Genosko, Gary. Remodelling Communication: From WWII to WWW.

McAnany, Emile

Genosko, Gary. Remodelling Communication: From WWII to WWW. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Pp. 161. ISBN 978-1-44264434-2 (cloth) $40.00; 978-1-4426-1583-0 (paper) $22.95; 978-1-4426-9972-4 (eBook) $22.95.

This book tackles a challenging issue of tracing the communication models from the beginning of the field of communication to the present. The focus is not so much on theories as on models, or the way theory connects with data that may test theory. In other words, models are for doing and not in themselves for thinking about communication. Genosko says, for example: "Models are productive--they do something--in the sense that they are designed to do, or have structures that, generate data about systems they represent .... The relationship between models and the systems they represent is sometimes called the validity relation where validity encompasses replication of systemic data, predictive capacity, and structural correspondence with the system at issue" (p. 7). But this quote is simply the author's precis of the positivistic model with which he begins, i.e., Shannon and Weaver. He goes on in subsequent chapters not to deconstruct this model but to place it in some kind of historical perspective as the beginning of the process. This process will include the encoder-decoder model of Hall; the poetic literary model of Jakobson and his critique by Baudrillard's simulacrum theory of communication; the guerrilla decoding of Eco; the dangers of seeking a megamodel of Gerbner and its contrary movement by Guattari in his singularity model. The book draws some general conclusions in a final chapter.

Before briefly skimming the content chapters, here are some suggestions for reading this interesting if challenging book. For mass communication readers, the citations from cultural studies are sometimes if not always abstruse, but generally most readers recognize Shannon and Weaver, Stuart Hall, and Fiske. From Cultural studies, readers will recognize most of the references from their own background. For all readers there is the complexity of references to the history of science that may not be familiar. The style is also a barrier. The author delves into complex territory, but uses vocabulary that is confusing and a writing style that not so much has long sentences, but ones that are constantly interrupted by explanatory parentheses. This may require a closer reading of the whole book and a rereading of the long introduction. All this noted, I suggest that this is an intriguing and important book. It argues that even Shannon and Weaver can be interpreted as a model that makes good sense for the basic engineering behind communication technologies, past and present, and that Weaver and Schramm connect Shannon's original theory to the human and social aspects of communication. From there the author argues for the cultural studies models of Hall, Fiske, and Jakobson; and against the pessimistic assessment of Baudrillard. He questions Eco and Fiske's limitations of decoding but approves their emphasis on the freedom of the decoders to make their own kinds of meaning from a given text. His treatment of Guattari argues for more freedom from the confines of models themselves and the suggestion that "the danger is the relative ease with which one may mistake an explanatory for a descriptive model and unduly restrict investigation by taking the model too literally. Models, in other words, must be handled with care" (p. 127). The author does not dismiss what has been done in the past, including models from mass communication, but asks the reader to be careful not to look back but forward to testing models in today's world of digital plenty and to see the unexpected and even aberrant as fertile ground for modeling and exploration.

The book contains complete references and some commentary in footnotes and a detailed index.

--Emile McAnany

Santa Clara University