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International Reviews of Spreadable Media

As Spreadable Media is picked up across international borders and/or is translated into new languages, we’re particularly excited to see various international reactions to ideas from the book. Below, we highlight recent reviews the book has received from academics and journalists outside the U.S.:

  • Kirsten Mogensen reviews Spreadable Media for the Society of Media Researchers in Denmark’s MedieKultur, calling the book “a treasure chest full of ideas for scholars, practitioners, and university teachers” that “demonstrates the valuable insight that can be gained when professionals and academics co-create.”
  • Ksenia Prasolova, associate professor at Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University’s Institute of Humanities, writes a very thorough review of Spreadable Media for Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian, and Central European New Media, Vol. 10. Prasolova calls the book a “comprehensive, well-informed and amply-referenced study of today’s spreadable media environment, its logics and practices” that “give(s) the floor to others, and let(s) a myriad other voices be heard.”
  • Manuel Garin reviewed Spreadable Media for the 37th issue of the Spanish-language film studies journal Secuencias in 2013. Roughly translated, he writes that Spreadable Media‘s “multiple, contrasting points of view in a true grayscale makes the book a great tool for bringing the world of the college to business and vice versa.”
  • In his April 2014 review of Spreadable Media’s new Swedish-language release for the newspaper GPMattias Hagberg contrasts the book’s message that “we now have the chance to create a truly democratic society” with Robert Samuels’ work on automodernity, which Hagberg sums up paints us as “technology subjects.” Hagberg concludes that both accounts of our culture can be right simultaneously—that there’s enormous potential but also potential dangers lurking in new forms of sharing and in the technologies that shape it. He sums up that new technologies have the potential to both promote and undermine “conversation, transparency and democracy.” Hagberg also reflects on the degree to which his very article has the potential for spreadability. (Since we’re sharing it here, we suppose it did…)
  • While decrying that the book’s tone is “part-illumination and part-inspiration in that energetic, enthusiastic, entrepreneurial ‘Silicon Valley’ way” and framing the authors as “evangelical preachers” (a declaration we’d guess wasn’t intended as full compliment), Damien Spry’s 2014 review of Spreadable Media for Media International Australia  says the book “offers a rich account of concepts and case studies that scholars and professional communicators should appreciate” on key themes of entertainment media “and the fans that blur the boundaries between producer and audience.” Spry credits the book’s core ideas on spreadability and also points toward the U.S.-centric nature of its consideration of transnational media flows and a range of other questions about the spread of power and surveillance—and cultural and socio-political contingencies and structures on spreadability—that remain to be explored in depth.
  • Kay Glans’ March 2014 review of Spreadable Media in the Swedish journal Respons examines the Swedish-language debut of the book vis-a-vis Hartmut Rosa’s Acceleration, Modernity and Identity. Gloss reacts strongly against Spreadable Media, questioning a world where audiences are encouraged to constantly be reacting without thinking, where amateurs are put on equal footing with professionals, where people are “willing to accept inequality because they’ve got a sense of empowerment,” and where the quality of content is not taken into consideration, Writes Gloss (roughly translated), “Anyone who reads and slowly melts well-informed journalism without feeling the need to immediately comment…is broadcast culture without grassroots participation…The participatory culture they praise is usually about soap operas, television series with supernatural elements, wrestling…Rather a problem for democracy that people spend way too much time on peripheral nonsense rather than to inform themselves about and engage in key issues.”