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This valuable and timely book by Jacob Johanssen has arrived at a point in history in which both the study of media and media itself are undergoing significant change. Both the material objects and the formats in which media experiences are produced and consumed have altered hugely since media, communications and film were first taken seriously by academics (in the 1960s). Obvious examples of media objects that have changed significantly include the ‘phone’, which is now effectively a mobile computer, and the ‘television’, which is now less a physical object than an expanded and expanding audio-visual medium. Other momentous media transformations have been consequent upon the growth and influence of digital corporations like Google and Facebook, whose enormous wealth and influence have derived from their increasing ability to use media objects to extract their users' personal data. This data provides raw material for the construction of information about micro-targeted individuals and groups, which is then sold to businesses who can use it to influence susceptible buyers more effectively than they ever have done before (this phenomenon, so thoroughly documented by Shoshana Zuboff [2019], is covered by Johanssen in his chapter on ‘big data’). Digital innovations in media have led to massive socio-economic and cultural transformations as well and have arguably even fostered a new media ‘reality’ - or rather ‘hyper-reality’ - one that media does not only reflect, but also creates (à la Baudrillard, 1994). Theories of media have had to be altered accordingly.
Johanssen thinks that updated psychoanalytic theories are good tools for understanding this new media world. Before showing this, however, he summarizes and assesses some formerly used media theories. While doing so, he notes what has been prescient about their use as tools for the analysis of media in the past and what might or might not be appropriate in utilizations of them in the present. This, unsurprisingly, i