Showing papers in "Critical Studies in Media Communication in 1987"
TL;DR: The authors discusses the assumptions that ground radical, liberal, and socialist feminist theoretical frameworks and reviews and critiques feminist media research, and concludes that socialist feminism offers the greatest potential for a comprehensive framework to address women's devaluation in communication but that much more theoretical and empirical work still needs to be done.
Abstract: This essay discusses the assumptions that ground radical, liberal, and socialist feminist theoretical frameworks, and reviews and critiques feminist media research. I argue that liberal feminism, which characterizes much U.S. mainstream media research, speaks only to white, heterosexual, middle and upper class women and is incapable of addressing most women's concerns. Radical and structuralist feminist communication scholars, however, tend to focus exclusively on texts and often ignore important contextual considerations. I conclude that socialist feminism offers the greatest potential for a comprehensive framework to address women's devaluation in communication but that much more theoretical and empirical work still needs to be done. Finally, I encourage the recent tendency among feminist communication scholars to ignore disciplinary boundaries and draw freely on literary, film, and speech studies, as well as mass communication and feminist theory.
149 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzes earlier work in the area and describes a theoretical and methodological framework for further empirical studies, focusing on the explanatory value of qualitative research and the social and cultural implications of the reception process.
Abstract: Recent research about the mass communication audience suggests that a combination of textual and social science approaches to reception should be adopted. This essay analyzes earlier work in the area and describes a theoretical and methodological framework for further empirical studies. Special attention is given to the explanatory value of qualitative research. The social and cultural implications of the reception process are discussed with particular reference to television. Finally, the essay discusses the applications of qualitative reception data in research and their wider social relevance.
97 citations
TL;DR: In recent years, the study of popular culture has gained legitimacy in American universities and several intellectual developments have stimulated this: a sociological perspective on the "production of culture" that tends to minimize the differences between high and popular culture; work in anthropology and other fields that has broadened the concept of what can be studied as a "text" and increasing attention in several disciplines to the role of audiences in constructing the works of art they read or interpret as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In recent years the study of popular culture has gained legitimacy in American universities. Several intellectual developments have stimulated this: a sociological perspective on the “production of culture” that tends to minimize the differences between high and popular culture; work in anthropology and other fields that has broadened the concept of what can be studied as a “text” and increasing attention in several disciplines to the role of audiences in constructing the works of art they read or interpret. This essay critically reviews these developments and discusses their implications for the university.
65 citations
TL;DR: The Utopian talk about cable television as a dramatic "new technology" swept through the policy arena around 1970, and the talk treated cable as an autonomous technology and consequently obscured political and economic conditions while exaggerating cable's uniqueness.
Abstract: Around 1970, Utopian talk about cable television as a dramatic “new technology” swept through the policy arena. Analyzing the talk as a discursive practice demonstrates both the value of discourse analysis and some contradictions of the policy process. The talk treated cable as an autonomous technology and consequently obscured political and economic conditions while exaggerating cable's uniqueness; these characteristics encouraged the reconceptualization of cable in the policy arena in a way that, in combination with several other forces, led to the reregulation of cable and its subsequent growth. The discourse thus helped shape an institution that it failed to describe.
56 citations
TL;DR: The authors defines television as a contemporary American instance of consensus narrative, a cultural formation or institution in which society's central beliefs and values undergo continuous rehearsal, testing, and revision, and proposes an aesthetic anthropology that understands television shows both as manufactured artifacts and as fictional texts.
Abstract: Aesthetic or literary approaches to television, this essay argues, provide an essential corrective to recent emphases on the ideological dimensions of modern media. Calling for an aesthetic anthropology that understands television shows both as manufactured artifacts and as fictional texts, the essay defines television as a contemporary American instance of consensus narrative, a cultural formation or institution in which society's central beliefs and values undergo continuous rehearsal, testing, and revision.
45 citations
TL;DR: In this article, three varieties of meta-television are described: audience awareness and intertextuality or medium-reflexive structure, metagenericism or genre-reflective structure; and auto-deconstruction and ilinx or text-based narrative.
Abstract: Metafiction has been described as a major element of literary postmodernism. Television also can be meta fictional: meta‐television. Three varieties of meta‐television are described: audience awareness and intertextuality or medium‐reflexive structure; metagenericism or genre‐reflexive structure; and autodeconstruction and ilinx or text‐reflexive narrative. Meta‐television relies on the ability of the viewers to recognize artifice. It is the cultural expression of creators and consumers bored with and restricted by television's naturalness.
40 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the ideological role of television through a study of television news coverage of unemployment during the first six months of 1983, focusing on the explanati cati...
Abstract: Issues concerning the ideological role of television are examined through a study of television news coverage of unemployment during the first six months of 1983. The study focuses on the explanati...
39 citations
TL;DR: The meaning of 60 Minutes lies in its story formulas as mentioned in this paper, where the anchors perform as detectives, analysts, and tourists in order to mediate narrative tension and construct a mythology for Middle America.
Abstract: Amid situation comedies, cop shows, and prime time “soaps,” CBS’ 60 Minutes became a hit during the mid‐1970s. Critics since have tried to account for the meaning of a popular news show. In great part, the meanings of 60 Minutes reside in its story formulas. Reporters perform as detectives, analysts, and tourists in order to mediate narrative tension and construct a mythology for Middle America. What 60 Minutes offers us from week to week is a cultural center, a sense of place. Embedded in its news is the power of metaphor and formula to both transform and deform experience, to secure a middle ground for audiences, and to build unified meanings in and for a pluralistic culture.
35 citations
TL;DR: The authors argues that the concept of accountability was originally intended as a guide to policy making and that, to appreciate the continuing relevance of the Commission's work as a landmark in media studies, it is essential to understand the policy orientation that underlay most of its ideas and recommendations.
Abstract: The ideal of “accountability,” a major normative concept in media ethics for the past forty years, was articulated during the mid‐1940s by the Commission on Freedom of the Press, a distinguished group of intellectuals and scholars who met intermittently during World War II to consider the problem of freedom of expression in modern society. Drawing on a variety of archival materials for evidence of the commission's thinking, this essay argues that the concept of accountability was originally intended as a guide to policy making and that, to appreciate the continuing relevance of the commission's work as a landmark in media studies, it is essential to understand the policy orientation that underlay most of its ideas and recommendations.
35 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the nature and function of listening to music from the perspective of semiotic phenomenology and argue that music is a form of media consumption, a habitual practice that inscribes social meanings and organizes pleasure.
Abstract: This essay explores the nature and function of listening to music from the perspective of semiotic phenomenology. Listening to music is a form of media consumption, a habitual practice that inscribes social meanings and organizes pleasure. The analysis of listening to music occurs in the three stages of description, definition, and interpretation. The description specifies the lived reality of listening to music in a postmodern world. The definition reduces this description to the structures of affect that locate audiences and interpretive positions on music. The interpretation elucidates the potential for co‐optation in pop music.
28 citations
TL;DR: This paper reviewed some crucial experimental studies of the behavioral consequences of exposure to violent or aggressive pornography and evaluated their validity and relevance as support for censoring pornography in the aftermath of the Meese Commission.
Abstract: This paper reviews some crucial experimental studies of the behavioral consequences of exposure to violent or aggressive pornography and evaluates their validity and relevance as support for censoring pornography in the aftermath of the Meese Commission. We find this research deficient on a number of grounds. Many designs confound the effects of the stimuli with the anger of the subjects. The theoretical models consistently do not explain the results, and, to the extent that they do, such models do not offer support for censorship policies. The evidence of aggression is ambiguous and subject to contradictory interpretations. Means in factorial designs are reported incompletely, scales constructed incredibly (particularly the Likelihood to Rape Scale), and the experimental procedures relate only questionably to everyday realities. Consequently, while censorship policies might have a sound basis on moral and ideological grounds, this particular strain of research does not constitute a scientific basis for s...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the image production and management of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Eastern and Western blocs during and immediately after the reactor accident in April 1986, and compare and contrast the varying ideological packaging that was wrapped around the nuclear catastrophe by Western governments, the Soviet Union, Western nuclear power firms, and the anti-nuclear movement in Western Europe and North America.
Abstract: This article examines the image production and management of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Eastern and Western blocs during and immediately after the reactor accident in April 1986. In particular, it compares and contrasts the varying ideological packaging that was wrapped around the nuclear catastrophe by Western governments, the Soviet Union, Western nuclear power firms, and the anti‐nuclear movement in Western Europe and North America. In the year following the accident, these image management efforts largely highlighted the necessity of keeping and pushing ahead with more nuclear power development rather than reducing society's reliance upon nuclear energy. Thus much of the threatening import of the Chernobyl events has been contained within the legitimating interpretation of its packaged representation to the mass publics of the East and the West.
TL;DR: The broad appeal of broadcast evangelism among conservative American Protestants in the face of considerable evidence that it is a rather ineffective and inefficient means of evangelization is discussed in this article. But it is difficult to see how the broad appeal can be explained by the fact that it can be seen as a product of progress, contemporary evangelical theology, and American technological utopianism.
Abstract: This essay seeks to explain the broad appeal of broadcast evangelism among conservative American Protestants in the face of considerable evidence that it is a rather ineffective and inefficient means of evangelization. It first defines the “mythos of the electronic church” as a product of the Christian idea of progress, contemporary evangelical theology, and American technological utopianism. Then it describes and examines the mythos as represented in the rhetoric of various well‐known broadcast evangelists and their major trade association, National Religious Broadcasters. Finally, the essay offers a critique of the mythos as a possible agenda for further inquiry.
TL;DR: On the live variety radio program A Prairie Home Companion, host Garrison Keillor fabricates the fictional community of Lake Wobegon and addresses another fabricated community, the baby boom generation as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: On the live variety radio program A Prairie Home Companion, host Garrison Keillor fabricates the fictional community of Lake Wobegon. In doing so, he also addresses another fabricated community, the baby boom generation. The weekly monologues portray Keillor's persona moving from nostalgia and bitterness to acceptance of the conditions of community as they are. Consequently, they reflect and encourage a passive and uncritical approach toward community life in an audience that has outgrown activism and is searching for an alternative.