Divina Frau-Meigs’ Media Matters in the Cultural Contradictions of the ‘Information Society’ – Towards a human rights-based governance is one of a number of recent monographs to grapple with the changing nature of communication regulation, policy and legislation, at the national, regional and supranational levels. In doing so, Frau-Meigs does not just comment on emerging regimes of global communication governance, but rather attempts to reinsert a human element into a discourse that has become increasingly divorced from the populations it is meant to serve.
Frau-Meigs argues for a more ‘people-centered’ model of global communication and information governance, which places this book in conversation with other recent manuscripts addressing what Raboy and Shtern have called ‘communication rights and the right to communicate.’1 In making this case, this book not only addresses topics familiar to political economic critique, but also engages with emerging challenges that come with new Information Communication Technologies and networks : digital privacy, freedom of information, surveillance, the right to forget, data mining and consumer profiling, media education, and the many iterations of the digital divide. According to Frau-Meigs, each of these issues can be understood and challenged through the lens of human rights.
In this article, you will find information on the author and a summary of the different chapters in Frau-Meigs’ book, that shed some light into the subject-matters she chooses to analyze.