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The book Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media by Jason Hannan addresses one of the major problems in the age of social media: trolling. Hannan explores trolling through the lens of its origins, starting in the early days of the Internet and proceeding to current social media platforms, framing it in the context of capitalism and morality. This is followed by showing the connection between conservatism and right-wing trolling, conspiracy theories, cancel culture, online shaming, and solutions for dealing with trolling. He also reflects on political trolling and the future of democracy in the social media age.
Hannan uses the framework of Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) and MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981) to build the technological and historical context of trolling. With the help of Postman’s work, Hannan frames the technological and public discourse context of trolling. Postman postulated that television as a medium has inspired public discourse to be a presentation of shallow, uncritical, and superficial and easy-to-grasp ideas solely aimed at grabbing the audience’s attention. Hannan applies this framing to social media space, where popularity and social affinity are determinants on matters of truth rather than logic and evidence. This encourages public discourse to be reactionary and “owning” the other sides by being as outrageous as possible, thus mainstreaming trolling as part of public discourse and a means of building social media capital.
MacIntyre’s critique of the Enlightenment is used by Hannan to build on the tenet that trolling is a product of liberal individualism and market morality. According to MacIntyre, the Enlightenment movement failed to develop a moral code separate from religion. This void was filled by the morality of the marketplace, which pitted individuals against each other with the sole purpose of pursuing self-interest and capital accumulation, thus positioning morality as a private matter guided by individuals’ preference, will, and desires. The consequence of this was, first, a tendency to malign perceived enemies’ motives, second, using protest as a means to preserve power and privilege, and third, supremacy of individual rights over community. Hannan, using this framework, opines that trolling is a fourth consequence of market morality.
After having established the theoretical framework, Hannan proceeds to connect the theory with examples. He begins by showing the relationship between conservatism and right-wing trolling. The principle of conservatism lies in the consequence of market morality as envisaged by MacIntyre: Conservatism is based on the principle of “defense of the free market, limited government, fiscal responsibility, family values, law and order, free speech, and individual liberty” (p. 47). It is based on the rule of the few over the obedience and passivity of others, which means preserving the social hierarchy and the status quo. So, social and equality movements are considered by conservatives as a threat to the status quo. The fear of losing elite status leads to a sense of resentment. This resentment, when accompanied by fear and repeated over time, manifests in seeing the other as an enemy. Hannan shows that the conservative cultural fear of losing their position in the social hierarchy has led to the fostering and thriving of right-wing trolls. The purpose of these trolls is to demonise the so-called other as the enemy by any means possible. He demonstrates the conservative culture of fear manifested in the form of trolling by citing the media careers of famous right-wing trolls Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
Hannan underlines two major consequences of trolling: cancel culture leading to online shaming and the rise of conspiracy theories. Cancel culture, he states, has been born out of the conservatives; however, it has been wielded by all sides of the political spectrum to exert power and influence. Market morality, as stated earlier, encourages individuals to accumulate capital, which has been turbocharged in the social media sphere to accumulate social media capital and status. This is a double-edged sword, drawing on Nietzsche’s understanding of debt and guilt from The Genealogy of Morals (1989) and Benjamin’s work Capitalism as Religion (1921/2005), as the cultic nature of social media demands the constant presence online that aids in the collection of social media recognition as the debt. The debt is collected by the social media community whenever they see the debtor veering from the norms. One way of collecting this debt is by online shaming followed by “cancelling” the individual. Hannan likened it to medieval execution in the public square, drawing parallels between these practices in that both lead to pain, torment, and shame and are lessons to others about not making the same mistake, or they will also be punished publicly.
The reason for the rise of conspiracy theories in the virtual world, according to Hannan, is the prevalence of loneliness in modern society. Loneliness as a human condition began with the emergence of the industrial society, the rise of the market economy, and the development of psychology as a science. The danger of loneliness is explained through Hannah Arendt’s (1971) observations during the Third Reich on it. During this time, individuals were pitted against each other in the labour market to make their ends meet and survive in a culminating sense of insignificance. This insignificance coupled with a loss of trust made it a perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories, which ultimately fuel the rise of totalitarianism. Due to this loss of trust, we lose making sense of the world, and social media with endless feeds further compound this problem. The affordances of social media cater to our personalised view of the world, thus making us susceptible to conspiracy theories. These theories reinforce our worldviews by telling a story that we can believe in and that gives us a sense of community. Hannan illustrates how and why loneliness and the allure of conspiracy theories are related with the example of the QAnon theory, which spread widely on social media during the Covid-19 pandemic.
After underlining the cause and consequences of trolling, in the final chapter of the book, Hannan focuses on the solution to the problem. The solution is building back trust, as he underlines that trolling is a product of loss of trust amongst people. As explained in the previous chapters, we make sense of the world by seeing ourselves as the protagonist and also viewing the world from our ideological bubbles. These bubbles reinforce our morality by making us believe that we are on the moral high ground. They also fuel a sense of distrust of the people who are opposed to our bubble, resulting in trolling them online. The solution to this problem is building trust. The method suggested by Hannan is media literacy through public education, which, according to him, are the “foundations of a free and democratic society” (p. 114). He explains using Durkheim’s and Dewey’s views of public education: According to them, public education is a social space where students learn how to speak, reason, think, deliberate, and cooperate with each other. The learnt abilities will be enacted in the future in the public sphere. However, public education should not be limited by this view but broadened. The idea that Hannan references is Freire’s view of public education as a space of practising freedom through dialogue. Freire describes it as the practice of public reasoning where humans make sense of the world around them and strive to transform it. Dialogue depends on six core values of love, humility, faith, trust, hope, and critical thinking. Hannan proposes that dialogue should be accompanied by the transgression of ideas proposed by hooks (1994). In this, students are encouraged to question ideas and connect it with their and others’ experiences, building solidarity. This exercise fosters a spirit of mutual trust, which helps to fight distrust, thus providing a solution to trolling.
In the conclusion of the book, Hannan brings together the ideas he talked about in various chapters. He highlights the current situation of various social media in light of the various revelations over the years and Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter. He also underlines that social media affordances make the creation, production, and distribution of content easier, and the absence of editorial gatekeeping has led to popularisation of right-wing ideas online. According to Hannan, this, to a large extent, has resulted in the rise of fascism online; the only way to counter this is to foster a spirit of trust through strengthening public education.
In the beginning of the book, Hannan clearly states that the aim of the book is to provide historical context to trolling. The historical contextualisation of trolling begins by framing it using Postman’s theory on television and MacIntyre’s critique on the Enlightenment’s failure to develop a moral code, thus framing it as a consequence of technological and historical development. Additionally, he extends the historical framing to the consequences of cancel culture and the rise of conspiracy theories. He traces the origins of cancel culture in conservatism and compares it with medieval public executions, illustrating the similarities of the two with regard to the aims and reasoning. Furthermore, he draws parallels with loneliness during the Covid-19 pandemic and the Third Reich, showing how both these situations were ripe for the spread of conspiracy theories. According to Hannan, the solution to trolling is public education, which has been proven in the past to foster solidarity and trust. Thus, in my opinion, the author succeeds in his aim to historicise trolling. This approach to trolling not only helps us to understand it in a new light but also offers a new perspective with which to deal with it.
Trolling Ourselves to Death is a well-written, thought-provoking, and timely book on a very common malaise in social media: trolling. Through well-founded arguments, Hannan has been successful in his aim to historicise the speech act of trolling. The structure of the chapters is well organised, so that readers can easily connect the theory cited in the beginning of the chapter with the examples at the end of it. While reading this book during the second Trump Presidency might be difficult, books like these are, however, important for making sense of and understanding both social media and the events happening in the world around us.
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Communicating COVID-19: Media, Trust and Public Engagement is a complete body of work from renowned scholars exploring communication during COVID-19, with theoretical reflections and case studies exploring the role of mediatised representations of COVID-19 and public health institutions and communities with emerging issues of trust and engagement. In the book, the contributors discuss the deficit of trust, which is at the heart of communicative issues, during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, and they subsequently explore a variety of practical, ethical, and theoretical dimensions of pandemic communication, such as journalistic and media practices during the pandemic, community media, risk perception, behaviours, trust, community outreach, digital misinformation and rumours, narrative responses, and surveillance and data politics. Edited by Monique Lewis, Elisa Govender, and Kate Holland, the book offers a rich examination of how communication shaped public understanding, trust, and responses during the pandemic and across diverse contexts and communities.
The book is organised into four thematic parts engaging with various aspects of communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Part I explores the practices of community radio, podcasting, and journalism, highlighting how media professionals managed the overwhelming flow of information to produce content during the pandemic. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss community media and podcasting as alternative medias and how these types of media have dealt with the pandemic and impacted different communities. Chapter 4 discusses the impact of the pandemic on the livelihood of Bangladeshi journalists; in addition to the challenge of communicating health-related information in the media, journalists faced increasing precarity, lack of freedom in their work, decreased access to credible sources and reliable information, as well as health and security issues. In the same vein, chapter 5 explores the impact of COVID-19 on journalistic practices in Pakistan and notes that journalists faced mental issues, a lack of organisational support, and a lack of training on how to report on health emergencies. Chapter 6 reported similar challenges in Portugal, as well as concerns over the lack of diversity in sources and in journalistic practice during the pandemic. Chapter 7 reports on the media representations of remote GP consultations in the UK. While remote health appointments became the norm during the pandemic in the UK, the adoption of this practice was praised in the media at the beginning, but was increasingly criticised afterwards, especially after the first wave of COVID-19 infections. In Chapter 8, the authors discuss the role of journalistic meaning and practice, which became a significant issue during the pandemic. The authors question the role of norms and habitus in journalism, which contributed both to perpetuating normative ideas and allowing contestation during the pandemic.
Part II reflects on the directionality of communication, looking at how health, political, and community leaders shared public health messaging, and what this reveals about top-down versus participatory communication in times of crisis. This part starts with Chapter 9 and discusses community perceptions of risk in South Africa to demonstrate that key community messages did play an important role in conveying information about health and in adopting safety measures in daily life. Chapter 10 discusses the impact of ongoing colonial structures that have impacted the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities during the pandemic. Chapter 11 highlights the ongoing marginalisation and inequalities that individuals with disabilities had to contend with during the pandemic in Australia. Almost serving as a reflection on the previous chapters, Chapter 12 reflects on the importance of engaging communities in health research to improve health understanding and outcomes. Similarly, Chapter 13 delves into the ways in which stigma is connected to disease threat and efficacy in Côte d’Ivoire and how Ivorians have shifted some of the blame for COVID-19 towards the wealthy and frequent travellers abroad. Ama de-Graft Aikins’s highly original ideas in Chapter 14 explore how art can contribute to a heightened understanding of risk and disease. She argues that art should be integrated into health communication as a way to reflect, imagine, feel, think, and embody complex health experiences. Chapter 15 explores the small Kingdom of Eswatini in Sub-Saharan Africa, with just over 1.1 million people. The authors look at a variety of responses and conclude, as with many authors cited in the chapter, that community- and context-dependent health is necessary to improve communicative and health outcomes for all.
Part III turns to the digital media landscape, investigating the role of communication in vaccine discourse and the broader digital environment, including social media dynamics, data politics, and questions around privacy and surveillance. Chapter 16 investigates the amplification of anti-vaccine sentiment in Canada, while Chapter 17 explores the ways in which the Chinese government used the pandemic to acquire citizens’ data and increase surveillance. Chapter 18 and Chapter 19 examine the concept of rumour and its impact during the pandemic. Chapter 18 delves into strategies for rumour identification, while Chapter 19 explores the role of social media in rumours. Further exploration on the role of social media occurs in Chapter 20, with a case study of perceptions of trusted sources during the pandemic in Palestine.
Part IV adopts a more theoretical lens, addressing how values, rhetoric, and framing shape public understanding of health risks, and how these elements influence citizens’ capacity to assess health and science information. In Chapter 21, the authors use examples from rhetorical discourse in Singapore and New Zealand to investigate the role of values in COVID-19 risk communication and behaviour. Chapter 22 explores the importance of health literacy during the pandemic, and the impact on health interventions and outcomes. Chapter 23 discusses the concept of “biocommunicability” to show how communication affected us all during the pandemic. The final chapter summarises the book’s insights and the role of trust in COVID-19 communication.
Collectively, the four sections of the book provide a robust and interdisciplinary examination of the complex intersections between media, trust, and public engagement during pandemic times. It brilliantly exemplifies that beyond a global health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic was a significant communicative challenge that impacted understanding, behaviours, and trust. The insights presented in Communicating COVID-19: Media, Trust and Public Engagement are highly relevant to the Nordic context. Characterised by strong welfare systems, high levels of social and institutional trust, and strong public broadcasting services, the Nordic countries shaped their pandemic responses in distinctive ways. However, while often cited as examples of effective crisis communication, Nordic nations also faced challenges during the pandemic. Digital misinformation, disparities in risk perception and health outcomes among minority groups, and communicative tensions between various groups have been reported. The book’s emphasis on community engagement, alternative media practices, and the ethical dimensions of public health messaging resonates with ongoing debates in the Nordic region about transparency, inclusion, and the role of both institutions and health authorities in shaping public discourse. Moreover, the book’s attention to the sociocultural and emotional dimension of communication during the COVID-19 pandemic offers a great perspective to reflect on the richness of perspectives that the Nordic region can both learn from and contribute to.
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The book New Digital Feminist Interventions: Speaking Up, Talking Back, edited by Giuliana Sorce and Tanja Thomas, is – as its name suggests – a timely, original, and engaging academic intervention and contribution to the field of new media studies, feminist media studies, and gender studies. By bringing together diverse case studies of feminist and queer activism of various communities and contexts from around the world, the volume elevates the immense potential offered by digital platforms for creative, visionary, critical, transformative, and transnational articulations and practices of resistance. The examination of different platforms, contexts, and dimensions of doing digital feminist activism in Asia, Europe, and the Americas contributes with novel aspects and perspectives to our current comprehension of transnational feminist and queer activism.
Especially during these times of rising anti-gender backlash, the volume holds its significance by “speaking up and talking back”. The book elaborates on “speaking up” and “talking back” as new theoretical access points for investigating digital feminist activism in digital spaces where different examples of doing digital feminist activism are weaved together through these concepts. Drawing inspiration from the substantial work of academic feminist and feminist activist bell hooks, it features the resistance interventions by feminist, decolonial, and queer actors, communities, and collectives who reclaim the digital as a space of collectivity, imagination, and activist campaigning and organisation against oppression. bell hooks’s work has always been affiliated with the vision of not stopping at analysis but also cultivating the potential for social transformation.
The editors point out – and I agree – that speaking up and talking back are fundamental terms needed for comprehending bell hooks as an academic feminist and feminist activist, where marginalised Others rise up to the challenge and resist oppression, and by doing so, speak back as subjects in our polyvocal, platformed public sphere. For hooks (1989: 5), talking back refers to the practice of levelling with your speaking partner, rising to their speaking position, and “speaking as an equal to an authority figure”. For hooks (1989: 9), the experience of speaking up embodies performative power in an empowering manner, as it encourages co-witnessing and participating in dissent through solidarity – especially when acted out in a public setting:
Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side-by-side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech, of “talking back”, that is no mere gesture of empty words, that is the expression of our movement from subject to object- the liberated voice.
Hence, “talking back from the margins” means consciously taking up a counter-hegemonic position and thus speaking out against discrimination and objectification (Kazeem-Kaminski, 2016: 29). With passionate, rebellious, radical, visionary feminism that combats sexism, racism, and classism in a manner of “speaking up and taking back”, as articulated by bell hooks, this volume is organised in four sections that include ten chapters: Activist Practices, Activist Formats, Activist Experiences, and Activist Scholarship. The chapters cover vlogging, podcasting, filmmaking, initiatives and events, feminist labour, journalism, hashtag activism, storytelling, performance, and Big Data and AI.
The first section of the volume, Activist Practices, includes three chapters on feminist and queer activist campaigns and initiatives arising from Europe, West Asia, and Latin America. These chapters examine the functionalities and operation of hashtags as well as cultivation of spaces and events for resistance practices and queer and feminist solidarity. In Chapter 1, written by Sonia Nuñez Puente, the focus is on the well-known gang-rape case called “La Manada” [The Pack] from Spain, which examines the ways in which feminist activists have utilised rage as a tool for intensifying their resistance both online and through broadcast media channels. Through the establishment of hashtags and online campaigns, feminist activists managed to create visibility, community and publicity online. Going beyond merely witnessing to what she calls “ethical witnessing” (which also becomes co-witnessing) and using it as a methodological approach and a theoretical framework, Puente analyses how the rage about sexual violence is discursively constructed in feminist digital practices around the case of The Pack. Puente articulates (p. 27): “Giving ethical witness to violence makes it possible to set in motion a process of co-witnessing that evidences the construction of solidarity, in the face of the violence suffered, while articulating discourses aimed at talking back to misogyny”.
Chapter 2, written by Ingrid Bachmann, examines the prominent Spanish language femitags on Instagram and X against sexual violence in the context of Latin America. Through thematic textual analysis and close reading, this chapter reveals common discursive articulations for resisting violence against women: 1) talking back at victim-blaming, 2) decrying that it is about time women can do and go as they please, and 3) speaking up against Latin American machismo and society’s response to gender-based violence. Bachman points out (p. 44): “Importantly, given that most of Latin America shares Spanish as an official language, femitags also serve as ‘an archive of grievances with a transnational dimension’”; they help organise content and facilitate for online community members to get involved and involve others in these discussions about gender-based violence in Latin America.
In Chapter 3, Yener Bayramoǧlu points towards the novel notion of queer diaspora that involves hybridity, the complexities of migration trajectories, fragmented identities, and unbelongings shaped by gender and sexuality. Through this lens, he investigates Lubunya Deprem: a digital queer disaster relief initiative established by queer NGOs in Turkey and collectives in the diaspora, which offers diasporic support and a new space for transnational solidarity with queer earthquake victims. Bayramoǧlu articulates (p. 55–57):
In its online communication strategy, Lubunya Deprem sought to raise awareness and funds for queer victims and sex workers in the affected regions. […] Lubunya Deprem was not only about digital humanitarianism but signaled a different form of a political queer diaspora formation. Instead of a focus on identity and self-reflection, it was organized around an urgent situation caused by a disaster.
Beyond certain activist practices, it is also important to consider different media formats that offer spaces of resistance for speaking up and talking back for queer and feminist activism. The second section of the volume, Activist Formats, includes two chapters that investigate filmmaking and feminist grassroots journalism as such formats. Chapter 4, written by Cristina Mislán, focuses on the grassroots alternative Puerto Rican feminist news platform called Todas. This analysis reveals how historically, US-based mainstream news coverage has relied on a discourse that feminises and racialises Puerto Rican men and women as “ethnic Others” whereas Todas serves as a counter-public that challenges such colonialist representations. As Mislán indicates (p. 76): “This analysis illustrates how a feminist and solidarity-building approach to journalism not only opposes mainstream norms of objectivity (and what is defined as traditional news values) but also its Eurocentered lens that maintain the coloniality of power”.
In Chapter 5, resorting to the prominence of archival work for queer feminist activism, Jia Tan unveils the lost lesbian voices through filmmaking and remembrance by doing a historical memory work of the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women. The analysis majorly focuses on the film We are Here, which significantly underscores the archival motives in queer feminist articulations with an emphasis on moving bodies. As Jia Tan puts forward (p. 89):
The use of an embodied archive also makes the reclaiming of lesbian rights in the film quite different from conventional human rights filmmaking. […] Although the film emphasizes the notion of rights, it is different from the usual tropes of human rights media, such as the use of “humanitarian gaze”, which encompasses the organization and perpetuation of expectations and desires to witness human suffering.
Furthermore, lived experiences of feminist activists in relation to digital activist work is relatively understudied; therefore, the third section of the book, Activist Experiences, uncovers the feminist digital labour of doing feminist activism as well as experiences of diaspora podcasting. Chapter 6, written by Gülüm Șener, uncovers the creative, relational, and affective labour involved in doing digital feminist activism – speaking up and talking back in the context of Turkey. While these categories are not considered to be new, Șener, through in-depth interviews with feminist organisers, applies them to the realm of digital feminist activism, attempting to emphasise the often-ignored labour of feminist activists. As Șener reminds us (pp. 111–112):
Similar to domestic labor, digital feminist labor is often overlooked and unseen, its significance hidden behind the screens. […] Activists follow online feminist agendas, gather and fact-check information, create and curate content aligned with feminist principles, and develop strategies to increase visibility. They also engage with their audience, show solidarity with allies, direct women to support mechanisms, and manage emotions to drive action. Additionally, they plan social media activities, tackle digital attacks, and address the emotional toll and burnout associated with their activism.
Chapter 7, written by Luwei Rose Luqiu, investigates how uncensored podcasts produced by feminists enrich the discourse on gender issues in mainland China. The analysis considers three podcasts and examines the thematic patterns, the frequency of specific gender-related topics, and the framing of discussions on feminism while revealing the tactical approaches these podcasts develop to bypass censorship and engage with their audiences on sensitive topics. As Luqiu argues (p. 127):
This study underlines that despite the challenges posed by censorship, feminist podcasts produced by Chinese women living overseas play a crucial role as alternative media platforms. Even uncensored podcasts contribute to widening the breath of discussion, introducing new feminist concepts to Chinese audiences and facilitating knowledge-sharing, especially on the third wave of Western feminism.
Moreover, Chapter 8, by Christina Scharff, also focuses on the invisible digital labour of feminist activists, especially care work as feminised labour. Conducting the study through qualitative in-depth interviews with feminist activists based in Germany (15) and the UK (15) to comprehend their subjective meaning-making processes, Scharff concludes (p. 146):
The desire to make sure that everyone’s being taken care of may stem from a position of white feminine “goodness” (Kanai, 2020, p.32) and bespeak race and class privilege, contrasting with accounts of self-preservation and the need to be careful of what to say to the world.
Moreover, Scharff argues (p. 147): “The feminine perfect may account for the toxic nature of intra-feminist debate, thus highlighting the need to explore the constructions of femininity that underpin ‘digital feminist knowledge cultures’”.
In the last section of this volume, Activist Scholarship, two chapters brought together offer reflections and resonances of doing feminist and queer digital activism research. In Chapter 9, Kristin Comeforo reflects on queer belonging in digital platforms and transforms her research into a performance that uses her own scholarly voice to generate a vision of queer world-making. She starts with an auto-ethnographic approach and employs “re-vision” as a critical methodology through which she develops a “layered account” performance that weaves together a butch-femme love story on a Facebook group with mainstream narratives of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as narratives and voices from the AIDS crisis during the 1980s and 1990s. Moving beyond auto-ethnography, she brings together the dialogic performative, performance studies, and ultimately the utopian performative to “help her see” her participation in the love story as articulated through social media practices, as pointing towards a queer digital feminist intervention against mainstream, white, cis-hetero stories of the pandemic. As she points out along the lines of Muñoz (pp. 166–167): “Utopia offers us a critique of the present of what is, by casting a picture of what can and perhaps will be […] in this manner, hope takes on the political as it relates to the utopian”. In Chapter 10, written by Stine Eckert, Alexandra Porter, and Kalyani Chadha, there is a meta-analytical study of the existing research already being carried out in relation to Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) – involving theoretical and methodological reflections as well. This research reveals different points of view and approaches adopted in queer and feminist research in relation to Big Data and AI covered under the following themes: 1) confront, 2) avoid, 3) retool, 4) enter a (love) relationship, and 5) fear of missing out (FOMO).
The authors reveal that feminist media and communication studies scholars are not afraid to speak up and talk back against various authorities and authority figures. The authors say (p. 184):
They talk back at Big Tech, at the academy, at their own discipline. They do so via empirical studies and theorizing new concepts or combining both. Employing a variety of methodological approaches remains a strength of feminist media studies today, including mixed methods with quantitative and qualitative approaches to triangulate findings, computational methods, and calls for more complex methods such as extended case studies, creative writing, and combining online and offline interviews with observations.
This review of research literature suggests that there is a developing feminist framework for comprehending and theorising Big Data and AI considering the consequences, ramifications, merits, and potential ills of these novel technological developments in the form of feminist speaking up and talking back.
Although I enjoyed reading this volume that covers different regions of the world, it mostly focuses on places or cases where Spanish and Turkish are the official language – so it would be beneficial to have more variety. All in all, though, as an early-career researcher, I highly recommend reading this engaging volume for a multi-faceted comprehension of contemporary transnational feminist media studies, as this would allow making comparisons with Nordic feminist media scholarship as well.