Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike

Through a textual analysis of over five hundred news reports, Kumar shows how the strikers pressured a seemingly intractable media system to represent the interests of workers and thereby elevated the class contradictions at the heart of a booming economy. While UPS had made about a billion dollars in profit during the year prior to the strike, its workers had seen paltry wage increases, a steady shift from secure full-time jobs to part-time jobs, and deteriorating working conditions.

During the strike, the corporate media were forced to address working-class issues sympathetically. However, once the strike was over, the media reverted to business as usual. Drawing on her analysis of the strike, Kumar argues that media reform is more complicated than is suggested by liberal media theorists, yet she also argues against the pessimistic currents of radical scholarship that views the media as all-powerful. Instead, she puts forward the case for a dialectical understanding, developing what she calls a “ dominance/resistance model” for media analysis.

"[An] excellent book about the 1997 strike against the United Parcel Service."--International Socialist Review

Outside the Box presents an in-depth study of media representation of the 1997 United Parcel Service (UPS) workers' strike. Deepa Kumar delineates the history of the strike, how it coincided with the rise of globalization, and how the mainstream media were pressured to incorporate pro-labor arguments that challenged the dominant logic of neoliberalism. Drawing on a textual analysis of over five hundred news reports, Kumar argues that media reform is more complicated than is suggested by liberal media theorists. She makes a case for a dialectical understanding, developing a "dominance/resistance model" for media analysis.