur: Upon his arrival in North America, Pendakur was confronted by the realization that Indian experience was not perceived as valuable in the media world. He returned to school and studied political economy under the advisory of Dallas Smythe. He sees many more opportunities for scholars to study the role of the media not just within capitalist countries but also within countries other than the

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center of world capitalism. What happens in one part of the world may have an impact on other parts because it is no longer a one-way flow. Ideological battles that have trailed Pendakur made him recognize that the intellectual freedoms won by his predecessors in the field are not guaranteed but rather are a lifelong pursuit to preserve for future generations. Gerald Sussman: It was working on factory assembly lines during summer breaks that Sussman came to see how ordinary working-class people spent their lives. While he felt privileged to be receiving a college education, he realized how fundamentally unjust it was that these people would forever work in such unhealthy, and often dangerous, environments. Sussman fears that corporate capitalism is on a collision course with social movements and with the Earth’s physical ecology. He thinks of critical research as a moral commitment, not just a career, and believes that it is the obligation of those with a view toward social and ecological progress to transform society toward a more socialist world order, based on respect for the environment, for people, and for other living organisms. Janet Wasko: After working in TV and for a commercial production house, Wasko became disillusioned, realizing that the media and the potential for using it in a productive, constructive way were being wasted. She believes that critical analysis helps people to understand why new media develop the way they do. Where critical scholars make a difference, she argues, is through their teaching, exposing young people to the idea that just a few corporations control the media, and encouraging them to think about who benefits most from this arrangement. Wasko is concerned about the corporatization of universities and the preoccupation with undergraduate vocational training. She feels that there’s more interest in training students to work in the industry and not enough effort to get them to think about what the media industry is all about. Yuezhi Zhao: By the time Zhao entered university in China at the age of 15, she had already gained a complex “social science” education through her own life experience with class background, local power relations, equal access to basic education, scarcity of resources, the urban–rural divide, notions of equality, justice, the popular propagation of these values at the societal level, and different social actors’ willingness to uphold these principles and to fight for them. Despite attempts to caricaturize or marginalize her, she regards her position as a privilege that comes with a tremendous social responsibility to work for the betterment of those who did not have her kind of opportunities,

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even though she knows that her ability is limited and her impact is even more limited. Despite the varying attempts to silence them, the scholars in this volume address some of the positive changes as well as lingering problematic issues in critical research, often through personal anecdotes and candid reflections. What they have to share can serve as a guidepost to those who wish to understand the difficulties that are facing critical researchers and how they navigate through the challenges. At the same time, they also offer a means of understanding ourselves as we try to make sense of the dynamic and complicated world in which we live. M. A. Amazeen J. A. Lent 20 January 2015

References Bagdikian, B. H. (2004). The New Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon Press. McChesney, R. W. (1993). Critical communication research at the crossroads. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 98–104. McChesney, R. W. and Pickard, V. (2011). Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It. New York: The New Press. Turow, J. (2011). The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth. New Haven: Yale University Press. West, M. D. (2013). Is the Internet an emergent public sphere? Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 28(3), 155–159.