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Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture

Volume 34 (2015) No. 1

Gatekeeping Theory from Social Fields to Social Networks

David DeIuliis Duquesne University

A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

ISSN: 0144-4646

IN THIS ISSUE

Table of Contents

Gatekeeping Theory from Social Fields to Social Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1. Intellectual Origins of Gakekeeping Theory . . . . 4 A. Lewin and field theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 B. Lewin and gatekeeping theory . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2. Gatekeeping Theory after Lewin . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 A. Mr. Gates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 B. Levels of analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 C. Gatekeeping after Mr. Gates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 D. Contemporary gatekeeping models . . . . . . . . 10 E. The gated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 F. Gatekeeping on the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

3. Network Gatekeeping Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 A. Definitioins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 B. Gatekeeping on social networks . . . . . . . . . . . 15 C. Network gatekeeping on Digg . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 D. Network gatekeeping on Twitter . . . . . . . . . . 16 E. Network gatekeeping on Facebook . . . . . . . . 18

4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Book Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

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Communication Research Trends Volume 34 (2015) Number 1 http://cscc.scu.edu

Published four times a year by the Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture (CSCC), sponsored by the California Province of the Society of Jesus. Copyright 2015. ISSN 0144-4646

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Gatekeeping theory and applications of gatekeep- ing to the media constitute a venerable communication studies tradition, dating to the late 1940s (for the theo- ry) and early 1950s (for the application to communica- tion). In brief, the communication use of the theory tries to explain how information reaches audiences: communication media do not transmit all information, or did not in the “classical” period of newspapers, radio, and television. In that period publishers matched printed pages to the advertising that could support them; broadcasters included news as a public service. In a similar vein, other content—music, serialized sto- ries, drama, comedy, and so on—also faced the need to fit into a finite communication channel. Given the prac- tical limitations, then, of space or time, someone, somewhere decided what was news or entertainment or fitting content for the media.

Researchers, beginning with White (1950), applied the term gatekeeping and the theory (first pro- posed by Lewin, 1947) to the news industry, since its structure of reporters and editors clearly illustrated the filtering process through which information passed before it reached an audience. The theory proved robust and helpful for decades. Gans (1979), for exam- ple, applied it to the national news, both broadcast and print, in the period after the Watergate scandal, offering a detailed treatment of how the news media actually worked, through a careful participant observation of four major news media. In this as well as in Lewin’s original formulations, researchers took a more socio- logical approach to the communication questions.

The advent of the Internet changed both the man- ner of communication and the media through which people get information. Not surprisingly, it also changed the role of decision making about what actu- ally reaches people. Unlike broadcasters, for example, Internet service providers often pursue a policy of “net- work neutrality” regarding what traverses the Internet.

In the review presented here, David DeIuliis of Duquesne University offers an introduction to more recent work on gatekeeping. Even with online media more or less removing the limitations of available space or available time, gatekeeping seems to have changed its role and operations. But it still exists. Theorists, particu-

larly from information management areas have wrestled with explaining what has changed, even as many com- munication scholars have more or less assumed that the original gatekeeping theories still apply. Though the net- works may have few theoretical space limitations, peo- ple still have finite time and attention.

Referring to the expanded theory as “network gatekeeping” and drawing on the work of one key the- orist, DeIuliis offers this brief summary in his abstract:

Network gatekeeping theory applies the conceptual infrastructure of gatekeeping theory, in which journalists select which news the pub- lic sees, to social and information networks cre- ated by the Web, where the ability of users to create and circulate their own content changes the roles of gated and gatekeeper. Introduced by Karine Barzilai-Nahon, network gatekeeping redefines the concepts of gatekeeping theory. It extends beyond selection of news to the manip- ulation of information. This article situates net- work gatekeeping theory within the history of gatekeeping theory and applies network gate- keeping to three social networks: Digg, Facebook, and Twitter.

DeIuliis argues that gatekeeping occurs but in a differ- ent way.

This issue of COMMUNICATION RESEARCH TRENDS

returns, then, to the world of mass communication, par- ticularly in its digital embodiment.

* * * David DeIuliis is a Ph.D. candidate and Visiting

Instructor in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

References Gans, H. (1979). Deciding what’s news: A study of CBS

evening news, NBC nightly news, Newsweek, and Time. New York: Random House.

Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics: II. Channels of group life, social planning, and action research. Human Relations, 1(2), 143–153.

White, D. (1950). The “gate keeper”: A case study in the selection of news. Journalism Quarterly, 27(4), 383–390.

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH TRENDS VOLUME 34 (2015) NO. 1 — 3

Gatekeeping Theory

Editor’s Introduction

Gatekeeping theory refers to the control of infor- mation as it passes through a gate (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). The gate is guarded by gatekeepers, who make decisions about what information to let through and what to keep out (Lewin, 1947b). In making these deci- sions, gatekeepers exercise power over those on the other side of the gate. The intellectual origins of gate- keeping can be traced to Kurt Lewin, a Berlin-born social scientist who applied the methods of individual psychology to the whole social world. Lewin approached gatekeeping as just one of many interrelat- ed phenomena that together make up a social field. To understand gatekeeping, one had to understand the whole field. Lewin’s student, David Manning White, was the first to apply the concept of gatekeeping to mass communication. White’s (1950) analysis of the gatekeeping decisions of one newspaper editor, called Mr. Gates, focused on the subjective factors that influ- ence gatekeeping decisions. Following White (1950), the field of communication has most often conceptual- ized gatekeeping as the selection of news, where a small number of news items pass a gate manned by journal- ists. In making their selections, gatekeepers construct social reality for the gated (Shoemaker, 1991).

The World Wide Web has presented new chal- lenges to these traditional models of gatekeeping, where raw content passes uni-directionally through a gate manned by journalists before reaching the reading public. The ability of users to create and disseminate their own content has uprooted and inverted the roles of gatekeeper and gated. However, if the mass of infor-

mation on the Web necessitates some form of gate- keeping, what does it look like? Brown (1979) and, more recently, Shoemaker and Vos (2009) and Shoemaker and Reese (2014), call for a return to Lewin. They argue that Lewin’s field theory remains relevant for gatekeeping. Much early gatekeeping research followed White (1950) and left Lewin’s field theory behind (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). For Shoemaker and Vos (2009), gatekeeping must recon- nect with its origins in field theory and add an audience channel to old models of gatekeeping. In several arti- cles and chapters, Karine Barzilai-Nahon disagrees. For Barziali-Nahon (2009), adding new channels to old models does not adequately account for the dynamism of gatekeeping in new media, and the changed roles of gatekeeper and gated. Barzilai-Nahon proposes a new concept, the “gated,” and a new theory, network gate- keeping, to model the dynamism of gatekeeping on new media.

In this review essay, I first describe the intellectu- al origins of gatekeeping theory in Lewin’s field theo- ry. I then trace the development of gatekeeping theory from early debates about its focus to modern questions about its applicability to new media.

I then outline the conceptual apparatus of network gatekeeping theory, and situate network gatekeeping theory within communication studies. Finally, I apply network gatekeeping in the context of Digg, Twitter, and Facebook, three social networks that demonstrate the capacity for not only selecting, but also repeating, channeling, and manipulating information.

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Gatekeeping Theory from Social Fields to Social Networks

David DeIuliis [email protected]

1. Intellectual Origins of Gatekeeping Theory

A. Lewin and field theory The father of gatekeeping theory is Kurt Lewin

(Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). Born in Poland in 1890 and raised in Berlin, Lewin was a pioneer of applied psy-

chology in the United States. From his early days in Berlin, Lewin developed a conceptual apparatus for studying human behavior and motives with method- ological rigor. Lewin developed best practices for

social scientists to understand the social world with the same precision that natural scientists understand the physical world (Cartwright, 1951). In Lewin’s time, social science was torn between speculative theory and objective empiricism. Lewin called for a middle ground that makes generalizations about the social world from observations of human behavior. For Lewin, the task of social science should be to concep- tualize the world. This process of conceptualization, the translating of phenomena in the world to concepts in the mind (Cartwright, 1951, p. ix), is the heart of sci- entific inquiry and the building block of theory. Good conceptualization oscillates between qualitative and quantitative, general and particular, part and whole, and group and individual.

The theory of gatekeeping emerged organically out of this process of conceptualization. Lewin con- ceptualized the social world as a relationship between individuals and groups. Each individual constitutes a “lifespace,” which consists of the individual and the individual’s environment (Lewin, 1947a). Groups too, comprise lifespaces, made up of the group and its envi- ronment. Together, the life spaces of the social world make up a “social field” (Lewin, 1947a). In a social field, the lifespaces of every individual and group coexist within one “ecological setting” (Lewin, 1951, p. 14). The relationship of social field to individual life- space determines human behavior. The social scientist defines a life space by identifying its individual parts, then determining how they relate to the whole social field in space and time (Cartwright, 1951). In defining a lifespace, the social scientist acts as a gatekeeper who “determines specifically what things are to be included in the representation of any given life space at any par- ticular time” (Cartwright, 1951, p. xi). With a series of “in” and “out” decisions about what to include and exclude from an individual life space (Lewin, 1947b, p. 145; White, 1950, p. 383), the social scientist defines the relationship between life space and social field, and individual psychology and social interaction (Shoemaker, 1991).

Gatekeeping decisions about the life space were informed by the intellectual climate in the early 20th century. For Lewin, the individual life space included the thought processes of the individual (Gestalt psy- chology), as well as the environment that the individ- ual perceives (Husserlian phenomenology), and any unconscious states that affect the individual’s psychol- ogy (Freudian psychoanalysis). Lewin argued that needs, goals, and cognitive structures, as well as polit-

ical, economic, and legal processes, must be included in the life space because they directly affect behavior. Remote events and movements have minimal effect and need not be included. The life space moves through history and is affected by past experiences, but only the system as a whole can show effects at any one time (Cartwright, 1951, p. xiii). Lewin’s work had a ripple effect on the social sciences, extending centrifugally the limits of the life space.

Similarly, the idea of gatekeeping is inherent within Lewin’s conception of the social sciences, informed by Gestalt psychology and logical posi- tivism, as well as the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. Logical positivism arose in Germany in the 1920s as a response to the idealism of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), whose idealist philosophy emphasized abstract Spirit over concrete reality (Ayer, 1966). The movement of logical posi- tivism brought philosophy back down to earth by grounding human knowledge in only experience and reason. Logical positivists rejected metaphysics, the study of the underlying nature of things, as meaning- less (Ayer, 1966). All theoretical statements are also meaningless until verified. Logical positivists assigned meaning to words according to their practical use and considered language only a representation of the true nature of things. For logical positivists, the language of science should be the common language of human knowledge (Ayer, 1966). Like logical posi- tivism, Gestalt psychology emerged in Germany in the 20th century as a response to certain schools of psy- chology that divided psychological experience into isolated and distinct parts (Köhler, 1969). Grounded in phenomenology, the study of human conscious experi- ence, Gestalt psychology argues that the sum of psy- chological experience is other than any of its parts, and understanding any of the parts requires an understand- ing of the whole (Köhler, 1969).

Lewin’s conception of the social sciences was also heavily influenced by Cassirer (1874–1945), a prominent German philosopher and cultural theorist who taught Lewin philosophy at the University of Berlin. In his three-volume Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923, 1925, 1929), Cassirer grounded knowl- edge in human culture. Humans make sense of the world through signs and sign systems (1923). For Cassirer, these signs form the fundamental unit of sci- entific analysis (Lewin, 1949). Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms looked to early, more primitive, forms of human knowledge expressed in natural lan-

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH TRENDS VOLUME 34 (2015) NO. 1 — 5

guage. For Cassirer, religion and art emerge from myth, and science from natural language (Lewin, 1949). Symbolic forms progress from emotional expressions of experience with no distinction between appearance and reality, to more abstract representations of types and forms of appearances in natural language, to pure signification of reality in theoretical science (Cassirer, 1923). Cassirer encouraged Lewin to expand the reach of psychology beyond the limits of individual psychol- ogy (Lewin, 1949).

In response, Lewin wanted to develop a more democratic method of social management (Cartwright, 1951). Lewin saw an opportunity to combine the objec- tivity of science with the objectives of people to under- stand this turmoil. Concepts in individual psychology, such as force fields, fluctuations, and phase spaces, could be used for social processes, and the mathemati- cal tools used to study quasi-stationary equilibria in economics could be used in cultural settings (Lewin, 1951). For Lewin, economic equilibria such as supply and demand were conceptually similar to social processes such as the productivity of a work team. By employing experimental and mathematical procedures of the natural sciences, the social sciences can achieve the same level of specificity as the natural sciences (Lewin, 1951).

However, the Jewish-born Lewin faced a num- ber of challenges in the years following World War II. As the crimes committed by Hitler’s Third Reich came to light, some natural scientists acknowledged the potential for social events to shape the natural world. However, not all social scientists agreed about the objective reality of the social world. Some con- cepts, like leadership, could not shake a “halo of mysticism” that kept them outside the purview of social sciences (Lewin, 1947a, p. 7). In the natural sciences, debates about reality concern the most ele- mentary of physical phenomena, like atoms and elec- trons. In the social sciences, debates concern the real- ity of the whole social world (Lewin, 1947a). Lewin argued that, if the body as a whole has different prop- erties from individual molecules, and molecules from individual atoms, the dynamic social whole will have different properties from individuals. Both are as equally real as atoms and the human body. Social sci- ence just had to identify the right constructs, then measure them in relation to a social whole, then infer laws about human behavior (Lewin, 1947a). Lewin’s methods have informed modern multivariate analy- sis, which measures causal relationships between two

variables by controlling for alternative explanations (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009).

Lewin also saw a disconnect between theory and practice (Cartwright, 1951). Practitioners of the social world, such as priests, parents, and politicians, tend to favor intuition and experience over conceptual analysis and social rules (Lewin, 1947a). For these practition- ers, events are complex reflections of the whole envi- ronment, not the whims of specific individuals. Lewin argues that social scientists should look for these reflections as underlying conditions of the social world by situating life spaces within social fields, then moni- toring changes in the social field caused by individual or group behavior. For instance, to understand the steps leading to war between two nations, the social scientist starts with the lifespace of each nation, then observes what each nation does, then reevaluates the goals, stan- dards, and values of each nation. Both the scientist and practitioner approach elements of the social world as part of a dynamic whole.

Lewin conceptualized social processes objective- ly as the result of conflicting forces. Lewin’s goal was to isolate, identify, and measure the forces, then manip- ulate the forces to achieve a desired objective. For instance, to change the level of productivity of a work team, a manager must unfreeze the current level of per- formance, then introduce a new level, then refreeze the new level in the same way as the old (Lewin, 1947a). The productivity of a work team is a “quasi-stationary equilibrium” that fluctuates around an average level (Lewin, 1947a, p. 6). The level of productivity of a work team proceeds in a predictable way despite changing demands and worker turnover. The fluctua- tion is due to equal and opposite forces, such as the orders of managers and laziness of employees, that push productivity above or below the average level. The productivity of the work team ceases to be quasi- stationary when forces push the level of fluctuation outside the area of the average. When such a force is strong enough to change the average level of fluctua- tion, opposing forces may bring the average back to the previous level. However, the force may also be so strong that it moves the average level of fluctuation permanently, as in the case of social revolutions (Lewin, 1947a).

Changing the level of fluctuation around a quasi- stationary equilibrium requires attention to the social whole within which the equilibrium fluctuates. The level of fluctuation is often associated with a social custom or habit that resists change, such as procrasti-

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nation in the workplace. In this case, additional force is needed to break the “inner resistance” of habit and ensure that the level of fluctuation does not revert back to its previous level (Lewin, 1947a). The standards of conduct within a group may also acquire a positive force of their own that ousts individual members of the group who deviate too far from the group standards. In this case, the social equilibrium itself becomes a stan- dard of individual conduct, pushing a work team mem- ber to keep up with its pace of productivity. Lewin accounts for not only the relationship between the indi- vidual and work team, but also the relationship between the work team and whole cultural context (Cartwright, 1951).

B. Lewin and gatekeeping theory Lewin articulated his field theory in two articles

published in the journal Human Relations in 1947. These papers, along with several other theoretical papers, were collected in 1951 and posthumously pub- lished as Field Theory in Social Science. In the first paper, Lewin developed the constructs of social fields and quasi-stationary equilibria, described above. In the second, Lewin proposed “gatekeeping” as a way to examine how objective problems, such as the movement of goods and people, are affected by subjective states and cultural values. In this famous article, Lewin shifts his focus to the social channels that connect individuals to social fields, and the ways to make change at the level of not only a work team, but also society as a whole.

When making widespread social change, such as changing the eating habits of a population, it is imprac- tical and expensive to educate every member of the community. Instead, one needs to target the most influ- ential members of the community who are in a “key position” to spread the message and model the desired behavior (Lewin, 1947b). The key position will depend on the desired social change. For instance, in the late 1940s American housewives were in a key position to change the eating habits of their families. Rather than educating every single American about nutritional value of orange juice, one should look to the person who buys the food for the family.

In this context, Lewin introduced his theory of gatekeeping using the terms channel, section, force, and gate. A channel determines what obstacles an item will face from discovery to use (Lewin, 1947b). Lewin mapped two channels through which food passes on its way to the American kitchen table, the grocery store and the garden. From the grocery store, food is

purchased, put in the icebox or pantry, prepared for consumption, and placed on the kitchen table. From the garden, food is planted and picked, then put in the pantry, prepared for consumption, and placed on the kitchen table. Decisions about what to buy or grow will determine what foods enter the channels. The points at which decisions are made within a channel are sections. Once a potato is chosen from either the grocer or garden, the cook must decide how to serve it, what to serve it with, and how much to save for tomor- row. Of all the potato plants grown in a given year, only a few make it through all of the sections of a channel to a dinner table.

Decisions in each section of the channel are guid- ed by forces. Purchasing decisions at the grocer will be affected by positive forces in favor of buying, such as low prices and personal preference, and forces against buying, such as high price or low nutrition. If the total forces in favor of buying the food outweigh the total forces against buying the food, the food will be bought, or the reverse. Consider pork chops. As you stand in the grocery store, deciding whether to buy the pork chops, there is a strong force in favor of buying the pork chops, if you like pork chops, but also a strong force against buying the pork chops, if they are expen- sive. Lewin’s housewife is similarly conflicted.

Once the housewife decides to buy or grow the food, it enters either the grocer or garden channel, and is pushed through the channel by forces that change direction once a decision is made. If the forces in favor of buying expensive pork chops prevail, the forces for- merly keeping the pork chops from the table now push them through the channel, because a housewife would not want to waste expensive pork chops. The point at which this force changes direction, from keeping food out of a channel to keeping it in the channel, is a gate (Lewin, 1947b). At this critical point, the character of the force changes. For instance, an elite university admissions board may produce strong forces against admission by admitting only the highest scoring stu- dents but, once they are admitted, the university helps the students to graduate in order to keep its matricula- tion rate high.

The decisions about what items to let in and keep out of a channel are made by “gatekeepers” (Lewin, 1947b, p. 145), such as the housewife and university admission board. Lewin (1947b) argued that social change was the product of forces acting on these gate- keepers. To understand the forces, one must first identi- fy the gatekeepers, then change, or change the mind of

COMMUNICATION RESEARCH TRENDS VOLUME 34 (2015) NO. 1 — 7

the gatekeepers. For Lewin, gatekeeping is always situ- ational, subject to changing circumstances in the pres- ent, and ideological, informed by long- term value sys- tems in the past and future (Cartwright, 1951). With this understanding of gatekeeping, Lewin answered his own call to combine the concepts and methods of natural sci- ence and economics with social science. The subjective forces acting on the housewife directly impact objective output, such as units of food sold (Lewin, 1947b). Lewin’s approach to gatekeeping in particular and

social sciences in general was fundamentally practical. Lewin saw himself as a “gatekeeper of civilization” (White, 1950, p. 390) who laid tracks through the vast expanses of human knowledge. Lewin was a careful and thoughtful theoretician who subscribed to the “method of careful approximation” (Cartwright, 1951, p. xiv). For Lewin, methods must always match ques- tions. With this in mind, Lewin proposed the concepts of the gate and gatekeeper in order to inspire the next generation of social scientists.

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2. Gatekeeping Theory after Lewin

A. Mr. Gates After Lewin, the trajectory of gatekeeping theory

progressed in the spirit of its creator, rippling outward from individual factors to organizational and external factors, to the entire social milieu in which gatekeep- ing occurs (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). Wilbur Schramm, one of the founders of the field of commu- nication studies (White, 1950, p. 383), had written that “no aspect of communication is so impressive as the enormous number of choices and discards which have to be made between the formation of the symbol in the mind of the communicator, and the appearance of a related symbol in the mind of the receiver” (p. 289). A year later, David Manning White became the first to explicitly apply Lewin’s gatekeeping theory to the mass media with “one of the first studies of its kind” in Journalism Quarterly (White, 1950, p. 383). With his article, “The ‘Gate Keeper’: A Case Study in the Selection of News,” White tried to understand how one media gatekeeper, called “Mr. Gates,” “operates his gate” (White, 1950, p. 383).

Staffed by anchors, reporters, editors, and corre- spondents, the first gate of the media is the point at which initial decisions about the newsworthiness of events are made (White, 1950). The impact of these decisions is easy to see, said White, by reading two accounts of a controversial policy issue from opposing political perspectives. The media gatekeeper deter- mines not only what events the public knows about, but also how the public thinks about events based on the gatekeeper’s own experiences, attitudes, and expectations (p. 384). In a chain of communication from discovery to dissemination, a news item passes through many people who all make “in” and “out”

decisions based on their own backgrounds (p. 383). At the end of this chain is Mr. Gates, a middle-aged man who edits a morning paper with a circulation of 30,000 in a Midwestern city of 100,000 citizens (p. 384).

Mr. Gates was responsible for choosing a select few stories from the “mass” of wire copy he received every day (White, 1950, p. 384). The stories that Mr. Gates saw had already made it through several gates manned by reporters, rewriters, and lower-level edi- tors. It was up to Mr. Gates to make the final decision. Over a period of one week, Mr. Gates saved all of the copy that crossed his desk, and wrote justifications on every piece of rejected copy. Mr. Gates rejected 90% of the 12,400 column inches of wire copy he received. Among the reasons given by Mr. Gates for rejecting events were, “BS,” “Propaganda,” “He’s too red,” and “Don’t care for suicide stories,” (p. 386). Also, reasons such as, “No space” and “Would use-if space,” were paired with subjective judgments such as “Better story,” or “Lead more interesting” (p. 387).

White interpreted these findings as evidence of how “highly subjective, how reliant upon value judg- ments based on the gatekeeper’s own set of experi- ences, attitudes and expectations the communication of ‘news’ really is” (p. 387).

White has become synonymous in gatekeeping literature with individual influences on gatekeeping decisions (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). However, he was also prescient in ascribing to gatekeepers the power to construct social reality: “in his position as ‘gatekeep- er,’ the newspaper editor sees to it (even though he may never be consciously aware of it) that the community shall hear as a fact only those events which the news- man, as the representative of his culture, believes to be

true” (White, 1950, p. 390). These two themes run through all subsequent gatekeeping research.

B. Levels of analysis In the decades after Lewin, gatekeeping research

has attended to both individual and cultural factors. There are four levels of analysis in Lewin’s field theo- ry: microsystem, or immediate context; mesosystem, or collection of immediate contexts; exosystem, or exter- nal institutional standards; and macrosystem, or cul- ture. Gatekeeping occurs in a microsystem (e.g., White, 1950), in a mesosystem as the product of competing interests among news outlets, in an exosystem of jour- nalistic standards and organizational policies, and in a macrosystem of cultural influences. Following Lewin, Shoemaker and Reese (1996) and Shoemaker and Vos (2009) identified five levels of analysis for the study of gatekeeping: individual, communication routines, organizational, social institutions, and social system.

The individual level of analysis concerns the characteristics of individual gatekeepers, or the com- municative products of individuals such as blog posts, emails, webpages, statuses, updates, podcasts, etc. The communicative routines level of analysis concerns the practices of a profession embodied in instincts and news values and judgments (e.g., Berkowitz, 1990). For instance, values of timeliness, proximity, and newsworthiness, and the practice of inverted pyramid style of journalistic writing, represent the field of jour- nalism as a whole, not the preferences of an individual journalist. The organizational level of analysis makes some news organizations different from others (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). The forces affecting gate- keeping decisions at a small rural newspaper will differ from those at large national operations. The social institution level of analysis focuses on forces that act on an organization, such as advertisers, governments, and activist groups. Media outlets may tailor their con- tent to appease one or all of these social institutions. Finally, the social system level of analysis concerns how more abstract forces, such as ideology, culture, economics, and politics, affect the gatekeeping process (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009).

C. Gatekeeping after Mr. Gates Some researchers have found support for White’s

(1950) emphasis on the individual and subjective (e.g., Chang & Lee, 1992). Bleske (1991) replicated White’s study with a woman, Ms. Gates, to determine the affects of technological development and changing

gender norms on individual gatekeeping decisions. Bleske found that Mr. and Ms. Gates assigned the same relative importance to human interest and national and international politics stories. While Bleske’s results were similar to White’s, they also show the importance of industry standards if a woman with the same job makes the same decisions 50 years later.

More recently, Enli (2007) replicated White’s study in the context of the Norweigian current affairs program SevenThirty. In SevenThirty, viewers can respond to content by texting a moderator. If chosen, the text will be displayed on the screen or presented to the program’s hosts as discussion prompts. The moder- ator act as a “boundary gatekeeper” by selecting which text messages to air (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p. 113). Over a two month period, only 15% of the nearly 1100 text messages sent to SevenThirty appeared on the show. All messages were edited for length and themat- ic content. Enli (2007) identified the opposing forces at work in the individual gatekeeping decisions as jour- nalistic norms and participatory ideals. Messages that were too sympathetic or antipathetic were rejected, as were personalized and elitist messages.

For Dimmick (1974), on the other hand, gate- keepers value their sources, colleagues, opinion lead- ers, reference institutions, and organizational policies over their own intuition. Similarly, Gieber (1956, 1960, 1964), Westley and MacLean (1957), and Chibnall (1975) emphasized the routines and practices of jour- nalism. For Gieber (1956), structural considerations, space limitations and a “straitjacket of mechanical details” (p. 432) limit the decisions a gatekeeper can make. Under an impending deadline, Mr. Gates cannot make subjective judgments about every piece of copy that crosses his desk. Shoemaker and his colleagues also argue that gatekeeping is more influenced by the “routinized practices of news work” than by any per- sonal beliefs of the gatekeeper. Routine forces serve as heuristics, or mental shortcuts, for making gatekeeping decisions under deadlines (Shoemaker, Eichholz, Kim, & Wrigley, 2001, p. 235).

Cassidy (2006) found that routine forces had a greater impact on the gatekeeping decisions of both online and print journalists than individual factors. Cassidy shows that impending deadlines, as well as the online ethos of instantaneity, make White’s individual factors less relevant. For Cassidy, immediacy is now a journalistic norm. Decades earlier, McNeilly (1959) and Bass (1969) had emphasized the roles of the jour- nalist in gatekeeping decisions. McNeilly (1959) mod-

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eled international news gatekeeping as an “obstacle course” (p. 230) of gatekeepers, from correspondents to copy editors, who all make decisions about whether and how a story should pass through their gate. In McNealy’s model, gatekeepers could provide feedback to other gatekeepers, and stories could emerge at dif- ferent stages of the gatekeeping process independently of the initial story. Bass (1969) divided the gatekeeping process into two levels: news gatherers—the writers, reporters, and local editors who turn raw news into news copy—and the news processers—the editors, copy readers, and translators—who turn news copy into a completed product.

While some (e.g., Halloran, Elliott, & Murdock, 1970) followed Bass (1969) by focusing on raw news gatherers, others (e.g., Chibnall, 1975) argued that news stories are shaped from raw observations. For instance, Westley and MacLean (1957) had modeled gatekeeping as a dynamic process where information moves from sender to receiver through a media chan- nel to an audience. At any time in the process, there are multiple senders sending information through various media channels, each with its own chain of communi- cation and series of gatekeepers. Information can bypass the sender and flow directly to the channel or, if an audience member experiences an event directly, may bypass both sender and channel. The dynamism of Westley and MacLean’s model attracted many subse- quent gatekeeping theorists.

D. Contemporary gatekeeping models In Gatekeeping, Pamela Shoemaker (1991)

defined gatekeeping as the “process by which the bil- lions of messages that are available in the world get cut down and transformed into the hundreds of messages that reach a given person in a given day (p. 1). With this definition, Shoemaker focused on the actual decisions of gatekeepers. Shoemaker and her colleagues later defined gatekeeping in the spirit of Lewin, as the “overall process through which social reality transmit- ted by the news media is constructed, and is not just a series of in and out decisions” (Shoemaker, et al., 2001, p. 233). Shoemaker extended gatekeeping beyond micro-level decisions to the whole construction of social reality (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009), to what “exists” for those subjected to a gatekeeping process (Lewin, 1947a, p. 6). Shoemaker et al. (2001) account for the many forces that affect gatekeeping decisions and for the power of the mass media to construct social

reality. They answer Lewin’s call to extend the limits of the life space.

Shoemaker and Vos (2009) defined gatekeeping as the “process of culling and crafting countless bits of information into the limited number of messages that reach people every day” (p. 1). Shoemaker and Vos echo White (1950) that gatekeeping decisions make many versions of the same material reality (2009, p. 2), and that the news reported by various media outlets is very similar (Shoemaker & Cohen, 2006). White’s (1950) chain of communication consists of reporters, rewriters, and wire editors. Shoemaker and Vos’ (2009) gatekeeping process begins when a news worker is exposed to an event and ends with selection of the most newsworthy and dissemination as news. However, another gatekeeping process begins when an audience member chooses what to consume. Gatekeeping is not arbitrary or random, but the result of deliberate deci- sions from exposure to dissemination (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). News items that make it through all gates draw the “cognitive maps” of news consumers (Ranney, 1983), and set the agenda for what it is impor- tant to think about (McCombs & Shaw, 1976).

With this in mind, Shoemaker and Vos (2009) synthesized the extant models of gatekeeping into a model of the gatekeeping field. They argue that the constructs of gates, gatekeepers, forces, and channels are as relevant now as they were for Lewin. In their model, raw information flows through three gate- keeping channels: source, media, and audience. Information enters the source channel through experts, observers, participants, commentators, and interested parties. Information enters the media chan- nel through reporters, editors, production staff, inter- active staff, and editorial and marketing assistants. The source and media channels converge as news content. Audience members then take what they want from the field of news content. Information enters the audience channel through Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, smart phone cameras, or any communication technology that records events. Information that is odd or unusual, of personal relevance, or a threat to public well-being is most likely to make it through the audience channel and reach the public (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). In this model, the audience is a gatekeep- er that allows only attention-grabbing information through the channel, and attention-grabbing has replaced newsworthiness as a marker of journalistic credibility (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009).

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In this model, messages move through communi- cation organizations such as blogs, newspapers, news outlets, television networks, and public relations agen- cies. Within each organization, boundary gatekeepers make initial decisions about what information to let into their channel. Once information passes these boundary gatekeepers, it moves to internal gatekeepers, who make decisions based on journalistic routines and standards. The internal gatekeepers then pass informa- tion to boundary output gatekeepers, who make final decisions about how to the present information based on feedback from the audience. Gates bracket each gatekeeper, and forces surround each gate. All gate- keepers weigh the influences of organizational social- ization, conception of their role, cognitive heuristics, and values, attitudes, and ethics (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p. 115). The source, media, and audience chan- nels all exist within a journalistic field.

Shoemaker and Vos (2009) argue that future stud- ies of gatekeeping theory must be attentive to history and transcend their own social system while account- ing for globalization. Furthermore, gatekeeping theo- rists should mix descriptive and interpretive accounts of gatekeeping with quantitative studies. They should follow Shoemaker’s (1991) sociological gatekeeping research by employing new statistical techniques to gatekeeping as a single variable in a sociological field. Shoemaker and Vos (2009) call for theorists to account for journalism practice, and for journalists to pay more attention to gatekeeping theory.

E. The gated Barzilai-Nahon (2009) echoes Shoemaker and

Vos (2009) in noting that more attention to the audi- ence is needed. However, Barzilai-Nahon calls for a new construct—the gated—and a new model that accounts for its dynamics. She bases her call on a review of all articles published from 1995 to March 2007 in Communication Research; Information, Communication and Society; Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly; and New Media and Society. Of the 2800 articles published in these journals during the 12-year period, 98 articles either mentioned gatekeeping or used it as an implicit conceptual foun- dation. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly had the highest percentage of articles con- taining a gatekeeping concept at 4.4%, followed by New Media and Society at 4.2%, Information, Communication and Society at 1.2%, and Communication Research at 0.6%. The field of com- munication had the highest total percentage of articles

focusing on or referencing gatekeeping of all the disci- plines studied. However, most articles only alluded to or cited gatekeeping without analysis (Barzilai-Nahon, 2009).

Barzilai-Nahon (2009) writes that communica- tion scholars, like Shoemaker, see gatekeepers as trained and trusted elites, while information scientists, like Barzilai-Nahon, see gatekeepers as embedded within a larger community. Also, communication scholars tend to focus on individual characteristics of gatekeeper elites, and information scientists on the relationships between individual gatekeepers and larger networks. Within both fields, however, Barzilai-Nahon saw increasing attention to new media technologies in gatekeeping research, but without a compatible theoretical foundation. With its attention to new media technologies, gatekeeping research has shifted from the process of gatekeeping to the capac- ity of gatekeepers to construct social reality. For instance, Hardin (2005) found that sports editors base gatekeeping decisions on their perceptions of the reading audience, not demographics of the audience itself. Their perceptions are often sexist and serve to perpetuate patriarchy in sports.

F. Gatekeeping on the Web Both Barzilai-Nahon (2009) and Singer (2006)

identified the comparison of old and new media as another theme in gatekeeping research. The Web has expanded the reach of gatekeeping to anyone with an Internet connection. Sources outside the scope of tradi- tional journalism, and without its professional stan- dards, have taken their place alongside the giants of journalism as destinations for news (Singer, 2006). However, journalists maintain that their privileged position as gatekeepers is safe, hardened by a “cultural understanding” that they are the most qualified to gate- keep (Singer, 2006). Nevertheless, journalists have acknowledged the increasingly prominent role of non- journalists or untrained citizen journalists to make decisions about newsworthiness. Working from Shoemaker and Vos’ (2009) model of journalistic field, Singer (2014) identifies the audience as secondary gatekeepers who judge the contributions of journalists and other users.

Singer (2014) attempted to characterize the deci- sions of these secondary gatekeepers and to determine the criteria they use to make decisions about the value and quality of content. A majority of the 138 newspa- per websites studied by Singer (2014) allowed users to flag inappropriate comments. A smaller majority of

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papers allowed users to rate or recommend content. The vast majority of papers allowed readers to rate the merit of content through social networking or social bookmarking tools. With this affordance, users “identi- fy what they see as worthwhile material for their own personal use, communicate that assessment to others, and republish or otherwise disseminate their selected items to a mass audience” (p. 66). They are gatekeep- ers as White (1950) understood the term.

While communications scholars have theorized extensively about the old and new media dichotomy, information scientists tend to focus on the identity of gatekeepers within new media (Barzilai-Nahon, 2009). Other themes identified by Barzilai-Nahon include the influence of gatekeepers on production of cultural artifacts and portrayal of various social groups, as well as how the gatekeeping process works, and normative questions about who should be gatekeepers. Overall, Barzilai-Nahon calls the period from 1995–2007 a period of stagnation for gatekeep- ing theory, where traditional gatekeeping theory can- not keep up with changing communication environ- ments. Barzilai-Nahon’s work is a response to an interdisciplinary failure to ask important questions about gatekeeping on the assumption that its 50-year- old foundations are firmly in place.

Barzilai-Nahon (2009) sees an unwillingness to rethink the foundations of gatekeeping theory as a fail- ure of theory building. However, Shoemaker’s early work, especially Shoemaker, Tankard, and Lasorsa’s 2004 book, How to Build Social Science Theories, addresses this very issue. Nevertheless, Barzilai- Nahon (2009) argues that Shoemaker’s gatekeeping theory is unfaithful to her own rules for theory build- ing. She argues that current definitions of gatekeeping are too disparate and contradictory to ground a mature and adaptable theory, and that a new theory of gate- keeping is needed for several reasons. First, the Web redefines the roles of “gate,” “gatekeeper,” and “gated.” The traditional model of gatekeeping needs more than tweaking because its conceptual apparatus is no longer applicable. Second, gatekeeping theory has been held back by disciplinary boundaries. An interdis- ciplinary concept needs a theory that can learn from each discipline rather than using terminology under- stood only within each discipline. Third, even within the same discipline, there is no shared vocabulary for speaking about the gated. While early gatekeeping models through Shoemaker and Vos (2009) speak of the audience, Barzilai-Nahon (2009) was the first to

apply a label to the “gated,” those subjected to a gate- keeping process. Barzilai-Nahon also found that the majority of scholars were concerned with editorial decisions made by editorial staffs and journalists about what items were newsworthy enough to be disseminat- ed. Later, the view of gatekeeping as the preservation of culture through construction of social reality also became commonplace.

This is consistent with the work of Shoemaker and Reese (1996), who emphasized the historical and social content of the media. Just as Lewin applied the methods of individual psychology to social phenome- na, Shoemaker and Reese (1996) applied the methods of media effects to cultures and media organizations. Their 2014 book, Mediating the Message in the 21st Century, is an updated edition of their influential 1991 and 1996 editions of Mediating the Message. For Shoemaker and Reese (2014), the symbolic envi- ronment is made up of messages. These media mes- sages are not an objective mirror of reality, but a co- creative construction of reality. The early editions of Mediating the Message focused on theory building through not only effects of the media on people, but also the influences of individuals, routine practices, media organizations, social institutions, and social systems on the production of the messages that make up the symbolic environment.

From the perspective of media effects, media content acts on individual psychology as an independ- ent variable. From Shoemaker and Reese’s (1991, 1996, 2014) perspective, media content is treated as a dependent variable, acted on by a variety of independ- ent variables within a social field. In the 1991 and 1996 versions of Mediating the Message, Shoemaker and Reese model influences of media production as a two- dimensional bullseye, with individual influences in the center, followed by routines, media organizations, social institutions, and social systems in concentric cir- cles (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014). In Mediating the Message in the 21st Century, Shoemaker and Reese (2014) model influences on the media as a three- dimensional wedding cake, with individual newlyweds on top, and social systems as the bottom and biggest layer of cake. While the early versions focused on indi- vidual influences, the new model can be approached in two ways. From the perspective of the individual, the lower layers empower individuals to succeed. From a media sociological perspective, the individual is perched precariously atop a supporting structure that, if destroyed, will bring down the whole cake. From either

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perspective, each layer of the cake part of a larger social field. By three-dimensionalizing their model, Shoemaker and Reese (2014) answer their own call for a return to Lewin, and Barzilai-Nahon’s (2009) call for more thorough explication of the theory’s foundation.

However, neither Shoemaker and Reese (2014) nor Shoemaker and Vos (2009) cite Barzilai-Nahon, and Barzilai-Nahon (2009) cites Shoemaker only in passing. Both agree, however, that gatekeeping deci- sions have shifted from “in” and “out” (Lewin, 1947b, p. 145) decisions to “more or less” rules of presentation (Shoemaker & Reese, 2014). On the Web, for instance, news portals like Google News employ a set of rules (Lewin, 1947b) to collect news articles from various outlets and display them on a single interface. Algorithms organize the articles into topics (e.g., World News, Local, Sports, Science) and rank them according to recency, source credibility, and newswor- thiness (Kalyanaraman & Sundar, 2008). In this con- text, the people in a “key position” to make gatekeep- ing decisions are the mathematicians who manipulate the algorithms. The experiences of the user replace the experiences of the news worker as the determining fac- tor in the gatekeeping “decisions” of a nonhuman news portal: “The Web is literally a web woven collectively by all citizens on the Internet, resulting in a massive amount of information being disseminated by both pro- fessional gatekeepers and laypersons. For casual users interested in efficiently obtaining news and informa- tion on the net, this proves burdensome because they

now have the arduous additional task of sifting through information of unknown pedigree and determing its veridicality instead of simply attending to news of established credibility” (Kalyanaraman & Sundar, 2008, p. 239). The audience member now makes deci- sions about the credibility of information and sources, but the algorithm is the gatekeeper as White (1950) understood the term.

Barzilai-Nahon (2009) argues that these new forms of gatekeeping call for a new model. The space for information is finite, making it “necessary to have established mechanisms which police these gates and select events to be reported according to specific crite- ria of newsworthiness” (Bruns, 2003, p. 1). However, in social and information networks that serve as both hosts and conduits of information, there is no lack of space and few established mechanisms to police ambiguous gates. The mass of information in this “con- textual vacuum” (Sundar & Nass, 2001, p. 57) necessi- tates some form of gatekeeping, either individual or institutional. For Lewin, the housewife is in a position to be a gatekeeper, but it is the social scientist with the power to make social change by studying her gate- keeping decisions. This is no longer the case. Laypersons have the power to change the social world (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). Whereas Lewin looked backward to the steps leading to war, today’s social sci- entist tracks the organization of a revolution in real time. Barzilai-Nahon’s (2009) empowers the researcher to reclaim the position of gatekeeper.

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3. Network Gatekeeping Theory

To outline the theoretical foundation of and terms associated with network gatekeeping, this review relies on Barzilai-Nahon (2008). In this article, among the most thorough articulations of her theory, Barzilai- Nahon proposes a new conceptual framework for gate- keeping. Rather than simply selecting which news items should pass through a gate, network gatekeepers aim to: (1) “lock-in” the gated within gatekeeper’s net- work, (2) isolate the gated within a network to protect their norms and information, and (3) allow for an unin- terrupted flow of information within “network bound- aries” (p. 1496). With these reoriented outcomes in mind, Barzilai-Nahon then defines the conceptual infrastructure of network gatekeeping consisting of the

gate, the gated, gatekeeping mechanism, network gate- keeper, and gatekeeping.

A. Definitions The gate is the “entrance to or exit from a net-

work” (Barzilai-Nahon, 2008, p. 1496). Although the gate is fluid and dynamic within social and information networks, it most often rests at the point at which the gated enter or exit the network. The gated, then, is sim- ply “the entity subject to gatekeeping” (p. 1496). In social and information networks, gatekeeping need not be forced or imposed on the gated. Because they like- ly have other options across the Web, the gated may willingly agree to the terms of gatekeeping in order to

enter a network depending on their relationship with the gatekeepers. Several factors affect these relation- ships among gatekeepers and the gated. First, political power dictates the extent to which gatekeepers can control the gated. The dynamics of information control often break down according to the political interests of involved parties. Second, the capability of the gated to produce information dictates the dynamics of network gatekeeping. While communicative technologies allow anyone to not only create but also disseminate their own content, access to and mastery of these devices will vary. The platforms on which users can dissemi- nate their content will also vary, affecting relationships among gatekeepers and the gated. Third, relationships among gatekeepers and gated will determine the level of gatekeeping present, with more direct and reciprocal ties resulting in less gatekeeping and more indirect and uni-directional ties leading to more gatekeeping. Fourth, the existence of alternative sources of informa- tion changes the gated according to the makeup of the gatekeeping mechanism.

A gatekeeping mechanism is a “tool, technology, or methodology used to carry out the process of gate- keeping” (Barzilai-Nahon, 2008, p. 1496) in any of 10 ways. First, channeling mechanisms such as search engines, directories, categorizations, and hyperlinks direct and attract the gated to various other networks. Second, censorship mechanisms delete or exclude undesired information or users from an existing net- work. Third, internationalization mechanisms tailor and translate information to local customs and conven- tions. Fourth, security mechanisms manage the authen- ticity of and access to confidential or sensitive infor- mation. Fifth, cost-effect mechanisms assign values to entering and exiting a network and using the informa- tion it provides. Sixth, value-adding mechanisms allow users to customize and contextualize their information on the network. Seventh, infrastructural mechanisms control access to the network at algorithmic and infra- structural levels. Eighth, user interaction mechanisms govern a network’s level of interactivity, modality, and navigability (e.g., Sundar, 2008). Ninth, editorial mechanisms govern content decisions in much the same way as traditional gatekeeping theory and, final- ly, regulation meta-mechanisms at state, national, or governmental levels may overrule any of the other mechanisms, depending on the makeup of its network gatekeepers (Barzilai-Nahon, 2008).

A network gatekeeper is an “an entity (people, organization, or government) that has the discretion to

exercise gatekeeping through a gatekeeping mecha- nism” (Barzilai-Nahon, 2008, p. 1497). Barzilai- Nahon identifies two dimensions of network gatekeep- ers: an authority dimension, which classifies network gatekeepers according to their level of authority over the gated, and a functional dimension, which organizes network gatekeepers according to the level of control they exercise over the gatekeeping mechanism. Within the authority dimension are governmental, industry regulator, internal authority, and individual levels. At the governmental level, network gatekeepers are gov- ernments. Different types of governments will use gatekeeping mechanisms in different ways, with non- democratic states more likely to use gatekeeping mech- anisms to limit access to information (e.g., age-limits on pornographic content). At the industry regulator level, public or private entities can establish and enforce gatekeeping mechanisms within a given indus- try, either in collaboration with or independent of gov- ernmental regulation (e.g., cable television controls). At the internal authority level, an organization itself exercises control of the gatekeeping mechanism (e.g., Facebook privacy controls). At the individual level, individuals monitor their own or their families access to information (e.g., parents limit their children’s access to television or Internet content).

Within the functional dimension, network gate- keepers can be infrastructure providers, authority site properties, or network administrators. First, infrastruc- ture providers, including network, Internet, and carrier service companies, determine the speed and flow of information passing through a network. Second, authority site properties and their search, portal, or con- tent providers act as gatekeepers by controlling which information Internet users see first or most often. Lastly, network gatekeepers may be designated net- work administrators or content moderators (e.g., news- paper employee tasked with regulating an online mes- sage board), or also individuals who play a network gatekeeping role (e.g., YouTube users who flag inap- propriate material)

Finally, network gatekeeping is the “process of controlling information as it moves through a gate” (p. 1496) through not only selection of news, but also addition, withholding, display, channeling, shaping, manipulation, timing, localization, integration, disre- gard, and deletion of information. Three of these capacities—channeling manipulation, and repetition— are of particular importance for conceptualizing net- work gatekeeping on social networks such as

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Facebook, Digg, and Twitter, platforms to which net- work gatekeeping applies (Barzilai-Nahon, 2008, p. 1497) but has not yet been considered.

B. Gatekeeping on social networks A 2010 report by the Pew Research Center

revealed that 75% of people who read news online get it through social networks. On social networks, users can participate in the gatekeeping process by offering feedback and comments on a particular selection, even if they do not post content themselves, and by forwarding, sharing, and posting links to news stories. Also, traditional news outlets may be only the first or, as is often the case among Digg.com users, the last link in a chain of sources and hyperlinks where news is not only selected by editors, but also funneled through the Web, where it is “amplified, sustained, and potentially morphed as it is re-circulated, reworked, and reframed by online networks” (Goode, 2009, p. 1293) in several ways, identified by Flew and Wilson (2008) as content work, networking, commu- nity work, and technical work.

First, although its goals differ from traditional journalism, the content work of network gatekeepers resembles traditional gatekeeping in that network gate- keepers edit, create, and disseminate content that con- forms to journalistic standards and norms. Second, net- working establishes relationships with other users and outlets to build a close-knit group of connections. Drawing attention to obscure news sites by bookmark- ing their articles on sites like Digg and forwarding or retweeting links to news articles on Facebook or Twitter can also be considered networking (Flew & Wilson, 2008). Third, community work includes skills such as registering on a site, creating a profile, and posting content. Similarly, technical work consists of tasks related to the technological affordances of a par- ticular medium which, as Barzilai-Nahon (2008) con- tends, exist within a horizon of gatekeeping power.

To “explore what new modes of gatekeeping power may be emerging” (Goode, 2009, p. 1295), this review article now explicates network gatekeeping on Digg.com, Facebook, and Twitter, three social networks that represent network gatekeeping’s capacity for manipulating, channeling, and repeating information.

C. Network gatekeeping on Digg In the context of network gatekeeping, Barzilai-

Nahon (2008) defines manipulation as “changing infor- mation by artful or unfair means to serve the gatekeep-

er’s purpose” (p. 1497). When users of the news aggre- gator Digg.com submit news articles to the site, they can be either rewarded, if the submission is highly “dugg” and promoted to the front page, or punished, if the submission receives little attention. Although the site advertises itself as an editor-free “place where peo- ple can collectively determine the value of content” (Digg, 2010), users perform their own network gate- keeping by manipulating the aesthetics of news arti- cles, as well as digging, burying, sharing, or comment- ing on others’ submissions. Digg may be free of editors as conceptualized by traditional gatekeeping theory, but its users’ success is dependent on their network gatekeeping. With this in mind, this section first out- lines the uses of Digg and, second, further explicates the dynamics network gatekeeping on the site.

All content on Digg is submitted to a communi- ty of registered users. Users then “digg” articles that interest them. If a given submission receives enough diggs, it is promoted to the site’s front page along with a marker of the user who initially submitted it. Because a front page story on Digg.com can result in an increase of at least 12–15,000 visitors to the site of the news outlet that produced the story (Cohn, 2007), Digg.com buttons have become ubiquitous in online news and social networking environments. Since developing a custom widget that ranks the top five most dug stories on its website, Time Magazine’s presence on Digg.com has risen more than twofold, and its Digg-driven clicks increased from 500,000 to 1.3 million (Shields, 2009). The site has caused simi- lar traffic increases for Newsweek.com and Wired.com (Shields, 2009), making it an invaluable resource for advertisers targeting Digg.com’s tech- savvy audience in search of customizable options.

The site features a number of customizable options, including a choice between seeing the most recent content or the top content from the last one, seven, 30, or 365 days. In the most recent option, arti- cles are ranked according to the recency with which they were made popular or received enough diggs to appear on the homepage. In the top content option, arti- cles are ranked according to their number of diggs. In either option, articles are accompanied by a number of comments, choices to share or bury, the news outlet that produced the article, and the username of the Digg member who submitted it. While clicking on the share icon allows users to share a link to the article by email, Facebook, or Twitter, users can also initiate and respond to comments on the article, either digg or bury

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each comment, and sort comments by oldest, newest, most controversial, and most dugg. Clicking on the username of the user who submitted the article leads to that user’s profile, which features statistics such as number of diggs, submissions, and comments—their network gatekeeping scorecard.

Halavais (2009) argues that this scorecard encourages further participation on the site (p. 445). By sampling 30,000 of Digg’s 2.8 million users and down- loading all of the comments they made on the site and the total number of diggs and buries each comment received, Halavais found that comments by experi- enced users were generally positively correlated with both diggs and buries. This indicates that on Digg those with experience are more likely to receive a reaction, either positive or negative. However, while most users strove for positive feedback and reinforcement through a large number of diggs and small amount of buries, some, through racial and religious slurs, insults, and profanity, sought to become as little liked by other users as possible. He suggests that the rewards that encourage participation on the site also enforce a “process that trains users to behave in ways that con- form to community standards and expectations” (Halavais, 2009, p. 457). In other words, in the absence of traditional gatekeeping standards, network gate- keepers develop their own.

While comments containing the word “liar” were likely to be buried, especially when used in reference to another Digg user, comments by users who supported their arguments with credible sources were likely to be dugg, despite the site’s pride in operating without edi- torial authority (Halavais, 2009). Because the word “Digg” itself was associated with editorial authority, articles with “Digg” in them were likely to be buried, along with criticisms of spelling or grammar, two com- mon editorial tasks (Halavais, 2009). Although the level at which these processes occur is unclear, in the context of network gatekeeping they represent an abstraction of the relationship between gatekeepers and the gated in traditional gatekeeping theory, with Digg users relying on the wisdom of others to become good editors, then using that same wisdom to perpetuate their own editorial influence. Despite its claim to egal- itarian editorship, users of Digg have various levels of confidence in their fellow gatekeepers, much like tradi- tional gatekeeping theory would predict. However, whereas in traditional gatekeeping theory editors can be condescending toward their readers and lack confi- dence in readers’ gatekeeping ability (Gladney, 1996),

online networks such as Digg reverse this relationship by allowing the audience to determine the efficacy of each gatekeeper, an arrangement addressed in two con- troversial redesigns.

In August 2010 and July 2012, the site underwent significant redesigns, which made it aesthetically simi- lar to Facebook and functionally comparable to Twitter. Although the front page of the site has arguably been made more credible by the infusion of news items from traditional sources such as the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, and CNN, Digg’s most ardent users were unhappy with is the perceived infiltration of editorial authority from a select number of publishers (Bohn, 2012). Also, the bury button, which allowed users to give submissions a low rating, was removed. Nevertheless, gatekeeping on the site remains funda- mentally the same, and understanding the dynamics of network gatekeeping by Digg users will shed addition- al light on the complex and multi-layered motivations of network gatekeepers.

Whether they exhibit a similar condescension toward other users as editors show toward readers in print media, and whether these perceptions have changed with the design of the site, will be a crucial first step in determining if sites like Digg.com are polarizing or uniting network news consumers. Digg’s popularity, at least in part, has been attributed to the democratic ideals of equality and egalitarianism (e.g., Hargittai, 2000) but, because “there seems to be prima facie evidence of a powerful core of ‘elite’ at work” on the site, the relationships among its users has been termed an artistocracy, a popularity contest, and a Digg mafia (Goode, 2009, p. 11). Contrastingly, Digg users have argued that the most popular users earn their sta- tus through skill and hard work (Goode, 2009) or, from the perspective of network gatekeeping, through their effectiveness as gatekeepers. While this effectiveness is a function of artful manipulation of information, users may also perform a network gatekeeping function by channeling news through a social network, one of the least understood motivational mechanisms of Digg (Halavais, 2009) and the hallmark of Twitter.

D. Network gatekeeping on Twitter For Barzilai-Nahon (2008), channeling refers to

“conveying or directing information into or through a channel” (p. 1497). Introduced in 2006, Twitter is a microblogging service that has become a source of immediate, instantaneous news. It allows users to act as network gatekeepers by channeling news through the

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site. This environment provides an ideal venue for examining the gatekeeping decisions of both followers and the followed, or gatekeepers and the gated. This section will, first, review the uses and influence of Twitter and, second, discuss several studies with impli- cations for network gatekeeping.

Any user of Twitter can follow or be followed by any other without any necessary interaction or mutual approval. Followers receive all tweets from those they follow, which appear on the user’ s profile chronologi- cally. There is a well-defined language on the site which promotes brevity and conciseness within a 140 character limit. “Retweeting,” or forwarding the tweets of other users without their knowledge and beyond their scope, has become a popular means of dissemi- nating news items (Cha, Haddadi, Benevenuto, & Gummadi, 2010) and reinforcing a message (Watts & Dodd, 2007). Much like the sharing function on Facebook, links to stories or tweets themselves can be retweeted independently of their originator in real time. Although those looking to Twitter for news may miss newsworthy items among the “other chatter going on,” the biggest advantage of the site is this element of instantaneity (Weinberg, 2008, para. 3).

In one of the first studies to explore the implica- tions of instantaneity in the entire “Twittersphere,” Kwak, Lee, Park, and Moon (2010) examined 41.7 mil- lion profiles, 1.47 billion social interactions, and 106 million tweets to study, among many other variables, the distributions of reciprocity between followers and the followed, or gatekeepers and the gated. They found that most tweets are not reciprocated, but there is some evidence of homophily among users. Similarly, Cha and colleagues (2010) identified three types of a relat- ed concept—influence—that Twitter users may attain. First, in-degree influence refers simply to the number of followers a user has. It is a straightforward and overt marker of that user’s known audience (Cha et al., 2010). Second, retweet influence is the number of retweets that bear a particular user’s name. It is a more subtle way of tracking users’ influence outside of their network of followers, and measures their ability to pro- duce content likely to be enjoyed by a large number of users. Third, mention influence is measured by the number of times a user’s name is included in a tweet or retweet, and indicates the “ability of that user to engage others in a conversation” (p. 3). All of these types of influence are played out in network gatekeeping deci- sions, and largely determine the makeup of gatekeepers and the gated.

More recently, Xu and Feng (2014) examine con- versations between traditional journalists and Twitter users to determine the identity of gatekeepers and the political power of the gated in terms of online connec- tivity and political and issue involvement. They found that politically active Twitter users reached out most often to journalists with similar political leanings. Also, most of the interactions between journalists and citi- zens on Twitter occurred more than once, but were most often initiated and retweeted by citizens. Xu and Feng see network gatekeeping as inclusive and empowering of average citizens who may not have had the opportunity to interact with journalists, even though they reach out most often to those they agree with. The inclusiveness and openness of social media may expose citizens to new viewpoints but may also harden their existing opinions.

Leavitt, Burchard, Fisher, and Gilbert (2009) engaged this makeup by measuring the influence of 12 of the most popular Twitter users over a 10-day period. They found that while celebrities were men- tioned more often, news outlets were more influential in getting their information retweeted. Although Weng, Yao, Leonardi, and Lee (2010) found high lev- els of reciprocity in a nonrandom sample of nearly 7,000 Twitter users, Cha et al. (2010) found only 10% reciprocity in a random sample of users. These mixed results concerning levels of reciprocity have implica- tions for network gatekeeping because, as Barzilai- Nahon’s (2008) theory posits, one of the advantages of social networks like Twitter is the ability of the gated, in this case average Twitter users, to interact with gatekeepers, the 12 most popular Twitter users. Low reciprocity on Twitter would indicate a hierar- chical model of gatekeeping, not the horizontal model proposed by Barzilai-Nahon (2005).

Cha et al. (2010) provided an answer to this inconsistency by examining which particular network gatekeeping activities result in the most influence in what topic and at what time. They found that while news sites, politicians, athletes, and celebrities were highest in in-degree influence, news sites, content aggregators, and business sites were highest in retweet influence and, for the most part, celebrities were high- est in mention influence. Also, because fewer than 30% of “mentions” contained links to original sources, men- tions are identity-driven, and retweets more content- driven because they almost always contained a link to the original source (Cha et al., 2010). Cha and col- leagues also found that the most influential users of

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Twitter were public figures, websites, and content aggregators, and that there was little overlap between the three types of influence.

However, ordinary users can also become influ- ential gatekeepers. In the same study, 20 of the most followed users who discussed a single news topic were examined. Although unknown prior to the news topic they discussed, users who tweeted consistently about one topic increased their influence scores the most over the course of a particular event. This implies that users can become more influential gatekeepers by focusing on a single topic and tweeting detailed, insightful things about that topic rather than merely conversing with other users. This finding was confirmed by Huberman, Romero and Wu (2008), who examined over 300,000 Twitter users and discovered that, although the number of followers did increase with the number of posts, those users with many posts do not necessarily have many followers, making number of friends a more indicative marker of influence than number of followers.

For the purposes of network gatekeeping, these results show that two users who are linked on Twitter need not be interacting. Research that has looked only at traffic on the site without measuring influence has found that the top 10% of Twitter users post over 90% of total tweets on the site (Cheng & Evans, 2009), prompting Goode (2009) to posit that “social networks are not flat; they are hierarchical; and they are not as conversational as we often assume” (p. 1293). However, how gatekeepers interact with the gated— and who exactly plays these roles—has not been con- sidered in the context of news sharing and network gatekeeping. This review essay now turns to Facebook, the world’s largest social network (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), to lay out directions for future research in net- work gatekeeping theory.

E. Network gatekeeping on Facebook Facebook is a social network that allows users to

post pictures, comments, and status updates visible to self-chosen Facebook friends. Facebook users make choices about what information to add, withhold, and disregard, and how to shape, localize, and manipulate the information they channel through their profile. While much research has addressed motivations for using social networking sites and personal web pages (e.g., Banczyk, Kramer & Senokozlieva, 2008; Papacharissi, 2002), little has specifically analyzed Facebook in the context of network gatekeeping. Some

of the most applicable work to network gatekeeping theory has been done in the context of online news sharing, and the heuristics that motivate news sharing and consumption on Facebook.

Within a given network of Facebook friends, there exist a small number of users who consistently share links to news stories. When online news con- sumers go to Facebook for their news, these users are performing a gatekeeping function. The other members of a given network can easily go elsewhere for their news but, if they consistently follow one friend’s links to news stories, that friend is a network gatekeeper, either voluntarily or unknowingly. Facebook users vol- untarily include personal information on their profiles as a function of their trust in the site. Many teenagers are willing to sacrifice privacy for constant connectivi- ty and are more likely to give personal information to a perceived “friend” online even if the friend is fake. More recently, Facebook users have adapted to the public nature of the Internet with a reluctance to share private information on their public profiles.

Facebook users make judgments about to friend- ships and connections based on bandwagon heuristics and authority heuristics (Sundar, 2008). In the context of online news sharing, the bandwagon heuristic posits that, “if others think that this is a good story, then I should think so too” (Sundar, 2008, p. 83). Much e-commerce research has shown the power of the “bandwagon effect,” whereby products that are recommended by a large number of users are more likely to be purchased than those with no or a small number of recommendations. For instance, the more and more positive reviews a book has, the higher the sales (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006). Essentially, e- commerce websites recognize the need not only to sell books to consumers, but to “enable users to sell them to each other” interpersonally (Sundar, Xu, & Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2009, p. 3457). Many online con- sumers recognize this profusion of bandwagon cues and consider a site without them incredible or unrep- resentative (Sundar, Xu, & Oeldorf-Hirsch, 2009). In the context of Facebook, the number of “likes” on a profile will influence perceptions of the profile owner based on the bandwagon effect.

When the New York Times website displays the day’s most e-mailed, searched and blogged articles, and the Washington Post features a Facebook applica- tion displaying friends’ activity, readers assign agency to a mass of other users and trigger the bandwagon heuristic. In the context of online news, readers may

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make judgments of the quality and credibility of arti- cles, and the people and issues they are written about, under the blind direction of other anonymous users conveyed through interface cues. Sundar, Knobloch- Westerwich, & Hastall (2007) explored the effect of three such cues: the source of the article, number of related articles, and how recently it was posted, and found that although the source of an article was not considered credible, it was nevertheless rated as credi- ble and newsworthy when associated with a large num- ber of related articles, indicating the influence of a bandwagon heuristic. Similarly, in a study of an online news portal, Sundar and Nass (2001) found that users were more likely to choose and spend more time read- ing articles that had been strongly recommended by many other users. Likewise on Facebook, where users with lots of friends are seen as authorities.

As defined by Sundar, Oeldorf-Hirsch, and Xu (2008), the authority heuristic posits that “experts’ statements can be trusted” (p. 3455). In both face-to- face and technologically-mediated communication, deference to an authority figure “is likely to directly confer importance, believability, and pedigree to the content provided by that source and thereby positively impact its credibility” (Sundar, 2008, p. 84). Even in the context of online news aggregators and portals, each article is accompanied by the news outlet that pro- duced it, allowing Facebook users to make credibility judgments about other users. On Facebook, authority heuristics often compete with bandwagon heuristics. If heuristics are influencing the perceptions of Facebook users, then cues that trigger both the authority and bandwagon heuristics should “directly impact user per-

ceptions of message credibility” (Sundar, Knobloch- Westerwick, & Hastall, 2007) By juxtaposing the two heuristics, Sundar, Oeldorf-Hirsch, and Xu (2009) found that both are psychologically relevant, but band- wagon cues are generally more persuasive than author- ity cues, but only when consistent.

The distinction between authority and bandwag- on heuristics has implications for content-sharing on Facebook. By sharing content on Facebook produced outside Facebook, Facebook users blur the line between editor and user, bandwagon and authority. For instance, The Washington Post, one of the most credi- ble and recognizable American newspapers, has its masthead in the upper left-hand side of its online inter- face. On the right side is a Facebook Network News application, which allows users to view either the most popular stories of the day accompanied by the number of people who have shared them or a summary of their Facebook friends’ news-viewing activity. By logging into Washingtonpost.com using Facebook Connect, users can share, like, and comment on content, as well as see all the content their friends have shared, liked, or commented on. Also, users can read content recom- mended by their network, see what Washington Post content is most popular across Facebook, and keep a profile page showing the content with which their Facebook friends have interacted. Depending on whether Facebook profile owners psychologically con- sider themselves editors or part of a community of users, juxtaposing these two ontologically distinct edi- torial roles may not only allow the Washington Post to become much more social, as the site posits, but also much less credible.

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4. Conclusion

Gatekeeping theory began with individual gate- keepers and rippled outward to organizational and institutional routines, to the entire social field in which gatekeeping occurs. Network gatekeeping theory, too, must attend to the distinction between individual gate- keepers and network gatekeeping. A social networking site like Facebook, if users are considered sources of content themselves, could be considered individual gatekeeping but, if users are conceptualized as part of a community of users interacting with other profile owners, it would be considered collective gatekeeping.

These distinctions will determine the nature of rela- tionships among the gated and gatekeeper, dictate the capacities for gatekeeping in various gatekeeping mechanisms, and direct the motivations and practices of network gatekeepers. For instance, within a given network of Facebook friends, there exist small number of users who consistently share links to news stories. When online news consumers go to Facebook for their news, this small number of users is performing a gate- keeping function. Although the other members of that network can easily go elsewhere for their news—they

have alternatives, in terms of network gatekeeping—if they consistently follow a prominent news sharer’s links and psychologically consider that user a news source (see Sundar & Nass, 2001), the user is a net- work gatekeeper, and a very powerful one.

Equally ambiguously, when “individual users control information on their social networking site (SNS) profiles,” Facebook users may engage individ- ual gatekeeping but, because SNS “offers wall posts and other interactions between profile owners and their social networks,” (Hu & Sundar, 2010, p. 105), they may also be gatekeeping collectively. Little research to this point has addressed how, if Facebook users are considered editors of their own content, their relation- ship with friends in their network relates to the conde- scending and hierarchical relationship between editors and audiences in traditional journalism (Gladney, 1996) or, as more people use social networks as news sources (Purcell, Rainie, Mitchell, Rosenstiel, & Olmstead, 2010), whether Facebook users’ selection of content on their Facebook profiles begins to resemble their selective consumption of news. A similarity would not only complicate Barzilai-Nahon’s (2005, 2008, 2009) network gatekeeping theory, but also have implications for how heavy Facebook users interact in real life, given Facebook’s purported ability to alleviate the tedium of face-to-face communication (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2011).

Because the popularity of user-generated news sites is, at least in large part, attributable to the “demo- cratic ideals of equality, accountability, transparency, and empiricism” (Keegan & Gergle, 2010, p. 134), it is important to know if users of these collective sites abide by the same democratic principles when making individual decisions about the quality, credibility, and representativeness of online news and, more funda- mentally, the gatekeeping ability of fellow online news consumers. Answers to these questions about collective vs. individual gatekeeping on Digg, Facebook, and Twitter will ultimately reveal whether these technolo- gies merely indicate a shift in gatekeeping practices on the Web or signify a more fundamental and consequen- tial transformation of the way news in produced and consumed in a digital environment.

The Web poses paradigmatic challenges not only to news production and consumption, but also to tradi- tional understanding of gatekeeping theory. Barzilai- Nahon’s network gatekeeping theory responds to the challenge by rebuilding the infrastructure of gatekeep- ing theory through the gate, gated, gatekeeping, net-

work gatekeeper, and gatekeeping mechanism. Network gatekeeping theory extends traditional gatekeeping the- ory beyond selection of news to addition, withholding, display, channeling, shaping, manipulation, timing, localization, integration, disregard, and deletion of information. Social networks like Digg, Twitter, and Facebook allow for more open and diverse exchange of information. At the same time, with no trained editors, the sites may more closely resemble a supermarket tabloid than a social network. Whatever the outcome, this review of gatekeeping in general and of Barzilai- Nahon’s network gatekeeping theory in particular hopes to provide a first step towards a holistic understanding of network gatekeeping, one that allows researchers to keep up with the ever-changing online news landscape and better equips communication practitioners to map the trajectory of information on the Web.

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Sundar, S. S., Xu, Q., & Oeldorf-Hirsch, A. (2009). Authority vs. peer: How interface cues influence users. Proceedings from the 27th international conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI EA ‘09). New York: ACM, 4231–4236.

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Book Reviews

Campbell, Heidi A. and Gregory Price Grieve (Eds). Playing with Religion in Digital Games. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014. Pp. xii, 301. ISBN 978-0-253-01244-9 (cloth) $85.00; 978- 0-253-01253-1 (paper) $30.00; 978-0-253-01263-0 (e- book) $29.00.

Heidi Campbell and Gregory Grieve’s edited col- lection addresses the intersection of religion and video games, providing an outstanding resource, particularly for those with interests in communication and religion. They note that, in their volume, “digital gaming is explored as a field filled with potential for new insights into the place, presentation, and impact of religion with- in popular culture” (p. 2). As they situate the essays, they argue that scholars and researchers have neglected the connection between video games and religion for four

reasons: “games are widely considered simply a form of young people’s entertainment; video games are often seen as artificial or unvalued forms of expression; tech- nology is thought to be secular; and virtual gaming worlds are seen as unreal” (pp. 2–3). They then demon- strate the inaccuracy of each of these assumptions.

A few researchers have begun the study of reli- gion and gaming. Their brief review of the published work (really only a handful of books and some panels at the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion) indicates that researchers have followed one of several approaches: the use of video games in reli- gious education, the use of religion as a plot device or narrative background in games, and the connection between gaming and the performance of religion. Their volume expands these directions.

Campbell and Grieve divide the volume into three equal sections, each consisting of four chapters: explo- rations of religiously themed games, religion in main- stream games, and gaming as implicit religion.

In the first section, Jason Anthony presents a helpful typology. Looking at how games have played a role in ancient Greek religious practice, Anthony sees four categories: didactic games meant to teach or instruct; hestiasic games, those connected to a sacred festival or celebration; poimenic games in which “the divine is an active, interested player” (p. 31); and praxic games, which engage with the sacred, as for example in seeking the divine will. For each category, Anthony seeks contemporary digital games, but then adds some others. Allomythic games provide a first- person entry into a religious landscape, where players can practice one or another kind of ritual. Allopolitical games place the player in a virtual community (Second Life, for example) in which worship takes a natural place. Theoptic games “embrace the category of ‘god games’” in which “the player assume[s] the role of an all-seeing power, who controls the environmental cir- cumstances of the game world” (p. 42).

Other studies in the first section examine specific games and religious traditions. Isamar Carrillo Masso and Nathan Abrams present an analysis of The Shivah, a game set in a Jewish cultural tradition and featuring a Jewish detective. “The Shivah provides new ways and trajectories of being Jewish that move beyond other stereotypes and is based on the practice of Jewish faith” (p. 62). Xenia Zeiler turns to Hinduism with an analysis of the game, Hanuman: Boy Warrior, “the first entirely India-developed digital game based on Hindu mytholo- gy” (p. 66). In addition to providing a summary of the

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game and the debate that it triggered among Hindu organizations, which judged it disrespectful of religion, Zeiler argues that her “analysis uncovers the debates’s underlying processes of negotiating religious identity and authority in global, diaspora Hindu contexts” (p. 67). Her questions, developed in the Hindu context, apply equally well to any religiously themed game. Finally, Brenda S. Gardenour Walter examines games that deal with supernatural horror; many of these typi- cally draw on Christian imagery and ideas of the occult.

Section 2 offers studies of how religion appears in mainstream games. Vít Šisler shows how video games, which represent real world events, typically represent Islam; he contrasts games developed in the Arab and American contexts. As a context he notes that “existing research on Islam and video games can be divided into three clusters: (a) the representation of Muslims in Western games, (b) the construction of identity in Muslim games, and (c) the communication of Islamic moral and ethical values” (p. 110). To deepen these approaches, he looks at games from each context, exam- ining the audiovisual layer (images and presentation of characters and locations), the narrative layer (the story- line), and the procedural layer (the rule systems that guide the players). He concludes that the games draw on generic conventions as well as set topoi. Rabia Gregory focuses on medieval religious imagery and legends in multi-layer online role-playing games (MMORPG), in which players take on the identity of characters in the fantasy worlds. Situating the games within the context of theories of play and representation, she examines one game, Shadowbane. Noting that players in such game environments take on shared narratives, she concludes with an observation that more scholars should study “the coincidental similarities between body and avatar and body and soul, between ascending the spiritual ladder and grinding the gaming treadmill, between achieving salvation and leveling up, between meditating on a hand-painted woodcut while spinning and playing an MMORPG while making dinner” (p. 151). Shanny Luft turns to a specific subset of game players: “hardcore Christian gamers.” The title comes from a website on which players share their faith while they also exchange tales of their favorite, often violent, first-person shooter games. Using content analysis of the websites and ques- tionnaire research Luft “identified some ways in which Christian gamers are similar to mainstream hardcore games, and second, . . . identified how Christian gamers distinguish themselves through efforts to make their gaming practices adhere to the communal and ethical

standards of their religion” (p. 165). The last study in this section analyzes how game producers and compa- nies localize games culturally. Here Peter Likarish offers a case study of Actraiser and Actraiser 2, noting how the developers modified the original Japanese games, par- ticularly in terms of religious references, to gain accept- ance in the U.S. context.

Section 3 of the book offers a very different approach, with each essay arguing that game playing itself takes on a religious or ritual tone. Rachel Wagner builds on her earlier analyses of gaming and religion to find a parallel between religion and games, rejecting the idea that “religion is ‘serious’ whereas games are ‘fun’” (p. 193). Instead she argues that both require a sincerity for meaningful participation and that games fit well into many of the existing studies of the sociology of religion. Oliver Steffen asks, “what does a digital game need to be spiritually effective?” and examines The Path. In this, he notes several qual- ities of spiritual or religious experience, as described by researchers of religion: flow, meditation, a contrast between a cognitive orientation of empowerment and surrender, and morality. He applies these categories to his analysis of what is, on its surface, a non-religious game and finds evidence of each. Michael Waltenmathe analyzes playing games through the lens of Alfred Schutz’s theory of the life-world. In the chapter, he argues “that humor and play are the bridge between the worlds of video games and the actual world, because both the religious experience and the comic relieve us of the tense and fundamental anxiety of what Schutz calls the ‘paramount reality,’ the prag- matic world of working in daily life” (p. 239). Finally, Kevin Schut offers a kind of critique of the games-as- religion approach through his case study of Civilization IV. In this and in other games that offer a more explicit inclusion of religion, he notes that the games face a limit of their medium: all have a mech- anistic bias. To code any activity, the developers must assign points for religious acts and reduce religion to a kind of external practice. Noting that this is “a bias of representation” (p. 272, italics in original), he sug- gests that polysemy and multiple players can over- come it. He concludes, “it is worth being aware that, uncorrected by any contrary force, video games have a tendency to mechanize faith, presenting an impov- erished vision of what religions mean to adherents” (p. 273).

This edited collection is uniformly good and well worth reading. As the editors and authors note, the study

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of religion and gaming stands very near its beginning. They invite others to take up the study and this book offers a good starting point.

Each chapter has its own notes and reference list; the book has a gameography and index, as well as author information.

—Paul A. Soukup, S.J. Santa Clara University

Genosko, Gary. Remodelling Communication: From WWII to WWW. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Pp. 161. ISBN 978-1-4426- 4434-2 (cloth) $40.00; 978-1-4426-1583-0 (paper) $22.95; 978-1-4426-9972-4 (eBook) $22.95.

This book tackles a challenging issue of tracing the communication models from the beginning of the field of communication to the present. The focus is not so much on theories as on models, or the way theory connects with data that may test theory. In other words, models are for doing and not in themselves for thinking about communication. Genosko says, for example: “Models are productive—they do something—in the sense that they are designed to do, or have structures that, generate data about systems they represent . . . . The relationship between models and the systems they represent is sometimes called the validity relation where validity encompasses replication of systemic data, predictive capacity, and structural correspondence with the system at issue” (p. 7). But this quote is sim- ply the author’s précis of the positivistic model with which he begins, i.e., Shannon and Weaver. He goes on in subsequent chapters not to deconstruct this model but to place it in some kind of historical perspective as the beginning of the process. This process will include the encoder-decoder model of Hall; the poetic literary model of Jakobson and his critique by Baudrillard’s simulacrum theory of communication; the guerrilla decoding of Eco; the dangers of seeking a megamodel of Gerbner and its contrary movement by Guattari in his singularity model. The book draws some general conclusions in a final chapter.

Before briefly skimming the content chapters, here are some suggestions for reading this interesting if challenging book. For mass communication readers, the citations from cultural studies are sometimes if not always abstruse, but generally most readers recognize Shannon and Weaver, Stuart Hall, and Fiske. From Cultural studies, readers will recognize most of the ref- erences from their own background. For all readers

there is the complexity of references to the history of science that may not be familiar. The style is also a bar- rier. The author delves into complex territory, but uses vocabulary that is confusing and a writing style that not so much has long sentences, but ones that are constant- ly interrupted by explanatory parentheses. This may require a closer reading of the whole book and a rereading of the long introduction. All this noted, I sug- gest that this is an intriguing and important book. It argues that even Shannon and Weaver can be interpret- ed as a model that makes good sense for the basic engi- neering behind communication technologies, past and present, and that Weaver and Schramm connect Shannon’s original theory to the human and social aspects of communication. From there the author argues for the cultural studies models of Hall, Fiske, and Jakobson; and against the pessimistic assessment of Baudrillard. He questions Eco and Fiske’s limita- tions of decoding but approves their emphasis on the freedom of the decoders to make their own kinds of meaning from a given text. His treatment of Guattari argues for more freedom from the confines of models themselves and the suggestion that “the danger is the relative ease with which one may mistake an explana- tory for a descriptive model and unduly restrict inves- tigation by taking the model too literally. Models, in other words, must be handled with care” (p. 127). The author does not dismiss what has been done in the past, including models from mass communication, but asks the reader to be careful not to look back but forward to testing models in today’s world of digital plenty and to see the unexpected and even aberrant as fertile ground for modeling and exploration.

The book contains complete references and some commentary in footnotes and a detailed index.

—Emile McAnany Santa Clara University

Gustafsson, Karl Erik and Per Rydén. A History of the Press in Sweden. Göteborg: NORDICOM-Sverige, 2010–2011. Pp. 369. ISBN 978-91-86523-08-4 (paper) SKR 250.00.

Most media scholars in the United States and England will know, at least in outline, the history of the English-language press, from its beginnings in London. Those in the U.S. may also have some famil- iarity with the foreign-language press in their country, a press that flourished in various immigrant commu- nities beginning in the late 19th century and that still

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exists today in parts of the country. However, most will probably not know much (if anything) about the history of the press in other countries.

This history of the press in Sweden provides an outstanding remedy. Condensed from the original four- volume work, this more or less chronological history offers a wealth of insights into the development of the press and the (often similar) challenges it has faced in the Nordic region. The authors note, “While shortening the text, however, we have added new research results. We have discovered new patterns and connections that were not previously apparent to us” (p. 11). Though they had to limit illustrations and back matter to fit the one-volume limit, they do make the bibliography and references available on the project’s website (www.presshistoria.org). Given their approach to the history, Gustafsson and Rydén note that “a history of the Swedish press, such as the present one, deals pri- marily with those newspapers and magazines that were printed, had a number of issues, were generally avail- able in Sweden, and have been preserved” (p. 13).

While a review like this cannot really summarize the book without simply repeating its history, it can point out some key facts. The history of the Swedish press begins in 1645 (p. 18). And much of the output of the Swedish press has been preserved, thanks to a gov- ernment edict in 1661 mandating the preservation of at least a copy of every printed work. Not surprisingly, major cities (Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Lund) had papers, but so did a number of provincial towns.

The Swedish press did not exist in isolation, but borrowed ideas from foreign publications (p. 28); like most European governments, the Swedish government placed some censorship restrictions, which affected the development of the press. However, a constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press dates from 1766; the authors point out, “Not only was it path breaking in Sweden, even in an international context it was a remarkable document. At the time, no other country had gone as far in guaranteeing the freedom of the press” (p. 41). And, similar to the case in most other countries, the Swedish press history often becomes the history of influ- ential individuals—owners, publishers, editors, writers, and their spouses who often carried on the work.

Each century offers its own developments: from liberalism in the early 19th century to a political press in the later part of that century to press wars in the early 20th century. The period between the wars (1920–1940) saw great growth while the 1950s witnessed structural changes, which still affect papers today.

The volume details not only the newspaper histo- ry, but also that of magazines and their sometimes spe- cialized audiences. And it addresses the fragmentation of the audience in recent years, along with the rise of digital or online papers.

The book provides an excellent and readable introduction to press history in Sweden. The authors add some context of the history of Sweden, since press history takes place within that national history.

The book features two indices: one of people and one of publications. As noted, apart from a few illus- trations of front pages, all other images and the full bib- liography appear on the website.

—Paul A. Soukup, S. J. Santa Clara University

Hepp, Andreas. Cultures of Mediatization. (K. Tribe, Trans.) Malden, MA and Cambridge, UK: Polity (2013). Pp. ix, 166. ISBN 978-0-7456-6226-8 (cloth) $64.95; 978-0-7456-6227-5 (paper) $22.95; 978-0- 7456-6349-4 (e-book) $18.99.

This English translation of Andreas Hepp’s German work (originally published in 2011) provides an excellent introduction to and summary of much of the literature on mediatization, including discussion of Hepp’s own work. The term, “mediatization,” may appear somewhat unfamiliar to U.S. English speakers, though the concept itself runs through much current communication research. Hepp argues that media cul- tures are many layered and include, at minimum, the concepts of communication, medium, and culture. Since all three interact in complex ways, he seeks to develop a way to study them. He explains, “I would in this book like to show that media cultures are those cul- tures whose primary resources are mediated by techno- logical means of communication, and in this process are ‘molded’ in various ways that must be carefully specified. That is the reason why I call them ‘cultures of mediatization’” (p. 5). These cultures, which “have increasingly left their mark on our everyday life, our identity, and the way in which we live together” deserve study “because the significance of this transi- tion [to a media culture] is underrated” (p. 1).

Hepp organizes the book straightforwardly. Chapter 2 presents a “via negativa,” explaining what media culture is not; Chapter 3, a look at an initial def- inition of mediatization; Chapter 4, a more in-depth examination of media culture in the light of mediatiza- tion; Chapter 5, “how we live in different forms of

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translocal communities” (p. 6), made possible by medi- atization; and Chapter 6, an exploration of method- ological approaches to studying such media cultures.

Chapter 2—the negative approach—begins with the direct statement, “media culture is neither a mass culture, nor the culture of a particular dominating medium (either books, TV, or the world-wide web); nor is it a program that integrates us into one society, or a cyberculture that gradually enmeshes us and turns us into cyborgs or cyberpunks” (p. 7). To sup- port this statement, Hepp reviews media studies from the work of the Frankfurt School to the present, exam- ining the work of scholars such as Horkheimer and Adorno; Innis, McLuhan, and Meyrowitz; Beniger and Schmidt; Silver, Rheingold, Gauntlett, and Jenkins. His chapter subheadings provide a quick guide to his thought as to what does not characterize a media culture. At the risk of repetition, the scholars whose work he reviews follow the headings:

• omnipresent, but not a mass culture (Horkheimer and Adorno)

• marked by the medium, but not dominated by one medium (Innis, McLuhan, Meyrowitz)

• constitutive of reality, but no integrative program (Beniger, Schmidt)

• technologized, but not a cyberculture (Silver, Rheingold, Gauntlett, Jenkins)

The chapter offers a good introduction to the arc of media studies most relevant to Hepp’s thesis.

Chapter 3 introduces the thought of a number of researchers who get at the idea of mediatization in var- ious ways. These include John B. Thompson, Nick Couldry, Sonia Livingstone, Otto Groth, Jesús Martín- Barbero, Roger Silverstone, David Altheide, Robert Snow, Stig Hjarvard, Friedrich Krotz, Bruno Latour, and Raymond Williams. From each he draws one or another aspect of the role and impact of media on soci- ety to develop the larger concept. Two important defi- nitions or descriptions anchor the discussion. Quoting Thompson, Hepp accepts an initial concept:

If we focus . . . not on values, attitudes, and beliefs, but rather on symbolic forms and their modes of production and circulation in the social world, then we shall see that, with the advent of modern societies in the late medieval and early modern periods, a systematic cultural transfor- mation began to take hold. By virtue of a series of technical innovations associated with printing and, subsequently, with the electrical codifica- tion of information, symbolic forms were pro- duced, reproduced, and circulated on a scale that

was unprecedented. Patterns of communication and interaction began to change in profound and irreversible ways. These changes, which com- prise what can loosely be called the “mediaza- tion of culture,” had a clear institutional basis: namely, the development of media organiza- tions, which first appeared in the second half of the 15th century and have expanded their activi- ties ever since. (Thompson, 1995, p. 46, quoted in Hepp, p. 30)

After careful development, Hepp moves from Thompson’s “mediazation” to a more nuanced sense of mediatization, this time quoting the work of Friedrich Krotz:

A differentiated and formalized definition of mediatization can and should not be presented here, because mediatization qua definition in a given form is always specific to a particular time and culture, so that any definition has to be based upon historical investigation.

Mediatization as a process cannot be decon- textualized, not on the historical, social, and cul- tural planes. (Krotz, 2007, p. 39, emphasis in original, quoted in Hepp, p. 51)

Mediatization emerges as a social and cultural process, connected to the media and the ways in which media interact with societies.

Chapter 4 builds on this. “Mediatization is . . . more a conceptual construct, like individualization, commercialization, or globalization; and to be understood as a panorama of a sustained metaprocess of change” (p. 69). Here, Hepp follows the pattern of introducing the work of various media scholars and drawing on them to flesh out the con- cepts. Here he examines the ideas of mediatized worlds, networks of communication, and the figura- tions of communication. The challenge for commu- nication theorists lies in describing such complex realities. This connects to the discussion of Chapter 5 on how various communities and social move- ments connect to or exist within the media cultures. How does community formation occur within such powerful overarching configurations of media? How does personality emerge or distinguish itself? In this chapter, Hepp considers the ideas of locality and translocality, and territory and de-territorialization, again drawing on a variety of communication and sociological research.

Chapter 6 offers idea on ways to study mediatiza- tion. Acknowledging that such a methodological

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description would require another book, Hepp offers a briefer overview. “Something different can be done here: we can outline a methodological framework for empirical research into cultures of mediatization, and this is what the following seeks to do. As an outline, it will be organized into four phases: the development of theory; decentering; pattern analysis; and, finally, tran- scultural comparison” (p. 127). The latter point, though only described in outline, lies at the heart of Hepp’s way into mediatization—a comparison of various media cultures.

Cultures of Mediatization provides, in a short book, a very comprehensive introduction to an overar- ching theory of media and society. Just the summaries of the various strands of thought from which Hepp draws the idea of mediatization repay careful study. Each situates the larger history of communication research, showing how the study of communication has developed through time. The book belongs on every advanced media studies syllabus.

As expected, the book contains a reference list and an index.

—Paul A. Soukup, S.J. Santa Clara University

References Krotz, F. (2007). Mediatisierung: Fallstudenien zum Wandel

von Kommunikation. Wiesbaden: VS. Thompson, J. B. (1995). The media and modernity: A social

theory of the media. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kowalski, Dean A. Moral Theory at the Movies: An Introduction to Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. Pp. 359. ISBN 978-0-7425-4787-2 (paper) $64.95; 978-1-4422-1455-2 (eBook) $54.99

Dean Kowalski provides a gift, a literary triumph that greatly assists educators in explaining and clarify- ing ethical theory in the college and university class- room. He strategically structures this by using popular films as foundational examples to explain ethical theo- ry. In each chapter, he introduces the necessary ele- ments of ethical theory, applying a lead filmic example used to explain the elements, followed by an “anchor- ing” of two additional films (p. xi). This creative struc- tural choice successfully and clearly communicates each element of ethical theory, in that there are many scenes in the films that thoroughly exemplify each the- oretical element. Upon seeing this, students understand how the films’ scenes explain the theoretical concepts,

giving them a better understanding of the concepts, achieved through viewing the films.

In Chapter One, “Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Moral Reasoning,” Kowalski begins by setting the tone to apply the film Thank You For Smoking (2005) as an explanatory tool for the ethical theory elements. Kowalski first summarizes the film, while at the same time applying a foreshadowing-based guide in a series of “page boxes” that instructs students and instructors alike about how to apply and understand the ethical theory elements to the film’s key scenes: an effective tactic he uses for all chapters. Also, he includes an additional page box in which he explains the chapter’s learning outcome; in this case, he makes clear that the goal is for the student to understand Plato’s explanation of ethically significant concepts and the differences between philosophy, rhetoric, and sophistry. Here, as in all 12 chapters, Kowalski strongly encourages and expects the instructor to show each motion picture in class first, then examine key scenes that explain each concept. After going through the film’s summary, Kowalski introduces and defines rhetoric and its rela- tionship to persuasion and knowledge, doing this through an excerpt of Plato’s Republic (p. 6). It is after this introduction that Kowalski, in his discussion and analysis section of the chapter, clearly defines ethics and philosophy (p. 12). In addition, he explains the structure of philosophical arguments (pp. 12–15) applying the film Minority Report (2002) as the film that adds value to the clear understanding of the con- cepts. Here, for example, he explains the two basic kinds of arguments, deductive and non-deductive, and follows up with additional clarity by applying the films’ premise as a way of explaining how some philo- sophical arguments successfully establish their argu- ments, when others fail to do so (pp. 14–15). Afterwards, he takes the time to summarize the film, along with the third film, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (2008). Here, he uses this film’s example as a way of explaining the nature of ethical judgments and the concept of moral evaluation (pp. 20 and 21). It is here where the reader sees that upon first reading the three films’ summaries, viewing the films, and then reading and reviewing each film’s application to the concepts associated with ethical theory that a very high degree of understanding and clarification is available to them.

We are then introduced to Part 1, “Metaethics,” which leads to Chapter 2, “Simple Ethical Subjectivism.” For this chapter, Kowalski immediately introduces the summary of Match Point (2005).

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Afterwards, he introduces the next “instructional box,” informing the instructor and the student the key emphatic scenes that will assist in explaining the upcoming concepts related to ethical subjectivism. After accomplishing these two tasks, he explains the historical setting related to the theory’s creator, David Hume, and uses excerpts from his works A Treatise of Human Nature and An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (pp. 44–46). He also provides an additional informative “box” in which he makes clear that a key learning outcome for this chapter is for the student to understand Hume’s definition, explanation, and utilization of his ideas related to metaethics. Here Kowalski reveals a key reason for studying Hume’s work in emphasizing that “the concept of truth is one of the most fundamental and difficult philosophical top- ics” (p. 47). He defines the differences between sub- jective and objective truths. Also, he defines and explains Simple Ethical Subjectivism and uses exam- ples from Match Point (2005), The Shape of Things (2003), and The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), fol- lowed by plot summaries of the latter two films. The instructor and the student continue to benefit from Kowalski’s bookending of the three films’ plot sum- maries, with the first one at the beginning and the lat- ter two at the end, while weaving key moments in each film to further explain Hume’s theoretical framework.

In Chapter 3, “Moral Relativism,” Kowalski explains this example of ethical theory by showing that morality is related to the group that is interpreting it. His first film choice, Hotel Rwanda (2004), is an effec- tive beginning. This film contains real-life happenings based on one group’s determination of moral decisions related to those of another. Kowalski, like in the previ- ous chapters, continues with the summary, coupled with the instructional box that indicates key scenes that clearly show how the film is helping to explain moral relativism. Kowalski then introduces in summary the importance of the work of William Graham Sumner, while encouraging the student readers to think about the key scenes that “most effectively portray Sumner’s thesis (p. 69). Kowalski then states how along with Hotel Rwanda (2004), he is also going to apply the films The Joy Luck Club (1993) and Do the Right Thing (1989) to showing “how the ideas of ethnocen- trism and (especially) tolerance seem paradoxically problematic for the moral relativist,” and how all three films are “conducive to learning about moral rela- tivism” (p. 74). Kowalski applies the structural ele- ments of moral relativism to key scenes in all three

films, emphasizing how Sumner’s concepts of culture, ethnocentrism, tolerance, and moral progress and reform are elements that clarify and explain his theory. The chapter’s clarifying strengths regarding the student reader’s understanding of moral relativism is the choice of the three films, each one containing scenarios in which the elements of Sumner’s theoretical structure literally “play themselves out” onscreen. For example, Kowalski emphasizes director Spike Lee’s controver- sial sequence in Do the Right Thing (1989) in which some of the film’s characters spew out racial slurs at an ethnic group that’s different from their own, therefore emphasizing examples of the lack of tolerance in soci- ety (p. 77). Kowalski continues the effective summa- rizing of the latter two films while also ensuring that the student reader understands the differences between moral relativism and simple ethical subjectivism.

For Chapter 4, “Divine Command Theory Ethics,” Kowalski first summarizes the horror film Frailty (2001) and uses it, along with the films Evan Almighty (2007), and The Boondock Saints (1999) as films that are “expressive of themes relevant to divine command theo- ry (p. 98). Also, Kowalski includes an excerpt of Plato’s writing of the discussion between Socrates and Euthyphro as the first written account of a debate about “an ethics of divine command” (p. 98). Here, Kowalski explains the elements of this theory by defining divine command theory. In the chapter’s section titled “Contemporary Divine Command Theory,” he explains the theory’s essential feature: that ethical judgments are made true solely by divine decree or command (p. 99). Afterwards, Kowalski succeeds in weaving in examples from all three films, further clarifying that each chosen scene emphasizes each film’s interpretation of a key concept of the theory: that “an act is morally right (oblig- atory) or wrong (impermissible) only because God so deems it (p. 100). At the same time, Kowalski goes an additional step in emphasizing recent modifications of the theory by stating that “modified divine command theorists would agree: all of God’s commands are made from love, which is the supreme value” (p. 107). Also, before he summarizes the two remaining films, Kowalski makes it clear that “divine command theory (especially in its classic, non-modified form) seemingly offers a skewed picture of the divine nature” (p. 108). It is from this part of the chapter that the student, after see- ing all three films and reading the remaining summaries, can gain a clear understanding of the theory.

The focus of Chapter 5 concentrates on explaining Ethical Objectivism. Kowalski chooses The Cider

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House Rules (1999) as the first film that he summarizes and guides the student to the key anticipated scenes that explain the theory. Afterwards, he introduces the stu- dent to theorist Thomas Reid who was known for “championing the role of common sense in philosophi- cal inquiry” (p. 119), and also includes an excerpt of his work Essays on the Active Powers of Man. For this chapter’s learning outcomes, Kowalski emphasizes that he wants the student to understand how the theory explains “the existence of ‘truths of reason,’ the distinc- tion between moral principles and moral facts, and how these can be used in a case to support ethical objec- tivism” (p. 125). Further, Kowalski immediately clari- fies his application of the theory to the first film by stat- ing that The Cider House Rules implicitly raises the issue of “how moral rules apply to our daily lives” and that this film “can be interpreted as expressing the metaethical ideal that each of us regularly invents—and reinvents—our own moral rules” (p. 124). This is an important connection in which the student, after view- ing all three films, should immediately take note; the application of the theory to the first film, the remaining two films’ summaries, Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and Shindler’s List (1993), and the “ethical objectivism is in the eye of the beholder” factor based on the fact that all three films have unique differences in which one can apply and explain the theory.

Part 2, titled “What Ought I to Do” segues into Chapter 6, “Biology, Psychology, and Ethical Theory,” and introduces the plot summary of the film Cast Away (2000). Afterwards, he introduces the importance of Thomas Aquinas, including an excerpt of Summa Theologica. Kowalski explains Aquinas’ “explicating the nature of moral truth generally” (p. 151). Also, he points out that throughout the upcoming areas of the chapter he will discuss how ethical objectivism is a nor- mative or moral theory which “attempts to articulate important and universally binding ethically significant truths” and how “moral theories strive to delineate posi- tions that are impartial and free from arbitrary authority” (p. 151). Next, Kowalski, in revealing the learning out- comes, lets the student know that in addition to the film Cast Away, he is also going to consider the films Spider- Man 2 (2004) and Boys Don’t Cry (1999) writing that all three film “are conducive to better understanding the nature of moral theories generally and ethical egoism and natural law ethics specifically” (p. 152). For exam- ple, Kowalski effectively explains ethical egoism, apply- ing it to Spider-Man 2 in which the main character tem- porarily concentrates on promoting things that are for his

well-being apart from the superhero persona, but then eventually changes his mind. Kowalski uses the Peter Parker character’s “before” state of being to explain this theoretical framework. In the conclusion, Kowalski shows and states that elements of ethical theory such as the concept of natural law are subject to theoretical inter- preters, with the understanding that their belief systems are a factor, regarding their acceptance or rejection of such concepts.

In Chapter 7, “Utilitarianism,” Kowalski first sum- marizes the film Extreme Measures (1996). After cover- ing the plot summary the scenes that help explain the theory, he introduces the student reader to John Stuart Mill and includes an excerpt of his work Utilitarianism. He uses the excerpt to define the theory which states that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness (p. 177). After doing so, he now introduces the inclusion of the remaining two films, Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). Kowalski first defines the theory by stating that “the utilitarian doctrine is that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to an end” (p. 181). Kowalski’s choice of all three films greatly increases the understanding in that all choices have to do with the the- oretical framework’s interpretation of just what human beings will do in order to satisfy, from the point of view of utilitarianism, their quest for what they define as whatever needs to be done to achieve happiness. All three films contain main characters who choose to do certain things to accomplish their personal definition of happiness, all in different situations and different ways. Therefore, the strength of the chapter centers upon the means by which each film’s main characters seek to achieve their own version of happiness. Kowalski uses each film to indicate that each character choice empha- sizes the presence of the theory in that despite each char- acter’s “moral center” or “ethical state of mind,” they are convinced that they must engage in a certain number of tasks to achieve a level of happiness—tasks of the kind that results in their own peace of mind. Upon viewing the films and reading the summaries followed by their reading of Mills excerpt, the student should have a clear understanding of the basic foundation of the theory.

In Chapter 8, “Kant and Respect for Person Ethics,” Kowalski summarizes the film based on Dr. Seuss’ story Horton Hears a Who! (2008). As in previ- ous chapters, Kowalski also applies trivia to accompa- ny the film’s summary, further challenging the student

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readers to increase their knowledge of the film’s narra- tive elements, a strategy that will also add value to their understanding of the application of the upcoming theo- retical examples. Kowalski then introduces the works of Immanuel Kant through and excerpt from his work titled The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. It is after this excerpt that Kowalski defines Kant’s theo- retical structure as one in which he (Kant) “believes that only rationality—the careful use of one’s reason—has the potential to corral our desires and be informative as to what, necessarily, we ought and ought not to do” (p. 214). Kowalski adds the films 3:10 to Yuma (2007) and Amistad (1997) as others to which he applies Kant’s philosophical thoughts. He also uses the first film, which emphasizes the main character’s keeping his word no matter what, as an example that demonstrates Kant’s theoretical framework. He does this when after showing Horton the Elephant’s statement that “I said what I meant, and meant what I said,” he follows up by stating that “Kant held that persons, as inherently rational, possess the unique ability to provide reason and ultimately principles for their (our) behaviors” (p. 216). Here, Kowalski is stating and following up with examples from all three films, (something that the stu- dent reader will realize after viewing the films). All three main characters, although embroiled in vastly dif- ferent scenarios, stick to what they believe are the cor- rect ethical actions. Although others don’t see the rationality of their actions, Kowalski emphasizes that they see it, and are going to continue to behave in what they understand as ethical behavior.

For Chapter 9, “Social Contract Theory: Hobbes, Locke, and Rawls” Kowalski first summarizes the film V for Vendetta (2006) as a starting point for explaining the theory. After summarizing the film, he then intro- duces an excerpt from Hobbes’ work Leviathan. Before this excerpt, Kowalski prepares the student readers by stating that Hobbes “explicates his ideas about the just state” (p. 240). He also indicates that their preparatory measures should also consist of viewing the remake of the film Lord of the Flies (1990). After laying this foun- dation, in which he applies key scenes of the first two films as a way of increasing the student readers’ com- prehension of social contract theory, Kowalski, in his learning outcomes, adds the third film, Serenity (2005). He states that one of the primary goals for the chapter is to reveal “what philosophers mean by a state of nature and the important role this idea plays in social, political, and moral philosophy” (p. 246). His other key goal is to show “the ethically significant differences between

Hobbes and Locke, and how the later attempts to defend the possession of natural, human rights” (p. 246). He also provides an important historical framework too, informing the student reader that Hobbes’ living through troubling times in England, including the English civil war . . . seemingly influenced his views on political philosophy” (p. 245). Kowalski continues by especially using the first two films to show the funda- mental differences between Hobbes and Locke, explaining their interpretation of moral law as it applies to social contract theory. He effectively applies Hobbes’ theoretical interpretation to Lord of the Flies while applying Locke’s structural viewpoint to V for Vendetta. He uses the two films to show that from a narrative standpoint, both filmic examples contain unique exam- ples of how individuals or groups respond to what philosophers term here as a state of nature. Kowalski defines this term as well, stating that “philosophers of the Enlightenment were preoccupied with the idea of pregovernment existence, hypothetical or not” (p. 245). His explication, which clarifies the differing interpreta- tions of the two theorists is a significant and effective choice; one that results in an understandable structure for the student reader. Finally, Kowalski introduces Rawls’ “justice as fairness” approach to social contract theory. He states that Rawls “believes those in the orig- inal position will agree to two basic principles: first, everyone in society must have equal political rights and duties; second, the only justifiable economic inequali- ties are those required to make everyone in society bet- ter off” (p. 256). It is here that he uses the premise of the film Serenity as an effective example that displays ele- ments associates with Rawls’ theoretical interpretation of social contract theory.

Part 3, “How Ought I to Be” introduces the stu- dent reader to Chapter 10, “Aristotle and Virtue Ethics.” Kowalski first summarizes the film Groundhog Day (1993), indicating which scenes are helpful in explicat- ing the theoretical framework, and then introduces the student readers to Aristotle through an excerpt from Aristotle’s work Nicomachean Ethics. This action pro- vides an effective segue into the learning outcomes, in which he states one of his key goals: to show “the unique way in which virtue ethics defines “right action” and why some find virtue ethics problematic as a result” (p. 278). At the same time, before applying Aristotle’s virtue ethics to Groundhog Day, and the remaining two films, The Last Samurai (2003), and As Good As It Gets (1997), Kowalski defines and clarifies Aristotle’s foun- dational theoretical structure. He states that Aristotle

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believes that “each thing invariably has a primary func- tion . . . which makes it unique from every other thing, and this can be determined by observing its behavior” (p. 278). He goes on to explain that Aristotle believed that once human beings achieved a level of excellence, this is a “regular or habitual” occurrence and not an “accidental or occasional” one. He goes on to explain that once human beings achieve this level of excellence, they are virtuous human beings that “have actualized an ideal state of (professional) being” (p. 278). Kowalski also states that Aristotle believed that “a person can likewise achieve excellence and thus flourish as a human being (p. 279). It is at this time that Kowalski reveals that he has chosen three films where all three main characters who are professionally successful but maladjusted in other areas of their lives, must literally go through various trials mainly of their own making to eventually become a well-adjusted human being. Once the student readers view all three films and read the plot summaries, they are then ready to go through Aristotle’s excerpt and successfully tie it to Kowalski’s clear and understandable explanations of the theory and connect the information to many of the three film’s scenes.

Chapter 11 “Care and Friendship” begins with Kowalski’s summary of and application of the film Vera Drake (2004) to the explication of the theory of the ethics of care. In this chapter, Kowalski’s goal, through the application of the first film, and the remaining films, Life is Beautiful (1997) and The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008) is to demonstrate “how an ethics of care offers a distinctive approach to ethics, and so, how it differs with more venerable theories like Kantian-based systems and utilitarianism” (p. 306). Also, Kowalski indicates that he also wants to show how the themes represented in the three films “are conducive to better understanding ethical issues associated with care and friendship.” (p. 306). Kowalski follows this structure with an excerpt of Nel Noddings’ work Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Kowalski successfully connects Noddings’ work to all three films by analyzing the lead characters in all three films that have “others-centeredness” in common: they all consider themselves as doing the best they know how, regarding the action of sincerely caring for the well-being of others. He states that Noddings empha- sizes that “moral judgments are . . . more akin to atti- tudes or stances taken given a more emotional approach to the world, and one grounded in caring for those we encounter” (p. 309). There are thematic elements in all three films that emphasize the aforementioned key

point. Prior to the summary of the remaining two films, Kowalski thoroughly covers the strengths and weak- nesses of care ethics. Again, Kowalski has placed a clear, solid foundational structure assists the student reader in understanding the theory.

The final chapter, “Plato and Being Good” is one which Kowalski first utilizes elements present in the film The Emperor’s Club (2002) to introduce Plato’s theoretical discussion that centers upon “why the question of whether one has adequate reason to live the good life arises” (p. 336). Also, Kowalski includes another excerpt from Plato’s Republic that is an explication of his theoretical concepts associated with what constitutes the good life. Afterwards, he chooses thematic elements also found in the films Goodfellas (1990) and The Man Without a Face (1993). Kowalski’s choice of the three films provides an advantageous situation for the student reader in that all three films contain main characters who strive to complete their own personal definition, good or bad, of what constitutes a good and just person. Kowalski addresses each main character’s actions that are examples of Plato’s theory. He states that “Plato believes that the ideal society is made up of three societal classes or factions: producers, guardians, and rulers” (p. 338). Kowalski goes on to emphasize that Plato believes that a “well-ordered state” is contin- gent upon the aforementioned factions successful execution of their assigned duties and that a failure to do so would result in a society lacking in justice and harmony (p. 338). Kowalski centers upon virtuous main characters and main characters whose past or present may not be of a virtuous nature and reveals that each main character is constructing their own definition or version of what society should accept as their being a just person contributing to the well- being of a just state. At the same time, Kowalski points out that the characters in the films who truly have been virtuous human beings have ultimately been able to live a remaining life in which they “pos- sess (primarily) harmonious souls and thus approach the pinnacle of human existence” (p. 341). Here, Kowalski indicates how the main characters on this path have been those who chose to sooner or later live others-centered, growth-oriented lives.

In conclusion, Moral Theory at the Movies: An Introduction to Ethics proves to be a powerfully help- ful text that succeeds on many levels. This is especial- ly noticeable in that the work succeeds in achieving a much greater understanding of ethics as it has been

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studied throughout history by using the medium of film to give it a degree of clarity that probably has not been seen in many works of its type.

—Patrick Stearns Claflin University

McChesney, Robert. W. Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet against Democracy. New York: New Press, 2013. Pp. xv; 299. ISBN 978-1- 62097-031-7 (paper) $18.95.

At this very moment, one could open an Internet browser and find a news aggregator web site featuring stories about blizzards in the northeastern United States, read a story from CNN about Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States, or peruse the independent news site Democracy Now. With a few keystrokes, one could also locate the web sites of hate groups, pornographers, or terrorist groups. It is no rev- elation that the Internet has revolutionized communica- tion in ways not seen since Gutenberg’s printing press. The Internet, through its most rapid growth beginning around 1990, has what Robert McChesney calls both its celebrants and skeptics.

Through the years, the celebrants have relentless- ly endorsed the Internet as a mechanism to eliminate political and economic borders. It was seen as a means to break down class barriers to bring powerful techno- logical tools to all people and to provide access to and sustain free markets unencumbered by corporate con- trol. The skeptics saw the worst of the Internet—its existence as a wasteland of silly ideas and disengage- ment, non-debates, and a refined system of delivering junk mail. McChesney acknowledges the work of cele- brants and skeptics as, to some extent, interesting and important, but he argues that it seriously misses the point about how we should meaningfully analyze the Internet. Treatment of the Internet by celebrants or skeptics is useless if they ignore the influence of capi- talism on every move it makes. Instead of vociferous clamoring about whether the Internet content has any value, McChesney’s point is this: “Political economy should be the organizing principle for evaluating the digital revolution. . . . The ways capitalism works and does not work determine the role the Internet might play in society” (p. 13). The author presents a critique of the Internet rooted in political economy as a corrective for the obscured views of cynics and skeptics. These roots can draw each into more meaningful dialogue. Capitalism, he argues is “the elephant in the room” that

has kept us from digging deep into the economic and political forces that have shaped the Internet.

McChesney describes the catechism of capitalism but contrasts it with real capitalism. The catechism cel- ebrates the so-called free markets that encourage com- petition, reward entrepreneurial thinking, and under- gird democracy. Real capitalism recognizes that (1) competition should be destroyed, and (2) surpluses cre- ated by capitalism through the artificial creation of scarcity on the Internet are returned to a few companies at the top and not to the communities that fed them. In the opening chapters of his book, McChesney draws distinctions among capitalism, free markets, and democracy. Specifically, McChesney’s second chapter is a primer on capitalism. It provides a history and eco- nomic basis for how capitalism deals with surpluses. When surpluses are invested and reinvested for the pur- pose of creating more surplus, the rich inevitably get richer. This is not a left-leaning rant, but rather a factu- al claim on the basis of the system. McChesney describes Political Economy of Communication (PEC) as an inquiry into the role of “institutions, subsidies, market structures, firms, support mechanisms, and labor practices, that define a media or communication system . . . the foundational role of government policies in establishing media systems” (p. 64). The PEC is the framework of his analysis.

There is some irony in the history of the corporate development of the Internet. Massive government funding, particularly military and research spending, helped lay the foundation for the Internet. It was devel- oped as a mechanism for free and open exchange. Advertisers, or at least those promoting a product or service (and McChesney refers to one of the first advertising exchanges on the Internet in 1994), were met with intense flaming. The Internet was then priva- tized and “market forces were to determine its course” (p. 104). Advertising now riddles the Internet land- scape. When these corporations become monopolistic in the sense that they can weather nearly any type of competition (even though a true monopoly could not exist) they can charge pretty much whatever they want; consumers really have no choices. We simply do not have any of the promise of a new economy promoted in the early days of the Internet.

How do these corporations do it? McChesney describes the importance of owning patents and con- trolling networks. Corporations own thousands of patents and as innovative startups bring new ideas, technologies, and patents to the arena, corporations buy

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them (even if they overpay) thereby also buying their patents and closing out any little guy who cannot build on the existing technology. Some entrepreneurs may even make it their goal to be bought out by a large cor- poration. Innovative technology just cannot penetrate the perimeter of the communication monopoly and, in fact, technology contributes to their strength.

Perhaps at the root of McChesney’s concern is his commitment to journalism. Clearly, professional jour- nalism is in a tailspin. The author points out that it isn’t that digital technology has caused all of the problems in journalism, but it “accelerate[d] and made perma- nent trends that produced commercialism” (p.175). Stories can no longer be investigated thoroughly there- fore extending the notion that those who control the media channels control the content. As McChesney puts it, “Increasingly . . . [journalism] . . . is unfiltered public relations generated surreptitiously by corpora- tions and governments in a manner that would make Walter Lippmann—whose vision guided the creation of professional journalism in the 1920s—roll in his grave” (p. 183). McChesney argues that if there is money to be made with on-line journalism, it will have to come from corporations with a great deal of existing power. In addition, fewer journalists will be (and are being) asked to produce much more while compensat- ed less. When power concentrates at high levels, jour- nalists can no longer do their jobs. Put bluntly, history has shown that those in power can sometimes be crooks, and unless professional journalists are there to expose those crooks, the powerful will simply continue doing what they’re doing, and the problem will get worse. Journalism is also becoming even more reac- tive—something bad happens, and the few journalists left simply tell us what happened. The converse would be to dig deep into the conditions that may have caused the problem in the first place, and pre-empt them.

McChesney would like to see reform on a very large scale. He promotes much greater attention to media literacy, net neutrality, greater funding to non- profit media, and a host of other correctives that could return the power of the Internet to its users. More specifically, he proposes a unique voucher system. Much like one could check a box on a tax return to give to a campaign fund, citizens could voluntarily partici- pate in a program that provides them a $200 voucher to give to media outlets that are purely public, unencum- bered by corporate advertising, serve the communities of which they are a part, and can employ full time jour- nalists to investigate issues or real consequence.

Digital Disconnect continues Robert McChesney’s reputation as one of America’s most renowned and insightful media critics. The author deft- ly moves through elements of political theory and pol- icy, economics, communication, and popular culture. McChesney is at once amazed by the Internet but deeply troubled by its privatization and monopolistic chokehold placed on its users by a handful of corpora- tions. Instead, we need to deal with surpluses on the community level: “Absolutely essential to building this new political economy will be constructing nonprofit and noncommercial operations to do journalism, pro- duce culture, provide Internet access, and serve as bedrock local institutions” (p. 231).

The volume contains endnotes for each chapter as well as an index.

—Pete Bicak Rockhurst University

Milev, Rossen (Ed.) Scriptura Mundi: Writings of the World. Sofia, Bulgaria: Balkanmedia and Wulfila House, 2014. Pp. 423. ISSN 0861-5047 (paper) No pricing available.

This thorough, and almost breathtaking, collec- tion appears as “The First International Review on Writing and Written Cultures of the World.” The editor explains that “Scriptura Mundi is an initiative of the NGO for international cultural and media cooperation Balkanmedia Association, founded in 1990 in Sofia (Bulgaria). . . . Scriptura Mundi for the first time pres- ents a wide international and multi-perspective, panoramic view on writing and written cultures of the world. It includes the studies of 38 leading national experts from 24 countries on the relevant alphabets and writing systems” (p. 2).

The very scope and complexity of the book makes it impossible to summarize beyond a brief overview of the contents, though even this brief sum- mary gives a good sense of the scope of the work.

Arranged in 11 parts, the volume offers an overview of studies on scripts. Part 1, “General Overview and Historical Origins,” situates the study of writing through a discussion of the role of the written word (Rossen Milev), the origin of alphabets (Sergei Proskurin), and the significance of writing technology for civilization (Harald Haarmann). Historical accounts include accounts of the invention of scripts (Anders Kaliff), as well as studies of particular writing systems: Mesopotamian cuneiform (Hans Nissen), Egyptian

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(Ahmen Mansour), Phoenician (Maha El-Khalil Chalabi), Mayan (Ramón Arzápalo), Old European / Danube (Harald Haarmann and Joan Marler), and runes (Arend Quak).

Part 2 focuses on writing systems of the world: Chinese (Feng Kejian and Li Juansheng), Japanese (Keiko Sei), Korean (Dong-Min Yoo), Indian (two essays, one by Srinivasan Kalyanaraman and the other by Come Carpentier de Gourdon), Arabic (Suleiman Huseiki), Hebrew (Hagith Sivan), Greek (Nikolaos Pantelidis), Latin (Juan-Miguel Ferrer ye Grenesche), Cyrillic (Kirill Razlogov), Armenian (Edik Gabuzhian), Georgian (Buba Kudava), and Ethiopic (Tekeste Negash).

The third part, titled “portraits,” offers studies of individual codices and people who played significant roles in the development of writing systems. Lars Munkhammar studies Wulfila, Codex Argenteus, and the Gothic alphabet. Jürgen Wilke examines the role of Gutenberg and the Gutenberg press in Germany while Ivan Saverchenko provides a look at Franzisk Skorina, the first Slavic typographer. In the last essay in this sec- tion, Miroslava Kostic introduces Zechariah Orfelin, “the first apostle of Serbian literature.”

Part 4 examines the impact of printing technolo- gy, with essays on religion and mass communication (Michael Mitterauer) and Arabic typography (Thomas Milo). The next several parts of the collection are more narrowly focused. Essays include studies of Slavic microlanguages (Martin Henzelmann), writing systems in Bulgaria (Katya Melamed), literacy studies (Leslie Limage), and libraries/museums and research centers. The latter include introductions to the Bibliotheca Alexandria in Egypt (Ahmen Mansour) and the National Museum of Chinese writing (Feng Kejian). Thomas Milo offers a look at the challenges and oppor- tunities that the digital world poses to writing with an essay on the Unicode system and Arabic script.

Part 10 calls attention to a different role of writ- ing with an essay by Maya Raikova on systems for music notation in antiquity and the Middle Ages.

The last part presents book reviews of recent work on writing, scripts, and the cultural revolutions made possible by this most human of inventions. It includes reviews of books on the Cyrillic alphabet as well as more general works presenting a typology of writing systems.

The volume also intersperses three color supple- ments. The first provides images of material discussed in the first sections of the collection. The second offers

portraits of individuals connected with the history of writing and printing: “inventors, innovators, and great masters.” It comes as a lovely surprise which makes the historical studies come alive in unexpected ways. The third provides images from contemporary exhibitions.

Scriptura Mundi offers a wonderful resource and source book on scripts and writing systems. At one level, the essays are accessible to the general reader, though many of them include more advanced, technical information. While individual essays appear in various languages, all of those not in English have fairly exten- sive English-language summaries. The book—its very size makes it difficult to regard it as a journal, though it appears as one—will be helpful for students of lan- guages, linguistics, and communication.

Each essay features footnotes and bibliography. The book also contains biographies of the contributors.

—Paul A. Soukup, S.J. Santa Clara University

Mossoff, Adam (Ed.). Intellectual Property and Property Rights: Critical Concepts in Intellectual Property Law. Cheltenham Glos, UK and Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2013. Pp. 895. ISBN 978-1-78100-716-7 (cloth) £284.00.

For anyone still wondering whether “labors of the mind” have legal protections from use by others, this book offers a wealth of scholarly research and thinking. It contains a useful historical and up-to-date summary of the intellectual property statutes and case decisions for lawyers. Importantly, however, every academic scholar, teacher, author, or performer unwittingly encroaches on the creative property and rights of oth- ers; Mossoff’s edited book offers valuable insights into when the use of the words, ideas, or works of others is fair use and when it is protected.

Mossoff has compiled a rich collection of the best law journal articles involving various aspects of the increasingly complex domain of intellectual property rights. Consider the variety of communication courses that might involve the protected intellectual property of other people: journalism, film, storytelling, global media, video production, technology, information cam- paigns, public relations, marketing, public speaking, screenwriting, communication law, radio and television production, to name a few. As a lawyer, law professor, and communication scholar/teacher, I appreciate the organization of this book. Law journal articles (format- ted with extensive bottom-of-the-page footnotes) cite

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all relevant appellate court decisions, as well as state and federal statues, that are involved in the issue taken on by the article. Therefore, each article provides an historical perspective concerning how courts have approached the issue of intellectual property rights in a variety of disputed situations, as well as forward-think- ing suggestions on new directions and policies that may be appropriate today.

Part 1, “Property Theory and Intellectual Property Rights,” has five sections: “Descriptive and Normative Accounts of ‘Intellectual Property’ as Property” (six law journal articles), “Copyright” (three articles), “Patents” (three articles), “Trademarks” (one article), and “Trade Secrets” (two articles). Lawrence Becker (“Deserving to Own Intellectual Property”) examines the notion that people might deserve to own the prod- ucts of their intellectual labor, perhaps more strongly than the way they deserve to own the products of non- intellectual labor; he asks how fairness allows us to choose to resolve conflicts of entitlement. Judge Frank Easterbrook’s article (“Intellectual Property Is Still Property”) came from a symposium on federal law. He tackles both the bright and dark sides of intellectual property (it encourages progress and invention, but it may foster monopoly). Of particular interest in the dig- ital age is Robert Merges’ article (“The Concept of Property in the Digital Era”), in which he engages new questions (Does property still make sense? Are certain forms of creative expression properly privileged? Have the courts constructed a creative elite?) while suggest- ing updating, rather than attacking or eliminating, intel- lectual property rights. Christopher Newman (“Transformation in Property and Copyright”) tackles the ways in which a work of authorship may be trans- formed into a derivative work (protected) versus trans- formative fair use (falling outside property protection). Particularly interesting for scholars and students study- ing organizational communication are the two articles on trade secrets, increasingly a hot issue in organiza- tional culture and practices today (Bone’s “A New Look at Trade Secret Law: Doctrine in Search of Justification” and Claeys’ “Private Law Theory and Corrective Justice in Trade Secrecy”). As they point out, organizational trade secrets touch on issues of con- tract, equity, unjust enrichment, unfair competition, and professional confidentiality norms. Communi- cation students will be immersed in these issues (some explicit, other implicit) in every career they choose.

Part 2, “The Property-Based Critique of Intellectual Property,” offers two articles that take on,

first, the moral aspects of intellectual property (Tom Palmer’s Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article, “Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects”) and the intriguing role that privilege plays (Tom Bell’s Syracuse Law Review article, “Copyright as Intellectual Property Privilege”). Both articles offer the basis for lively classroom discussions with students in a variety of communication courses, who will be intrigued with how a variety of courts handle real-world intellectual theft allegations, with an over-looked moral perspective that also challenges a student’s view of privilege. The pro- tection of intellectual property as a means of realizing social justice is suggested, embedded in the economic reality of scarcity and real-world property “games.” How copyrights are birthed and then expire is explored in the context of intellectual privilege, with a forward- thinking suggestion that reformats the debate.

In a digital age where words, art, photographs, videos, and music are now “shared” at increasingly viral speeds, Mossoff’s Intellectual Property and Property Rights provides communication professors and lecturers with valuable classroom teaching tools, supported by intriguing real-world cases, for helping their students understand what can fairly be used (as well as when their own creative intellectual works might be protected from use by others).

—SunWolf, Ph.D., J.D. Santa Clara University

Stafford, Roy. The Global Film Book. New York: Routledge. 2014. Pp. vii-xxiii, 365. ISBN: 978-0-415- 68896-3 (cloth) $150.00; 978-0-415-68897-0 (paper) $58.95.

This undergraduate text by British free-lance lec- turer Roy Stafford examines the transnational film industry and its impact on local culture and indigenous film production. Stafford takes a “polycentric” approach toward the “many different ‘flows’ of films between different parts of the world” (p. 6). The result is that Global Film is as much about business as it is about cinema, society, and enculturation. The text’s ideological bent, which evokes Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School, gives it a political-economy-of- film veneer—sometimes gratuitous.

Stafford cautions that Global Film isn’t “an intro- duction to film studies,” nor is it a “conventional text- book as it doesn’t support a specific syllabus or pro- gramme.” Nor yet “does it offer a formal course struc-

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ture” (p. 14). In other words, it’s somewhat amorphous and its encyclopedic detail demands repeated readings. However, one of Global Film’s many virtues is the copi- ous inclusion of web addresses for suppliers of films not released in Europe and North America and for data bases containing hundreds of films that may be viewed online. Serving as the de facto narrative spine through- out all 12 chapters—which may be read and skipped about in any order—is the familiar and unavoidable motif of Hollywood as the hegemonic Other. The author states, however, that, “This isn’t an ‘anti-Hollywood’ book” (p. 5). Here is an example of Stafford’s even- handed take on the nexus of global cinema:

If Hollywood was a prime agent in the “Coca- Colonization” of most of the world and this was deemed to be cultural imperialism, it was also seen as a potential agent of modernization in many cultures. The argument here is that in countries where traditional social structures con- strained social behavior, exposure to Hollywood films could have the effect of persuading young women, for example, to go against parental wishes in terms of marriage partners or employ- ment prospects. (p. 31)

And again,

Hollywood is potentially progressive because it introduces audiences to modernity and the benefits of changes in social behavior, new business prac- tices, new technologies, etc. But it achieves this by using a transparent approach that doesn’t encour- age those audiences to question what they are watching. In this sense it is conservative. (p. 59)

Here “transparency” is defined as “the concept associat- ed with Hollywood continuity editing which is ‘invisible’ and avoids attention to the process of editing” (p. 354).

And from a business perspective, “Hollywood is a dynamic institution that needs to interact with and feed off the energy created by film cultures across the world. Hollywood needs to maintain its audiences worldwide—more revenue now comes from the ‘International’ market (around 69%) than from ‘Domestic’ (31% from the U.S. and Canada)” (p. 9). In dollar terms, in 2012 Hollywood’s box office receipts from the U.S. and Canada totaled $10.8 billion, com- pared to $24 billion in the rest of the world (p. 12).

Of course it’s easy to conflate Hollywood’s vari- ous historical phases—each essentially a different busi- ness or ownership model—into a timeless, ethereal place, a montage of glittering close-ups, furs, and lim- ousines—perhaps with slight alterations for the digital

age. But that mythic Hollywood, so indelibly embed- ded in the collective imagination, was long ago demol- ished and sold off piecemeal by the same corporate raiders who began laying waste to American industry in the 1980s. What was left of MGM, for example, was purchased from the “financier” Kirk Kerkorian in 2005 by a consortium that included Sony and Comcast. Today, the storied studio names are owned by private investment firms who focus on merchandising and dis- tribution while outsourcing the actual movie-making to independent production companies.

Today’s Hollywood is a mirage, less about place and more of a virtual brand. What’s left of Hollywood’s storied studios are now subsidiaries of six multination- al conglomerations—Viacom, Fox, Sony, Comcast, Time Warner, Disney—headquartered in Tokyo, New York, and Philadelphia (Disney is the only behemoth with Hollywood headquarters).

As Stafford points out, the “market is not ‘free’ but heavily controlled by the Hollywood majors,” whose leverage enables them to “control their own operations in each of the major territories—or to broker advantageous deals with local distributors.” Thus Hollywood guarantees itself global distribution at reduced costs while forcing all other distributors to sell their “overseas” rights. Slumdog Millionaire (2008), for example, was an entirely British film that was financed by selling the distribution rights “outside the UK and France to a Hollywood studio.” Thus, the “profits from a very successful worldwide release mostly went back to Hollywood” (p. 10).

Owing to its world-wide dominance it’s fitting that of the 422 films (from 48 countries)—by my counts—mentioned in Global Film 71 are American made. The U.S. and eight other countries account for two-thirds of the films cited. The other countries and their film totals are: the UK (40); India (39); Japan (35); France (32); Hong Kong (21); South Korea (21); China (19); and Iran (13).

Although Global Film treats just one Nigerian film, Kunle Afolayan’s Araromire (The Figurine, 2009), that country that jumps out statistically. It’s film industry is called Nollywood for its prodigious output. In 2012 Nigeria ranked second in the world in feature film production with 1,000, behind only India’s 1, 274. (The U.S. was third with 817.) But Nollywood’s numbers may be somewhat fanciful. In a footnote, Stafford says, “Nigerian film industry fig- ures are estimates or are not available” (p. 342). And elsewhere Stafford states: “Some reports refer to

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‘Nigerian video films’ (nvf) and various claims about ‘1,000 films per year’ have been made. Certainly pro- ductions seem to be in the high hundreds” (p. 227). Accurate numbers aside, the idea of Nollywood as a potential Pan-African voice in international cinema is intriguing, particularly given the vast African diaspora to Europe and North America.

Global Film’s heterogeneous approach to topic, culture, and genre yields unexpected and far ranging finds. On the question of dubbing or subtitling, Stafford quotes from the blog of a South Indian subtitler:

The wide and prevalent use of subtitles has in fact globalized our viewing experiences in such a way that the very notion of “foreignness” has become problematic. . . .

Obviously, the act of subtitling involves “uni- versalizing” the “particular” which brings the “local/regional” in dialogue with the “nation- al/global.” It raises a lot of questions, similar to the ones confronted by a translator. This also poses troublesome questions about “regional” identities and “locality” of a film and the film viewing experience.

Should one “translate out” all the regional and culture-specific nuances to make the dialogues accessible to the global audience? Or, should one maintain the local flavor? If so, how? But the problem with subtitles is that they do not offer any scope for footnotes or explanations. So, subtitling is an act of balancing between the pressure to be concise yet cogent, true yet com- municative, local yet global. (p. 28)

And in an implicit plea for international harmony, Stafford recounts how the Israeli writer-director Eran Kolirin came up with the idea for The Band’s Visit (Israel/US/France, 2007), which “won prizes at festi- vals from Tokyo to Cannes” and was a hit in Europe and North America (p. 3). The film is about a police band from Egypt (invited to Israel to perform at the opening of an Arabic cultural center) who get lost in the Negev desert and are forced to take lodging in the home of a 40-something single woman who owns a diner and the homes of her regular customers. Kolirin said that until the early 1980s “‘the then single Israeli TV channel used to broadcast Egyptian films that were very popular with some Israeli audiences.’” And,

Sometimes, after the Arab movie, they’d broadcast a performance of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority’s orchestra. This was a classical Arab orchestra, made up almost entirely of Arab Jews from Iraq and Egypt. When you think of the IBA

orchestra, maybe the custom of watching Egyptian movies sounds a little less odd. (pp. 3–4)

Stafford offers that, “Perhaps if Israeli TV still broadcast Egyptian movies, there might be more opportunities for Israelis to learn about their neighbors—and perhaps there could be reciprocal showings in Egypt?” (p. 4).

Art, entertainment, and profit-making aside, this, then, is the promise of the international film trade, intercultural understanding. Global Film is a com- mendable effort to chart this ephemeral and inex- haustible trove of cultural riches.

The book includes “Guidance Notes for Readers,” a glossary of key terms, and indices of film titles and prominent names.

—Tony Osborne Gonzaga University

Starr, Douglas P. and Deborah W. Dunsford. Working the Story: A Guide to Reporting and News Writing for Journalists and Public Relations Professionals. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. Pp. 300. ISBN 978-0-8108-8910-1 (cloth) $75.00; 978-0-8108-8911-8 (paper) $35.00; 978-0- 8108-8912-5 (e-book) $34.99.

Working the Story is a thorough, thoughtful, prac- tical handbook for beginning reporting and public rela- tions students. Unlike many journalism books of the last decade with their graphic- and photo-heavy lay- outs, Working the Story, with its focus on explicative text, feels almost nostalgic for the journalism of a bygone era while simultaneously offering step-by-step instructions for today’s print and online news reporters and public relations writers.

Over the course of 32 chapters, authors Douglas Starr and Deborah Dunsford introduce students to the roots of a free press and the importance of news in a free society. The bulk of the text is devoted to exhaus- tive instructions on everything from writing a basic news story to critically reviewing art, writing news for the company magazine, and handling the press as a public relations professional. By pairing the two fields, the text acknowledges the increasingly merged univer- sity curriculums of strategic communications and jour- nalism while clearly emphasizing the important dis- tinctions between the two fields.

The opening chapter, “What news is, and why it’s important,” feels almost proselytizing in its fervent lan- guage describing the democratic need for news. “The

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future of the United States is up to the news media and to us. We need each other to keep the United States free and strong, so the career you are preparing for will help ensure the United States remains a government of the people, by the people, and for the people” (p. 4). Starr and Dunsford remind readers that personal blogs and social media sites, while ubiquitous and popular, can’t replace a reporter’s hard-won facts. In a world where many millennial college students voice little regard for the news industry, the reminder feels all the more valid.

In Chapter 2, “Your freedoms and how they are protected,” Starr and Dunsford maintain the high- minded language regarding the value of good journal- ism, a free press, and the U.S. Bill of Rights, educating readers about the importance of these 10 constitutional amendments. In what may be a slight overstatement of U.S. dominance on the international stage, the authors state that U.S. citizens have “freedoms that no other country in the world has” (p. 5), which contradicts recent studies that have found the U.S. Constitution losing favor as a model for freedom when compared to more recently drafted national documents. This is a minor complaint as most of the chapter is devoted to helping readers understand that “without freedom of speech and of the press, liberty and democracy cannot survive” (p. 8).

After the first two chapters, the subsequent chap- ters cover the various aspects of news coverage and information gathering. Starr and Dunsford’s readable, relatable writing style offers practical, easy-to-follow instructions and advice. In the chapter “How to gather information,” the authors take readers through the steps of an interview, from how to really listen to how to choose the right interview location. Some of the advice feels a bit archaic, including a suggestion on how to earn the trust of a potential source’s secretary. “If it’s a woman, compliment her outfit, her hairstyle, whatever; take her a flower on Secretary’s Day. If it’s a man, talk about something manly—sports, hunting, fishing, whatever—take him something small on Secretary’s Day” (p. 11). However, most of the advice is sound, practical, and current. Again, in deference to the growing popularity of citizen journalism, Starr and Dunsford remind budding reporters that while they may look to citizen reporters for ideas, citizen-gener- ated blogs are not subject to the same standards as journalism. “Be careful; citizen blogs contain both factual accounts of and unsupported opinions concern- ing what was observed. Unsupported opinions have no place in any news story. . . . Reporters are educated,

trained professionals who are assigned to cover and write about news events; citizen journalists are not” (p. 23). In this technology-fueled world, where opin- ions and facts seem to increasingly appear merged and indistinguishable in the cybersphere, stating such a distinction bears repeating.

In a short but important chapter entitled “Ethics, objectivity, and reporter rights,” Starr and Dunsford dis- cuss the complicated path a reporter must take as a pri- vate person who performs a public necessity. “Reporters report what they saw and heard; they are not partici- pants, they are observers; they are in the world, but not of the world” (p. 47). Reporters cannot wear campaign buttons, sign petitions, or march in demonstrations because such behaviors betray their biases, and while the reporters may be able to maintain their objectivity, their audience may assume allegiance. “The only time reporters can, and should, participate in government is in the privacy of the voting booth” (p. 48).

In the next several chapters, Starr and Dunsford provide detailed information about writing for the Internet, for broadcast, and for print. Other chapters offer instructions on a variety of news story types, including how to cover education, speeches, crime, taxes, and political campaigns. Each chapter defines basic terms related to the various topics. In the chapter on government, the authors help budding reporters navigate government hierarchical systems as well as bureaucratic terms such as “eminent domain,” “comp- troller,” and “easement.” In the chapter on how to cover courts, the authors define terms such as “kanga- roo court,” “grand jury,” and “nolo contendere.”

Ten chapters of the book are devoted to issues related to public relations, and the authors quickly dif- ferentiate the role of reporter from that of public rela- tions professional while recognizing that each should be familiar with the other. In the chapter entitled “How to handle the press,” Starr and Dunsford remind public relations students, “Never consider a reporter your friend” (p. 177). Reporters want stories, and PR people should help them find those stories. “Just as it is the reporter’s task to get a story, so is it your task to tell the story of your company, to explain what happened, to tell what is occurring” (p. 178). The next few chapters detail writing speeches, writing for company maga- zines, and planning conventions.

In the book’s penultimate chapter “Now what?” Starr and Dunsford again make their case for an unfet- tered press and for readers who support that press. The authors lament the downsizing of the nation’s newspa-

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pers, arguing that online news, with its hyperlinks and omnipresent opinions disguised as fact, is a lackluster replacement for print publications. “Fewer daily news- papers, fewer reporters, and less news about government puts the United States in jeopardy, because our access to news about government is what makes our democratic government work and keeps us free” (p. 246).

Overall, Working the Story is the perfect hand- book for students of journalism and public relations. Few texts in print today afford readers such an in- depth, methodical approach to the fields while concur- rently making an eloquent case for the importance of professional journalism.

—Kristina Morehouse Gonzaga University

Yook, Eunkyong L. and Wendy Atkins-Sayre (Eds.). Communication Centers and Oral Communication Programs in Higher Education: Advantages, Challenges, and New Directions. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. Pp. 287. ISBN 978-0-7391- 6816-5 (cloth) $95.00; 978-0-7391-8462-2 (paper) $39.99; 978-0-7391-7358-9 (eBook) $39.99.

“The communication centers movement is a rela- tively recent phenomenon in higher education, emerging in the late ’80s, compared to its writing counterpart” (p. xv). “A number of people have been involved in the process of establishing this forum of ideas for communi- cation center directors. Many of these ideas were a direct result of meetings of like-minded scholars at NCA [National Communication Association] and NACC [National Association of Communication Centers]” (p. xiii). The editors have compiled this collection of research articles as an avenue to touch on matters about the field that emanate from theoretical and research foundations, which in turn serves as a springboard into salient matters about Communication Centers.

Thus, Communication Centers and Oral Communication Programs in Higher Education: Advantages, Challenges, and New Directions is a strong collection of essays that (a) address theoretical issues, covering topics such as the importance of com- munication centers to higher education, the effects of communication centers on retention, critical thinking at the center, ethics, and different approaches for teaching communication; and (b) discuss praxis, exploring ideas about center set-up and use of space, staff training, technology applications, and campus advertising and

outreach (p. xvi). Communication centers exist prima- rily to assist students in the development of individual oral communication abilities and skills. Thus, this edit- ed book aims to address those involved including tutors, directors, faculty, administrators, scholars, and others involved in higher education.

Specifically, this collection of research articles has a three goals: (1) to organize cutting-edge knowl- edge of theory and empirical research about commu- nication centers so as to be of practical use to tutors and directors; (2) to introduce administrators and those interested in higher education to the potential value of communication centers to higher education; and (3) to engender more research about communica- tion centers that can inform theory and application of the topic even further (p. xvi). The edited book is divided into four parts.

Part 1, “Benefits to Higher Education” has five chapters designed to explain “how communication centers play a vital role on campus and their links to significant and timely issues in higher education such as retention, critical thinking, liberal arts curricular goals, student empowerment, and student growth” (p. xvi) In the first chapter, “Communication Centers and Retention in Higher Education: Is There a Link?” Eunkyong L. Yook presents a research study that “provides a summary of previous research on the link between communication, communication centers, and retention” (p. 3). Specifically, the researcher tests a hypothesis that the existence of communication cen- ters positively affects the average six-year persistence rate of an institution (p. 3). Although a small sample size was used, the researcher states: “the results showed a statistically significant level of difference between the two groups; institutions with communi- cation centers did have higher percentage rates (67.9%) than those with no communication centers (62.9%)” (p. 9).

Chapter 2, “Speaking Our Minds: Communi- cation Centers and Critical Thinking,” by Wendy Atkins-Sayre, “argues that development of oral com- munication skills are linked to critical thinking and that communication centers are, consequently, an important part of the learning process” (p. 14).

In Chapter 3, “Communication Centers and Liberal Arts Education: Problems and Possibilities Associated with Cross-Disciplinary Engagements,” Corey J. Liberman “discusses both the possibilities and potential problems of creating a communication center in a liberal arts environment” (p. 24). In addition, the

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chapter “concludes with a section recommending ways to frame the importance of such communication cen- ters on a liberal arts campus” (p. 24).

Chapter 4, “The Communication Center: A Critical Site of Intervention for Student Empower- ment,” by Sandra L. Pensoneau-Conway and Nick J. Romerhausen, explores a critical approach that (a) places “communication centers alongside traditional classrooms in an effort to portray the learning con- texts of each”; (b) addresses “the ways communica- tion centers and traditional classrooms differ from one another in terms of the learning environment and outlines what communication centers can do that tra- ditional classrooms cannot”; (c) explicates “the theo- retical framework of empowerment” and situates “it as a facet of engaged pedagogy”; (d) outlines “four barriers to empowerment that traditional classrooms hold and addresses how communication centers respond to each barrier; and (e) constructs the com- munication center as a “potential source of student empowerment” (p. 40).

Chapter 5, “The Role Becomes Them: Examining Communication Center Alumni Experiences,” by Susan Wilson, examines the experiences of alumni who have served as speaking/listening consultants. The survey used by the researcher “was administered to speaking/listening consultants and quantitative reason- ing and tutors in addition to writing tutors” (p. 56). However, in this chapter, the author focuses “on the speaking/listening consultant alumni’s responses” (p. 56). “It is the author’s contention that the accumulation of consultations over time with multiple clients on mul- tiple communication projects helps the consultant become more competent” (p. 56).

Part 2 investigates “Challenges to Today’s Centers,” also in five chapters. Chapter 6, “Ethics and the Communication Center: Chameleon or Tortoise,” by Eunkyong L. Yook, P. Anand Rao, and Sarah M. Wilde, begins the trail of challenges faced by those involved in higher education by exposing two primary issues. First, they expose the pressure applied by the numerous reports and survey findings that continual- ly indicate that business leaders, scholars, and higher education accrediting associations are pushing for oral communication skills among college students. They state: “In addition to strong concerns expressed by business leaders, scholars, and members of society in general, institutions of higher learning are also being pressured by concerns of a more practical nature—being accredited by regional and national

accrediting agencies” (pp. 71–72). Second, they expose the domino effect of the pressure by articulat- ing that in response to the reports “institutions of higher learning have looked to communication departments, and more specifically to the basic com- munication course, as a starting point in their search for a solution” (p. 72). Thus, the authors designed and conducted a study that gathered information from professors teaching speaking intensive courses. During this process, they encountered a problem. “we found ourselves in a philosophical quandary: How far should we be willing to go to adapt to a specific dis- cipline and instructor?” (p. 80). Thus, the chapter explores this ethical dilemma.

In Chapter 7, “The Blind Leading the Blind?: An Ethnographic Heuristic for Communication Centers,” Deanna P. Dannels and Amy L. Housley Gaffney clear- ly articulate that “when students come to communica- tion centers . . . they are coming for help on communi- cation assignments that are often situated in unfamiliar content areas, contextualized within new classroom expectations, and localized within disciplines that feel foreign to them” (p. 88). Thus, between the students who “cannot bring the situated, contextual disciplinary expertise to the table when they arrive at the center; and the tutors, who are “typically not disciplinary experts in the situated expectations for particular oral communication assignments” there is created “the blind leading the blind” (p. 88). The authors propose as a solution—a mindset driven by an ethnographic heuristic. Specifically, they argue that a “programmat- ic commitment to an ethnographic heuristic can reframe the traditional role of the communication cen- ter and hence begin to address the challenges brought to the fore when the blind are leading the blind” (p. 88).

Chapter 8, “Learning to Tell What You Know: A Communication Intervention for Biology Students,” by Trudy Bayer and Karen A. Curto, is a well-designed case study focused on “senior biology majors enrolled in a required course on writing and speaking in the biologi- cal sciences” (p. 113). The case describes “how the biol- ogy instructor sought specific help by collaborating with the director of the university’s communication lab, as well as participation in a semester-long bi-monthly course ‘Communication Across the Discipline.’” In detail, this chapter “discusses the reported outcomes from this ongoing collaboration project between the biology and communication faculty” (p. 114).

Since student visits to a communication center are an important assessment outcome (p. 131), in

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Chapter 9, “Using Theory and Research to Increase Student Use of Communication Center Services,” Jennifer Butler Ellis and Rose Clark-Hill focus on the design of persuasive messages. Specifically, “the goal of this chapter is to provide suggestions for how to conduct formative research for the design and evalua- tion of messages persuading students to use commu- nication center services” (p. 132). In support of this goal the authors describe three persuasion theories— Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), Social Norms Approach (Berkowitz, 2005), and the Health Belief Model (Rosenstock, 1990)—with examples for use in pre-production work. In addition, they high- light numerous methods—interviews, focus groups, and surveys—for conducting pre-production and pro- duction testing research. Then, they conclude by dis- cussing methods for evaluation of message campaign efforts (p. 132). Overall, they argue that “by conduct- ing formative evaluation research and assessing cam- paign efforts, communication center personnel may find persuasion an effective tool for assessment efforts and increasing student usage of communica- tion center services” (p. 143).

Chapter 10, “Focusing on Faculty: The Importance of Faculty Support to Communication Center Success,” by Michael L. King and Wendy Atkins-Sayre, is not a place-the-full-responsibility-on- faculty focused chapter. It is a well thought out and researched argument to articulate the importance of faculty support. The authors use Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behavior (TPB) to ground their research. Thus, the chapter “first reviews TPB literature and its application to the communication centers. Next, a methodology designed to identify specific factors con- tributing to suggesting center usage is presented. Finally, following the presentation of results, recom- mendations for increased faculty support of communi- cation centers are discussed” (p. 148).

Part 3, “Alternative Models for Communication Centers,” has five chapters that focus on an academic creativity studio model, a combined center approach, implementation of course management systems, a web- based communication center model, and an online speaking center, respectively.

Chapter 11, “Communication Center Ethos: Remediating Space, Encouraging Collaboration,” by Russell Carpenter and Shawn Apostel, focused on Eastern Kentucky University’s Noel Studio for Academic Creativity, which opened in September 2010. A well-defined purpose for the Studio was provided:

The Noel Studio is designed as a focused, col- laborative initiative to develop informed, criti- cal, and creative thinkers who communicate effectively. Through usage of the Noel Studio, students are expected to increase their under- standing of foundational elements of all com- munication, see connects between appropriate information and effective communication, work with student consultants to organize and refine ideas, develop research strategies that inform communication, deliver articulate pre- sentations, create high-quality communication products, and hone teamwork skills in order to effectively communicate in group situations. Further, the Noel Studio views the definition of communication broadly to encompass multiple ways of engaging in and expressing meaning. (p. 165)

Overall, the chapter “offers a case study of oral com- munication design in public and private spaces within the Noel Studio” (p. 163). The authors hope to “inspire progressive collaboration efforts that enhance ethos on campus” (p. 164).

In Chapter 12, “The Combined Centers Approach: How Speaking and Writing Centers Can Work Together,” Casey Malone Maugh presents the argument that “universities with the desire to create communication centers have only to look toward part- nering with existing writing centers” (p. 176). Thus, the chapter “details the rationale for the combined centers approach as a model for other colleges. The author [outlines] the training model designed for a combined center and [provides] insight into the ways in which a center of this nature can flourish under the model as well as [shares] a few of the potential disadvantages of a combined approach” (p. 177).

Course management systems such as Angel, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, eCollege, Moodle, and WebCT are increasing in higher education. Luke LeFebvre organizes Chapter 13, “Course Management Systems: Creating Alternative Avenues for Student Access of Communication Centers,” in three parts addressing the use of CMSs. First, LeFebvre “exam- ines CMSs by describing the basic components, finan- cial investments involved in course management soft- ware, student use of the technology, and the potential use of the software for computer-mediated communi- cation” (p. 188). Second, LeFebvre introduces the communication center and defines its primary student- learning objectives. Third, he offers suggestions for incorporating CMS into the communication center.

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In Chapter 14, “Virtual Communication Centers: A Resource for Building Oral Competency,” Lynn O. Cooper cites literature concerning challenges related to the basic course. Challenges include consistency and standardization across course sections, the ability to assess student learning, and adequate training of instructors. Thus, this study “chronicles an attempt to meet the needs of a new generation of students by high- lighting the 10-year development of a web-based com- munication center on a college campus” (p. 200). Cooper argues that “while the virtual communication center may not completely bridge the instructional gap in the same way face-to-face interaction does, it pro- vides a unique opportunity to enhance learning for the next generation of students” (p. 212).

Chapter 15, “The Implementation of Computer Mediated Communication in Communication Cen- ters,” by Alyssa Davis, explores the online program of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In this study two sections of an Introduction to Communication were required to use the Online Speaking Center. Through this study, Davis provides “encouraging” (p. 229) insights about online consulta- tion and the implementation of CMC.

Part 4, “New Directions in Consultant Training,” has three chapters designed to address issues specific to consultants such as technology, an effective listen- ing approach to client relationships, and suggestions for best practices. In Chapter 16, “Technology Tutoring: Communi-cation Centers Take the Lead,” Michelle A. Moreau and A. Paige Normand place an intentional emphasis on technology tutoring. Specifically, they argue that tutors employed within a communication center may have the foundation of traditional training in public address or performance but “may feel handicapped keeping up with the changing ‘rules’ for creating visual support for oral messages” (p. 233). Their Center has “created a train- ing infrastructure to make sure that [their] team of undergraduate speech consultants is prepared to tutor in the area of communication technology” (p. 234). The chapter strongly provides “an overview of the theoretical framework [they] use to assess multimedia communication and [offers] four illustrative consulta- tion training scenarios” (p. 234).

In Chapter 17, “Using Empathetic Listening to Build Client Relationships at the Center,” Kimberly M. Cuny, Sarah M. Wilde, and Alexandra Vizzier Stephenson use a mid-sized public university as a back- drop to “show how peer-to-peer tutoring incorporates

empathetic listening to build lasting relationships between peers, i.e. between staff and their speaker- clients” (p. 249). Chapter 18, “Best Practices in Communication Center Training and Training Assessment,” by Rhonda Troillett and Kristen A. McIntyre, is a research study focused on “how commu- nication center staff are trained and evaluated in order to highlight current practices as well as to recommend potential best practices in communication center staff training and assessment” (p. 257). Some of the best prac- tices recommended include (a) value explicit learning outcomes, (b) employ experiential learning strategies, (c) develop a guided process, (d) develop emergency training procedures, (e) close the training assessment loop, and (f) recognize staff.

Overall the editors were successful in compiling a book of articles grounded in research and current theo- ries to articulate the value, growth, and development of communication centers. Although this book was not written to serve as a classroom textbook for students, it was truly well developed for all of us in higher educa- tion in multiple disciplines including communication departments. It is critical that this book be used as a resource and guide not simply for conversation but for action in solving more of the oral communication com- petency issues that we are increasingly confronted with from various angles. In the foreword, Beth Von Till sums it up well when she states: “Whether they support courses in oral communication or communication across the curriculum programs, communication cen- ters have proven themselves to be invaluable in con- tributing to student success, retention, and graduation by providing pedagogical support for students” (p. xi).

The book also includes author and subject indices. —Jennifer F. Wood

Millersville University of Pennsylvania

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Berkowitz, A.D. (2005). An overview of the social norms approach. In L. Lederman, L. Stewart, F. Goodhart, & L. Laitman (Eds.), Changing the culture of college drinking: A socially situated prevention campaign (pp. 187–208). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Rosenstock. T. (1990). The Health Belief Model: Explaining health behavior through expectancies. In K. Glanz, F. Lewis & B. Rimer (Eds.), Health behavior and health education: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 39–62). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.

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