Reviewing Culture Online: Post-Institutional Cultural Critique across Platforms

Cultural research requires an intensified critical reflection to interpret what it is and reasons for its need as a driver of interactive diversity that enables meaning-making and communication critique (Johan 2020). Departing from this point, Reviewing Culture Online: Post-Institutional Cultural Critique across Platforms examines the ways in which regular consumers review cultural products on the web, varying from books to movies and from other art products to consumer goods. It depicts the diverse groups of communities—in institutional and non-institutional environments, particularly in social networks, where reviews take place on sites like Instagram, YouTube, and Vimeo. It undeniably uncovers that fact that culture is a marker of deeper continuities and cultural critique is supposed to be conducted in an objective way.

The book under review is strikingly informative and up-to-date with eight chapters in four parts dealing with cultural criticism and arts reviews online. The introductory part provides a general background of cultural critique across social networking sites and presents a brief overview of cultural reviewing and contexts for user-reviewing from an emic perspective. Maarit Jaakkola intends to figure out what role the evaluative practices of online consumers play in their day-to-day work, and how they can be evolved further and channelled to achieve more “democratic, tolerant and ethical goals” (5). For us, this fundamental framework can admittedly not only act as an invaluable reference in itself and but also offer a real potential guide for the target readers.

Part Two (chapters 2–3) investigates digital online communities, presents the concept of platform-based cultural products, and illustrates the insertion of the oft-mentioned cultural intermediary model into this comparatively new and still emerging area. A core notion is that of cultural mediation, a phrase initially created by Pierre Bourdieu (1984) to characterize the function of the reviewer as a bridge and translator across different communities and organizations. Jaakkola maintains that the criticisms levelled at the multipurpose application of the phrase do insufficient justice to the multidimensional quality of cultural mediation and it is essential that we separate the different features and devise a much more subtle term to deal with actors who cross borders.

Part Three (chapters 4–7), drawing on sociocultural theories of genre, provide a description of the underlying features of the critical review genre and distinguish between different levels of genre groups, establishing news reviews and user reviews as key conventions. They discriminate between professional and amateur reviewers of institutionalized texts, and between amateurs and professionals of the vernacular, and discuss the core characteristics of each. The overall normative foundation for cultural intermediation is therefore the identification of key sets of reviewers with an emphasis on the professional knowledge of the reviewer. Case studies are employed to investigate prominent vernacular critique communities on prevalent social media websites. The communities involved in this context consist of four distinct, but possibly creative symbols of reviewing practices, which demonstrate the various facets of the practice and objectives of local review. Such critical terms as “shared consumption”, “I see”, and “re-entertainment work” are then adopted to help characterize the lay review. It is found that vernacular criticism is an egocentric, shared, emotional work undertaken in an intimate conversation with a community of the same mind, within a context of co-consumption and leisure, in order to improve their own association with a specific culture.

Part Four (chapter 8) concludes the book with a summative account of the research via assuming that the customer review is composed of pedagogical potential and sketching out a pedagogical agenda towards the evolution of this dynamic domain. It does not purport to define the final value of user-generated reviews, which would be impossible. This is because its form, genre, and structure are experiencing continuous and accelerating change. It seeks to record a review at a certain moment, in which the notion of social media is comparatively new. As such, it takes another pace forward in examining the profoundly new context of cultural criticism and art reviewing, where classical institutions cease to dominate the regulations and where somehow everyone can participate in a renewed orientation towards value creation.

One possible merit of the book is that it expands the scope of critical arts and cultural reviewing whilst providing rich background information for cultural critique and arts reviewing within social web contexts. Another strength of the book is the incorporation of figures and examples that poetically bring the information to life for the target readers. A list of important conceptual terms included at the end also allows the audience to easily retrace the subjects that recur throughout the book. Teachers will gain from this book enabling them to reassess the data available on a daily basis through the lens of the researcher, while novel researchers will be enlightened by the critical research design.

In spite of the aforementioned advantages, nevertheless the book suffers from drawbacks at various levels. On the one hand, readers would have gained a deeper understanding of the theme of cultural criticism and arts reviews online if there could have been more case analysis from throughout the world. On the other hand, more innovative approaches could be employed to target the diverse and complex nature of critical art and cultural reviewing.

Taken altogether, Reviewing Culture Online: Post-Institutional Cultural Critique across Platforms is book that deserves to be read, for it offers a new perspective on arts and culture reviewing and contributes to the emerging literature on arts reviewing, cultural critique, and cultural communication. As such, the book is highly recommendable to teachers, students and researchers in that it can be counted as an accessible reference guide in their teaching, learning or research.