Synopses & Reviews
In this brilliant new book, Robert W. McChesney, one of America's leading media scholars and activists, brings both his authoritative analysis and unparalleled historical knowledge to bear on the growing but only fitfully successful field of media criticism and scholarship.McChesney explains why we are in the midst of a communication revolution that is at the center of twenty-first-century life. Yet this profound juncture is not well understood, in part, because our media criticism and media scholarship have not been up to the task. Why is media not at the center of political debate? Why are students of the media considered second-class scholars?
With a concise history of media studies, McChesney explains the important work of analysts like Noam Chomsky, Marshall McLuhan, and Alexander Meiklejohn, while showing how communication scholarship grew increasingly irrelevant in recent years, even as media became a decisive issue of our times. Now the burgeoning media reform movement, in which McChesney has been a key player, has made it even more clear that the revolution in communication demands a political and intellectual revolution as well.
Review
"Robert McChesney is the conscience of the media in America." —Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity
Synopsis
In Communication Revolution—both a sharp and cogent analysis of the history of media studies and a clarion call for citizen participation—Robert McChesney argues that with the Internet and wireless technology set to overtake traditional media, we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to build a more egalitarian communication system. He brilliantly shows how communication scholarship has failed to rise to the challenge of conceiving what this system might look like, leaving it to the burgeoning media reform movement (in which he has been a key player) to fill the vision vacuum.
Bringing both his authoritative analysis and unparalleled historical knowledge to bear on an urgent issue of our time, McChesney challenges us to transform the way we think about media. As Noam Chomsky has said, “Robert McChesney’s work has been of extraordinary importance. . . . It should be read with care and concern by people who care about freedom and basic rights.”
About the Author
Robert W. McChesney is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of several books on the media, including
Digital Disconnect,
Communication Revolution, and the award-winning
Rich Media, Poor Democracy; a co-author, with John Nichols, of
Tragedy and Farce; and a co-editor, with Ben Scott, of
Our Unfree Press, and, with Victor Pickard, of
Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights (all published by The New Press). He lives in Champaign, Illinois.