Price
In Price's account of national and international media restructuring, much agency lies predictably with the usual suspects: the world's most powerful states (especially in terms of technology, and trade) and the multinational media conglomerates and international organizations and agreements they head up. Generally speaking, some degree of agency in deciding how to resist or participate lies with states, defined as the interconnected structure of political institutions exercise authority over a certain geographic territory. Yet looking at the often heavy-handed "influence" of these international organizations (media, trade, financial), it becomes clear that agency in this context does not mean that states are free to do as they please, or even necessarily as they believe will be most beneficial to the citizens within their borders. To be sure, states can and do make media decisions we might normally consider an enactment of agency; yet knowing that decisions that contradict the goals of more pervasive and powerful organizations could negatively impact international relations, state leaders are hardly faced with a real choice. Agency in global media structures is a complicated interplay of law, politics, culture, technology, trade, and ideology, and it is nearly impossible to pin down.
Transnational forces permeate physical borders, shaping the media decisions of states both from the outside (including satellites, Internet, development and reform models/metaphors, and trade agreements), and the inside (for example, "deregulation" and "self-governance" of domestic media companies whose interests and direction are closely aligned with the government). Price describes an increasing interdependence of media and government, leading to the "toleration of even greater tendencies to monopoly" (p.13). Price also urges us not to discount to power of words and images (media content) on the "market for loyalties". While locating agency in this account is a challenge, Price does not seem to give much agency to the individual citizens and groups of citizens, the shaping of whose behavior, beliefs and "loyalties" is the goal of media restructuring. A more thorough account of how various individual, national, and international agents are resisting the forces describes by Price would provide a valuable counterpoint.