This book makes for fascinating but challenging reading. It is fascinating in that it covers wide-ranging and controversial topics such as racism; politicians, and their private and public spheres; and risks, covering those associated with children, food, Islam, and September 11.

The book is also challenging in that it introduces readers to a daunting number of social theorists. It starts with Foucault, on whose framework the author claims to have based her argument. It then continues with references to Eagleton, Gramsci, Hall, van Dijk, and Thompson, in discussing the importance of ideological bases to her book; Habermas, in dealing with private and public spheres; Butler and Goffman, in relation to the aspect of performance in the media; Beck and Giddens, in discussing risks; and Saïd and Hall, on Islam, Orientalism, and racism. Finally, it makes very brief reference to critical linguists such as Fowler and Fairclough in connection with the construction of discourses. The citation of all these commentators and thinkers is impressive and shows Macdonald's serious commitment to social theories as bases for her discussion. However, the connection between each of these theories and the analyses of specific cases is not always made clear.

The book starts with an overall introduction, in which Macdonald defines the term “discourse” on the basis of Foucault as “a system of communicative practices that are integrally related to wider social and cultural practices, and that help to construct specific frameworks of thinking” (p. 1). She makes clear that her use of the term “discourse” is different from what is called “discourse analysis.” However, she does not elaborate on the difference between “discourse” and “discourse analysis,” but instead spends more time comparing her approach to discourse with that of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), admitting that CDA shares the same objective of “relating discourse to power” as her approach. The difference, according to Macdonald, is that while CDA focuses on “the detailed structuring of individual texts” (3), her approach focuses on “the evolving patterns of discourse traceable across the contemporary media.” Her definition of discourse, however, is too abstract, and it is not clear how she can identify “evolving patterns.” In fact, this impression persists throughout the book, even after ample examples from actual discourses are presented. This seems to originate partly in the lack of systematic linguistic analysis, from which Macdonald keeps distancing herself.

Another point to be raised here is although Macdonald states that her “approach to discourse includes consideration of visual as well as verbal signification” (3), there is very little systematic analysis of visual significance in the book. Visual images are discussed when illustrating some examples. However, in total these amount to brief references to five photos, three cartoons, and a copy of a newspaper article. Macdonald clearly distinguishes her approach from the “micro-analysis” conducted by critical linguists such as Kress & van Leeuwen 2001, in that she “attempt[s] to map broader trends and changes over time and across genres” (4), and this is the strength and attraction of her study. However, the result is a lack of structure for the overall analysis because of its wide coverage of topics.

Chap. 1 starts with the description of the operation of “discourse.” Here, Macdonald gives some examples to illustrate her claim that cultural assumptions affect meaning interpretation, and restates the definition of “discourse” to emphasize its relationship with “wider social and cultural practices” (10). In discussing the media's role, she introduces the notion of “construction,” which, on the basis of Foucault, “emphasize[s] the provisional and contested nature of forms of knowing” (14). Macdonald, however, points out a need to go beyond the Foucauldian approach and emphasizes the necessity for a “sharper set of criteria” (21) for the evaluation of discourses as well as the study of audience responses, including cross-cultural comparison. This takes us to chap. 2, where Macdonald asserts the importance of employing “ideological investigation” in addition to the Foucauldian approach. After reviewing various definitions of ideology, including those offered by Eagleton, Thompson, and Gramsci, Macdonald concludes that Eagleton's model of “competing ideologies,” which defines ideology as “the effect of a variety of discourses” (42), is most relevant to her approach. She further quotes Eagleton, who asserts that for the “revealing of macro-structure of power, analysis needs to move beyond the particular discursive content to an evaluation of the thinking and behaviour that constitute an ideology of racism” (43). Thus, Macdonald emphasizes the potential of Eagleton's model to assist evaluation, which the Foucauldian approach lacks. However, she does not clearly state how this is possible. Since the concept of ideology is even more abstract than that of discourse, it is still not clear how it operates as a framework for analysis, nor do the examples given in this chapter satisfactorily illustrate the importance of retaining it in addition to the concept of discourse.

The introduction to section 2, which consists of chaps. 3 and 4, deals with the media's recent shift of attention to “the private and the personal” from “public concerns” (55). The connection between sections 1 and 2, however, is unclear at this stage. Chap. 3 deals with the media's recent trend of “personalization” (61). Here, Macdonald's employment of the feminist perspective is interesting; however, a sudden introduction of this new perspective in addition to the conceptual frameworks of discourse and ideology makes it difficult to find a connection with the preceding discussion. Chap. 4 discusses the recent trend of publicizing the “private” from two perspectives: publicizing public figures' privacy; and making ordinary people's life public (89), on the basis of Habermas's (1989) notion of “public space,” and Goffman's (1972) and Butler's (1990) notion of “performance.” Here again, Macdonald claims that feminist theory is more influential in challenging the definition of the “public sphere.” However, readers will again face difficulty in verifying this claim because the book is written primarily from the perspective of media discourse, but not from that of feminism; thus, systematic explication of the latter is lacking except for occasional brief references. Macdonald's introduction of yet another perspective, therefore, makes understanding her assertions more challenging.

Section 3 differs from the preceding two sections in that it is compiled under the overarching topic of risks. It starts by examining the difference between two questions of “ontological and epistemological” nature: “What is risk?” and “What do we mean by risk?” (105). The latter, according to Macdonald, regards risk as “constructed primarily through discourse” (105), and thus is in line with the Foucauldian approach. Chap. 5 deals with the risks faced by children. In discussing the role of the media in this regard, Macdonald repeatedly points out how the “child's voice” is often missing (113), and that in talking about child abuse, for example, there is a tendency for parental abuse to remain “private,” while pedophiles' abuse is overemphasized. Here, Macdonald offers revealing observations based on different perspectives, and these are again in line with her advocacy of the Foucauldian approach. Chap. 6 deals with “discourses about food safety” (129). Here, Macdonald claims that despite the global nature of the issue, it is often discussed from a “Western” but not an “international” perspective (129), giving examples of cases such as E. coli and genetically modified (GM) food. There is, however, often no evidence to determine whether her interpretation is the right one in explicating these cases. In the examination of “mad cow” disease, Macdonald makes a rare detailed reference to the use of vocabulary and modals (137), which is welcome since more attention to these aspects is needed to convince readers of Macdonald's claims.

Chap. 7 deals with “Western fears of Islam”. Referring to Saïd 1991 and Hall 1996, Macdonald describes how “the negative construction of the Arab” has been achieved (151) and how “Islamic fundamentalism” is associated with “terror” (157), giving examples ranging from Rushdie, the Okalahoma City bombing, and how Arabs are negatively stereotyped in American films (163–65). Macdonald also deals with the issue of “women in Islam” and illustrates, for example, how “the veil” is represented as a “key symbol of the silencing and depersonalizing of women” (167). She shows how “reductive” “a discourse of risk” could be by giving contradictory photo images of the veiled and unveiled woman. This is the only occasion where Macdonald utilizes a visual comparison, despite her initial proposal to discuss visual images.

The final chapter, chap. 8, focuses specifically on the September 11 attack. The difference of this case from the others involving Islam presented in chap. 7, according to Macdonald, is that in the case of September 11, “discourses of Islamophobia” and their “denial” coexisted (174); that is, although there was a tendency toward “inclusivity” on the surface, there also existed the construction of “the Muslim as ‘Other’” (179). Here again, Macdonald states the importance of including differing or “other” perspectives (183).

The book comes to an abrupt halt in this chapter, since the brief conclusion to chap. 8 also serves as the conclusion to the whole book. This ending appears to be unbalanced in terms of the overall organization, since the book starts with a separate introductory section. Readers who are expecting a proper conclusion may be taken by surprise. Macdonald, however, attempts to make this section coherent and links it to the rest of the book by seeking to demonstrate that the discourses of risk are related to section 2: While they can be regarded as belonging to a “public sphere,” “they are repeatedly portrayed as invading territories that were once thought of as ‘safe’, or at least ‘protected’” (189). She also tries to connect this section to section 1 by claiming that ideological perspectives as well as the Foucauldian approach to discourse are necessary because “discourses of risk become especially ideological” (189).

To conclude, the book is full of opportunities to discover possible alternative interpretations, and it will be stimulating for students and scholars with varying disciplinary backgrounds, including, for example, media, culture, communication, sociology, linguistics with its various hyphenated subdisciplines, and language teaching. As Macdonald repeatedly claims, the different perspectives she has employed in analyzing media discourse are revealing. Although there is very little detailed, especially linguistic, analysis of texts, and the wide-ranging coverage of social theories is not always directly connected to the analyses, the book is a welcome addition to the field of media discourse. It is recommended to specialists and nonspecialists alike.