Media and the Experience of Social Change

Reviews / Votes

The Arab uprisings, as well as the tumultuous political upheavals that have occurred since, suggest that we live not only in a world of crises but one that is undergoing profound transformations. Tim Markham's distinctive book thoughtfully encourages us to approach and understand this same world as lived, communicated and experienced in the everyday. He has written no less than a phenomenology of the political at once timely, eloquent and insightful. Recommended. Tim Markham explores how and why people navigate the world in relation to everyday experiences of modern media. Delving into the news reportage of the 'Arab spring' uprisings, he recasts familiar concepts - such as identity, cultural value, citizenship, engagement and trust - to secure an alternative basis for theory-building. This is a perceptive, challenging and at times provocative study, one certain to prompt fresh, counter-intuitive thinking about journalism's responsibilities in public life. At the time in which political life has become increasingly volatile and polarised there is so much at stake in the future of journalism and media. Political upheavals in the Middle East in particular are played out across a number of media platforms, highlighting frustrations and aspirations of millions of people demanding to be heard and calling for change. Tim Markham opens out this fiield and critically examines the conflicting, contradictory, micro impulses that stimulate and constrain media production and consumption in the region. In contrast to some of the celebratory accounts of the role of social media as the agent of change, this book anchors media in a much broader context of everyday capitalism.