Global Media Governance: A Beginner's Guide, by Sean O Siochru and Bruce Girard, with Amy Mahan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. 224 pp. $21.95. ISBN 0-742-51566-4.

This article presents information about the book "Global Media Governance: A Beginner's Guide," by Sean O. Siochru, Bruce Girard, and Amy Mahan. The authors of the book manage to maintain their balance between these two goals, institutional as well as political analysis. They are progressive and critical while bringing to bear appropriate evidence to support their interpretations. The arguments they put forward stay close to the evidence they present. To make their point, the authors identify three phases of the evolution of global governance, from the early logic of the industrial revolution, through the rise of the United Nations system and the emergence of new actors and issues such as the new international information order, to the current period where the traditional rules and regulations are under assault as a trade rationale replaces earlier normative assumptions about how international information and communications technology should be governed. They remind the reader of the traditional and modern reasons for regulating media, both as an industry or sector and as a special contributor to social, political, and cultural life.