Media, Voice, Space and Power : Essays of Refraction

Nick Couldry is one of the world’s leading analysts of media power and voice, and has been publishing widely for 25 years. This volume, published 20 years after The Place of Media Power, brings together a rich collection of essays from his earliest to his latest writings, some of them hard to access, plus two previously unpublished chapters.

The book’s 15 chapters cover a variety of themes from voice to space, from Big Data to democracy, and from art to reality television. Taken together, they give a unique insight into the range of Couldry’s interests and passions. Throughout, Couldry’s commitment to connecting media research to wider debates in philosophy and social theory is clear. A substantial Afterword reflects on the common themes that run throughout his work and this volume, and the particular challenges of grasping media’s contribution to social order in an age of datafication. A preface by leading US media scholar Jonathan Gray sets these essays in context.

The result is an exciting and clearly-written text that will interest students and researchers of media, culture and social theory across the world.

Nick Couldry is Professor of Media Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics. He is the author or editor of 14 books, including The Costs of Connection (with Ulises Mejias, 2019), Media: Why It Matters (2019), The Mediated Construction of Reality (with Andreas Hepp, 2016), Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (2003) and The Place of Media Power (2000).

Jonathan Gray is Hamel Family Distinguished Chair in Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA. He is the author of four books (Television Entertainment; Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts; Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality; and Television Studies (with Amanda D. Lotz) and the co-editor of seven further books.