Amazon : Understanding a Global Communication Giant

Taking a political economy of media approach, this book examines Amazon as a significant actor in the global media landscape.

Amazon is mainly conceived in the popular consciousness and media commentary as a corporate body, selling products and services to individual consumers and organisations, but Brevini and Swiatek show that Amazon has become a communication giant that trades in diversified media (its own and others), and exerts a significant influence on global communication, especially through its online services. Further, the authors provide evidence of Amazon's multiple influences on politics, economics, and culture.

With its comprehensive and critical overview, this book is ideal for students, scholars, and researchers of media and communication studies and political economy.

Benedetta Brevini is Associate Professor in Communication and Media, specialising in political economy of communication, at the University of Sydney, Australia. She writes on The Guardian’s Comment is Free and contributes to a number of print and web publications including Index of Censorship, OpenDemocracy and the Conversation. She is the author of Public Service Broadcasting Online (2013) and editor of the volume Beyond Wikileaks (2013). Her latest volumes are Carbon Capitalism and Communication: Confronting Climate Crisis (2017) and Climate Change and the Media (2018). She is currently writing a new book on Artificial Intelligence.

Lukasz Swiatek lectures in Media and Communications at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia. He has taught a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses (both junior and senior) in media studies, communication, and international and global studies across universities in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Previously, he worked in publishing and news (as a reporter and editor), as well as integrated communication, in both the corporate and not-for-profit sectors.