This book review has been published in Journal of Media Studies and The Author "Khurram Ali Shafique" Has placed the excerpts from my review on top the list

on his Official website http://marghdeen.com/

     Journal of Media Studies

Vol. 32(1): January 2017 133-138

© 2010 ICS Publications

www.jms.edu.pk

http://pu.edu.pk/home/journal/41/Current-Issue.html

BOOK REVIEW

Shafique, K. A. (2016). Waheed Murad: His Life and Our Times. Karachi, Pakistan: Libredux Publishing. ISBN-13: 978-0957141674

Reviewed by Muhammad Tayyab

“Waheed Murad: His Life and Our Times” is the first biography of any film star of Pakistan. The writer started writing this book soon after the death of Waheed Murad in 1983. Collecting all parts of the story and research consumed more than thirty years. The book was awaited by Waheed Murad’s family, friends and huge lot of fans who knew that a book is being written by a scholar on the celebrated film actor. This book describes the whole personality of the superstar, his lifestyle, struggle, patriotism and of course his astonishing skills as a writer, director, actor and producer. The book tells the tale of a passionate and hardworking person who became a superstar and spent almost 20 years of his life in the film industry.

                The author of the book Khurram Ali Shafique is an internationally renowned scholar of Iqbal Studies. He has a vast experience as a screenwriter, educationist and historian. He has been awarded with the Presidential Iqbal Award. The author’s work includes more than 200 articles and papers, and more than thirty books on various genres like history, textbooks, screenplays, Iqbal Studies, literature and many other. He is the founder of Marghdeen Learning Centre and is the pioneer of online courses on Iqbal Studies, which he has been conducting since May 2011. When a person with literary taste came to know about the death of Waheed Murad and witnessed the sorrow of almost the entire society, a question came to his mind that, “Could Waheed have lived longer if we, the society, had behaved differently?” which led him to write this book. (Shafique, 2016)

                The book delivers invaluable perceptions about Waheed Murad showing his vision for the society which is also reflected in his films. It provides each and every detail about Waheed Murad as a legend, covering his life, character, professional and personal life. The author has depicted all diverse aspects of his charming personality as a writer, producer, director and actor as well. The 180-pager book starts with “Prologue: A Question” and contains four chapters explaining the man behind the legend, the filmmaker, the writer and the chocolate-cream hero. The book ends with “Epilogue: The Answer” and provides his complete filmography, list of awards and references to useful sources.

Prologue: A Question the author asks that “Can the people of Pakistan find through their recent heritage the much-needed confidence in their existence as a people?” (Shafique, 2016). This part further draws a comparison of cinema development between England and Pakistan. “The Man behind the Legend” is the longest chapter which provides the background of Waheed Murad’s family, his personal and professional life. This chapter also traces his struggle, ambitions and goals which portray his real personality to the readers. This chapter also covers his films and dealing with his friends and colleagues which also shows his administrative skills and concern for humanity. This chapters ends with his tragic untimely death and aftermath.

                In the second chapter the film maker gives an in-depth study of the films produced by Waheed Murad under his own banner, “Film Arts”. The third chapter evaluates his scholarly contributions to literature through three films he wrote. And the last chapter gives an overview on the rise of Waheed Murad as a superstar, an iconic hero known as Chocolate-Cream hero. It also provides a detail of his film roles, why he took them and what do they tell us about our society. “In the epilogue: the answer” writer answers the question which he raised in the prologue in the light of what unfolded in the four chapters.

                The book is easy, detailed, interesting and well-written. The book attracts a wide range of people belonging to different sects of life including students of Mass Communication, Film, TV and Literature, Teachers, Film industry and fans of Pakistan and Waheed Murad’s Films. Citations at the end of each page satisfies the curiosity of those who want to read more about the topic. Illustrations and pictures are appropriate and rare which also encourage the reader to think about our culture, history and our film industry. While reading the film stories and the ideas entrenched with our culture develops ones interest to watch old movies. This book reveals that Waheed Murad was not only an actor but producer, writer, director and businessman, a visionary and a scholar, in short, an all-rounder. Waheed Murad was just a charming actor for me until I read the insights of Khurram Ali Shafique.

                This book is as much related to our culture as it is with Waheed Murad. This quality of the book makes it interesting for foreigners who want to know about our culture. The writer has captured the ‘spirit of times’ in a very professional manner. He pulls out the best stories about Waheed Murad and describes them in the best possible way, shaping the scenario in which these stories and incidents took place. He covers all major cultural and political events that took place during the life of Waheed Murad and also describes their relevancy, effects and importance on his life and films. This book also explains what type of cultural, social, economic and political events inspired Waheed to make films on specific topics at different times. This book reminds us of the golden era of our film industry and thereafter its fall.

                Waheed Murad was not the sole artist who made films, he was backed by a good strong team. The book also describes all other important characters who helped Waheed Murad to become a legend, his parents, spouse, friends and team members.

                The writer has portrayed Waheed Murad in a positive light and tried his best not to mention the negative aspects of his personality which shows the biasness of the writer. He did not reveal the mistakes Waheed made in his career and personal life. Waheed was an innovative person and always tried new things, which means sometimes things can go messy. There is nothing wrong with it. Edison was not ashamed of mentioning how many times he failed before perfecting a light bulb. The writer did not mention the negative aspects of Waheed Murad’s personality and also the name of his flop films and the reasons for their failure. Names and reasons could help the reader learn. The book also does not mention the reasons for the downfall of our film industry, this may not fascinate the audience but at least it would have made them aware of what mistakes not to make in the future.

                Rumors exist about Waheed’s personality, and there are even doubts about his death. The writer has left these issues unanswered, which raise several questions that could these rumors be true. The only thing that is clear in the book is that Waheed Murad was not an arrogant person and was shy and sober.

                Several other biographies including Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence, Shahab Nama, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir and My Brother are master pieces in their own self but this book has its own flavor and value. I rank this book 4.5 out of 5 and place it in the first row of my book shelf.

                Waheed has becomes a wonder for me after reading the book and yes, I must say that the writer has successfully achieved the goals he set for this biography. The ultimate thing I learned from this book is Waheed Murad was not like those artists who picked at others just for the sake of criticism rather I have found him as a reformer. This and above mentioned traits ensured that he became a legend. Waheed had and has millions of fans and the number has increased after his death. The number will further rise after people read this book. Unfortunately, like many other legends Waheed was not appreciated as much as he deserved during his lifetime.

                I want to end my review with his song as he himself said, "Sometimes I think that if I suddenly disappear or am no more for any reason, I would like to be remembered by the song ‘Bhooli hui hoon dastaan, guzra hua khayal hoon-Jisko na tum samajh sakay mien aisa aik sawal hoon’." (I’m a tale forgotten, a thought bygone. I’m the question which you couldn’t understand) which was also pictured on him in 1967 and sung by his friend Ahmed Rushdi. (Shafique, 2016)

References

Shafique, K. A. (2016). Waheed Murad his life and our times. In K. A. Shafique, Waheed Murad his life and our times (p. 8). Karachi, Pakistan: Libredux Publishing.

Shafique, K. A. (2016). Waheed Murad: His Life and Our Times. Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan: Libredux Publishing.

Shafique, K. A. (n.d.). The author. Retrieved from Waheed Murad: http://www.waheedmurad.com/p/the-author.html

The strength of social media: A book review of Social Media and Public Relations: Fake friends and powerful publics.

This Book Review has been published in Journal of Media Studies and in The News International Newspaper

Here is the link of The News International
http://tns.thenews.com.pk/strength-social-media/#.WT7vX2iGOvE

Here are the details of Journal.
Journal of Media Studies
Vol. 31(1): February 2016 93 - 99
© 2010 ICS Publications
www.jms.edu.pk

http://pu.edu.pk/home/journal/41/Vol_31_No_1_%202016.html

BOOK REVIEW

Motion, R. L. (2016). Social Media and Public Relations: Fake friends and powerful publics. New York: Routledge. ISBN-13: 978-0415856263

Social Media and Public Relations: Fake Friends and Powerful Publics details social media’s strong impact on public relations and marketing

Social media has become an important part of life for most of the people, especially youth who have become more active citizens and social participants because of social media. It provides them a range of benefits and opportunities like maintaining social connections, expressing opinions, sharing their views and achievements, interaction, information and knowledge seeking, pastime and entertainment, understanding people and enhancing their support networks. They do so many things on social media because of convenience. Extensive use of social media makes people change their preferences. They start liking or disliking specific things. They build their new opinions and change the older ones.

Considering the reach of social media, its higher conversation rate and instant feedback we can say that social media has a strong impact on Public Relations and Marketing as well. This book covers all aspects that allow us to understand how Public Relations functions in this active world. It examines the role of PR by exploring the various ways that social media is reshaping like its strategies, approaches and tactics. Through social media, the PR practitioners can now communicate effective and less costly content easily, faster and to a large audience. It provides detail information of both fake and authentic, meaningless and meaningful, powerless and powerful audience. This book is for all students, researchers, and practitioners in Public Relations, Media, and Communication Studies.

Motion, Heath, and Leitch have done excellent work in the past. Robert L. Heath is Professor Emeritus at the University of Houston, USA. Dr. Heath is an internationally renowned scholar on public relations. He has published hundred plus journal articles and many award-winning books, including The SAGE Handbook of Public Relations (2010). Shirley Leitch is Dean and Professor of Communication at the Australian National University, Australia. She has done a tremendous work in communication and Public Rations and contributed in so many publications as a researcher. Judy Motion is Professor of Communication at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She has written extensively on the power of public relations, public engagement processes, organizational change and branding. Professor Motion has extensive experience in successfully supervising PhDs to completion and assessing doctoral theses. She has contributed chapters in so many books, and wrote journal articles, Conference Papers, Reports, Conference Presentations and working papers.

First strength of the book is powerful research. Authors have done a great job in finding and exploring every aspects of topic over the course of history. They have cited numerous sources, quotations and paragraphs into each chapter of their book to strengthen the arguments and to clear things up. Social media is developing continuously and the patterns of users are also changing constantly. It has not a long history, and then Public Relations through social media is also a new concept. So having little available information, providing a book would have been a challenge to research, understand and convey all concepts. The second strength is that the book describes not only what to do but what not to do. It also seems that its main focus is to prevent PR practitioners from spoiling the image of their organization because it takes years to develop a good image but a single mistake is sufficient to destroy everything.

The book has twelve sections. Each chapter discusses the topic in detail with lot of references. Chapters are developed intelligently and provide enough information about emerging trend of social media and its historical perspective to understand all the phenomenon and the basics. All the chapters lead reader to comprehend the current issues, limitations, risks, challenges and opportunities from the audience perspective at the same time which can guide him or her throughout the journey of Public Relations through new media. The book describes not only Public Relations practices but also user perspectives to provide better understanding of both ends. It delivers the adequate knowledge about the lack of digital literacy, understanding of the norms of social media, immaturity about corporate identity risks, and the central emphasis on spin instead of authentic engagement. All these things make you more professional and skillful when you are doing PR on social media.

         Most significant strength of the book is placement of case studies and appropriate examples happened in the history. For example campaign against oil companies in America and #Likeagirl campaign by “Always” brand has been reported as biggest, successful and powerful campaigns initiated and operated through the social media. Writers included PR cases in each chapter where needed which shows the power of online world. Another strength of the book is detail explanation of different tools like Facebook, twitter and Instagram etc. it provides the strengths and weaknesses of the tools of social media so that we can use them efficiently and effectively.

Most important and obvious weakness of this book is not using illustrations or pictures. Pictures of real time examples allow reader to understand things well. It also works like brainstorming power that motivates them to come up with new ideas or to generate new messages from old ones. When reader sees an example he or she comes to know that how and which techniques has been used for that purpose so that they can apply same idea with new flavor in current settings.

Another weakness of the book in my opinion is use of over citations which means that authors just have compiled previous ideas into a book and lacked new ideas. That is why they have given references at the end of every chapter. Accumulating different ideas into one book is not bad as such and, therefore, I have mentioned this thing in strengths too because this particular thing have both positive and negative aspects. Positive aspect I have defined earlier. I consider this pattern negative to some extent because this phenomena “Social Media and Public relations” is evolving day by day as new strategies,

mindsets, behaviors, and tactics are observed over the period of time. So in latest books, reader wants something new instead of old concepts. No doubt book has discussed even the future consequences and anticipated many things but the layout conveys the opposite.

Comparison with other books from the same field is the toughest part for me. Every book has some unique and different points that make it worth reading. We can rate this book 4 out of 5 because there are some books which are not dry like this one and not rating it below 4 because this book adds many things in the discipline. There is no rating and reviews on the internet at this time because this book is new in the market. When it comes to rating, I will rank this book in top 10 books again because many writers have worked on the same topic for instance David Meerman Scott who wrote “New Rules Marketing PR”. This book is related to Social Media and Public relations and it is best-selling book internationally, with over 0.3 million copies sold so far. The main strength of the book is real times examples which makes us clear what to do. This book makes us note taking and provides new concepts and even old concepts in a new way.

The book “Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional” by Deirdre K. Breakenridge deals with the same topic and is a good book to satisfy our reading instincts. This book divides the different tasks of PR experts online into eight jobs and then explains what traits and skills are necessary for that type of job. Another book covers same topic but in a different way - “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR” by Brian Solis and Deirdre K. Breakenridge. This book communicates about tools of PR used on social media and describe them magnificently.

                “Social Media and Public Relations” focuses only on Public Relations. It provides a little detail of marketing and so there is no direct comparison with many of best books of the same discipline because most of them depict both phenomenon - marketing and PR - at once. In these books we can count “500 Social Media Marketing Tips” by Andrew Macarthy, “Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising” by Ryan Holiday. I  recommend the readers to read all above mentioned books too if they want to fathom the deepness of the topic.

The book is well written and have defined cultural clash, complexities and tensions between the promotional cultures of Public Relations and participatory cultures of social media very effectively. It is written sharply and documented thoroughly. So I must say that book fulfills the intentions of the writers, meaning that it conveys very effectively what was intended. Two way communication of social media provides a lot of opportunities for Public Relations experts while making it more difficult to minimise the effects of confounding variables - meaning haters, rivals, and foes. The book has accomplished its goal and delivered comprehensive tools and tactics to gain acceptance and to serve the public interest. I would like to finish my review by quoting a line from the book. “We believe that communication, through the practice of public relations, can make society more fully functioning, and a better place to live. But we also know that swords have two edges and cut both ways.” (Motion, 2016)