Racialized Media

This book examines the design (imagining and producing), delivery (distribution, gatekeeping, and cultural mediation), and decoding (reception, consumption, and debate) of varied genres and styles of contemporary racialized media. In line with what the late great media sociologist Stuart Hall called the “circuit of culture,” the authors herein collectively analyze, first, the production side of imagining and encoding ideological meanings and narratives, the material structures, the people involved, and global political economy of media; second, the arena of distribution in which marketing strategies, gatekeeping traditions, laws and policies, and professional customs structure where and how media is framed; and third, the practices of consumption whereby audience receive, interpret, and debate racialized media. Despite pronouncements that we have reached a “postracial” or “colorblind” society or that racial—and racist—meanings are only the domains of extremist activism and political rhetoric, we demonstrate how dominant racial meanings are deployed, negotiated, and contested in the behind-the-scenes productive activity with, distributive processes regarding, and consumer reactions to racialized media. The chapters highlight the multidirectional influences between media, the racialized climate of politics and culture, reverberations of media meanings in society, and experiences of media consumption along the lines of race, class, and gender positionalities. To analyze these complex relationships, contributing authors utilize various forms of media, including film, television, books, newspapers, social media, video games, and comics, among others.