Jane Chapman's Early Black Media is methodical study of the journalism originating from African and Afro-Caribbean people living in Britain, following the First World War. She argues that media produced by underrepresented groups provides evidence of activist sentiment and the formation of community identity during a period marked by racial hostilities. Early Black Media serves as a complement to Chapman's previous book, African and Afro Caribbean Repatriation, 1919–1922 (2018), in which she focuses on different forms of print communication, including documents and personal letters. In the current work, she situates the rise of Black newspapers and periodicals within the context of the 1919 race riots, noting that many of these understudied publications emerged to counter the narrative circulated by mainstream newspapers. Chapman's study is the first to focus on these publications, and it is one of the few studies of media history to focus on the postwar years as a distinct period.

In the first chapter, Chapman established her focus on the five-year period following the war, arguing that the African and Afro-Caribbean publications that proliferated helped to shape community identity. Throughout the book, she is careful to note that specialty publications struggled to survive because of their niche market readership and measures that were taken to prevent them from circulating widely in the colonies. Despite their limited distribution, these publications are a significant site of analysis because they provided a space to voice grievances and they demonstrate the influence of international thinkers on the growth of race consciousness in this era. Chapman contextualizes and supplements her analysis of Black newspapers with records from the British Colonial Office and a number of other government departments. Centrally, she claims that newspapers provided a space in which Black journalists and readers could claim agency, participate in diasporic community, and negotiate concepts of citizenship.

The second chapter analyzes Black newspapers as a site of resistance to organizational authority and policies. Chapman explores how Britain's Black publications demonstrate the influence of American thinkers on race coconsciousness, including Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. DuBois. Government officials expressed concern that Black newspapers would increase discontent in the colonies and they debated the merits of censorship. The chapter analyzes the organizational response to specific publications including Negro World and The African Telegraph, both of which drew significant scrutiny from organizational authorities who interfered in their publication and distribution. Negro World, distributed in mainland Britain and extensively throughout the colonies, may have been the most influential Black publication of the era. The African Telegraph, edited by Felix Hercules, sought to draw public attention to the grievances of Black communities and was considered a political threat by British authorities. Chapman argues that direct intervention from government officials worked to inhibit Black publications, at least in part because they feared the community-building potential of these media.

In chapter three, Chapman provides specific analysis of the content of Black publications such as Negro World, the African Telegraph, and the African and Orient Review. She argues that London-based Black publications were energized by the desire to respond to representations and stereotypes that circulated in the mainstream press. A sample of major papers from 1919 revealed no inclusion of perspectives from African and Afro-Caribbean people. Chapman uses editorial norms and specific examples of rhetoric to bolster the claim that major papers helped to foment distrust of Black people. She charts the methods that Black writers used to respond, including letters to the editor of mainstream papers, articles in the Black press, and public addresses. She contrasts the politics and activist approaches of Black journalists, including Hercules, Jamaican-born Claude McKay, and Duse Mohamed Ali. This chapter also includes a specific analysis of the December 1918 edition of the African Telegraph covering the end of the war and the period immediately following.

One of the central contributions of Early Black Media is its specificity. Chapman offers close analysis of the material that circulated in print publications after the First World War, offering insight into both the racialized perspective of mainstream publications and the developing race consciousness evident in African and Afro-Caribbean periodicals. Chapman's focus on the period from 1919 to 1924 allows her to trace the relationship between the British press and the media that emerged simultaneously in other national contexts, supporting her claim that Black consciousness developed as a transnational phenomenon.