Reference Reviews

Doug’s Student Reference Room

Battleground: The Media, edited by Robin Andersen and Jonathan Gray. 2 vols. 633 p. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-313-34167-0. $175.

Media literacy is a topic of great interest and concern to educators, but in many institutions, because it is not a central component in a course of study, it does not receive the attention it deserves. This two-volume set offers many entrance points into the vast topic of media and media literacy that can act as conversation-starters in courses across the curriculum. In 88 alphabetic entries, the editors have assembled the writings of academics and professionals who discuss selected controversial or “battleground” issues related to the media. Topics range from advertising to Al Jazeera, from video games to youth and violence. Entries provide an overview of the topic and an exploration of the ways that topic intersects with the lives of its readers. Traditional topics related to the media are analyzed in terms of current technologies and trends; new media is placed in the context of what has come before. The entry on advertising, for example, reviews the standard methods of persuasion that have forever been a part of ads, such as celebrity endorsement, brand identity, models of perfection, the promise of belonging and the language of association. A relatively recent development, though, has been “stealth” strategies like product placement in television and film, the use of “peer trend setters” in stores, and the “seeding” of new products by leaving empty bottles or containers of products where target consumers will see them and infer their popularity. The entry on iTunes places the technology in a line of development that begins with 78 rpm records and progresses through CDs and Napster to the current product. Discussion of the iTunes phenomenon focuses not just on the technology, though, but on the shift in the way consumers use music that accompanies the new technology, and the implications of that shift on such issues as copyright, the music industry and the works musicians create. Other topics include body image; effects of media on children; the digital divide; Google books; tabloid news; representations of gender, race and class; blogs and the blogosphere; and propaganda. This useful set includes a list of topics organized by categories, brief biographies of the contributors, a lengthy bibliography and an index. Recommended for high school, public and academic libraries.
—Doug Achterman