Title
Postings on the Rise of the Rest: Tracking Online Reception to the Post-American World
Publication Date
2013
Document Type
Article
Abstract
This article analyzes customer reviews of Fareed Zakaria’s best-selling book, The Post-American World posted on Amazon.com. Zakaria’s book explores the emergence of a new world order in which the “rise of the rest,” particularly China and India, threatens the geopolitical dominance of the United States. Drawing on reception studies of print culture, debates over the virtual public sphere, and sponsorship of literacy, our article’s textual analysis of 281 customer reviews offers a window into audience reactions to this public intellectual’s deliberations on the beginning of a possible decentering of America in certain realms of globalization. Our analysis of consumer citizenship in Amazon.com’s reviewer space identifies three dominant frameworks or “horizons of expectations” that structured interpretations of The Post-American World: readers’ framing of the book as a tool to foster enlightened citizenship, reviewers’ affective rhetoric of nation building, and the impact of Zakaria’s status as an immigrant intellectual on readers’ responses.
Original Citation
Birthisel, J. & Parameswaran, R. (2013). Postings on the Rise of the Rest: Tracking Online Reception to the Post-American World. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 37(3), 217-232. https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859913489571
Identifier
Virtual Commons Citation
Birthisel, Jessica and Parameswaran, Radhika (2013). Postings on the Rise of the Rest: Tracking Online Reception to the Post-American World. In Communication Studies Faculty Publications. Paper 32.
Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/commstud_fac/32