Book Review: Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice, by Nick Couldry

Abstract

Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. Nick Couldry. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013. 311 pp. $23.70 pbk.This book's objective is threefold. One is to explore contribution to organization within of national and rapidly changing nature of those relations. Second is to assess how societies interconnect across national boundaries by using different models of communication exchange, and in process globalizing all aspects of social relations and exchange of information. Third is how digital practice reshapes these relations into institutionalized structures, forms, formats, and interfaces for disseminating content. By assessing changing nature of relations between and society, author makes a thought-provoking contribution to growing body of literature on multiplying role of and institutions not only in delivering information and social and cultural content, but also in reshaping relations between individuals and societies at all levels of communication.Nick Couldry specializes in and social theory with a focus on complex interaction between traditional and He has authored several books on changing nature of modern society and In this context, he analyzes modern as a and form and networking that transforms legitimacy of and authority of order, thus approaching media's contribution to our possibilities for knowledge, agency and ethics from a social theory standpoint.The book's eight chapters are designed to investigate how social theory can explain modern traditional and digital practice and their impacts on culture and social relations. The issue of impact of digital on globalization and changing world of mass communication has been quite widely discussed in Western literature over past two decades. Yet, author argues that there is room for another book that offers mid-range conceptual tools for understanding difference make in our lives. His main focus, however, is not only on infinite expansion of global connectivity but also on new hidden forms of disconnection that come to light as the social consequences of digital as he seeks to grasp the types of order-and disorder-that results from deep embedding in social space.The starting point for first two chapters is an assessment of heterogeneous bundle of practices for acting in world. His main argument is that media research center of gravity should move away from examining texts toward study of the broader set of practices related to media. Chapters 3 and 4 look at social impacts of in modern world as a media ritual and symbolic that shapes social reality, starting with the corporate owners and makers of brands. The author develops a body of evidence that in practice media as institution of social power and institutors of social form constructs reality, which in turn constructs our view of world, globalization, and our relations with it. …