Re-Inventing the Media

159 Pages·2015·1.299 MB·English

by  Graeme Turner

RE-INVENTING THE MEDIA
Re-Inventing the Media provides ahighly original rethinking of media studies for the
contemporary post-broadcast, post-analogue and post-mass-media era.
While media and cultural studies has made much of the changes to the media
landscape that have come from digital technologies, these constitute only part of
the transformations that have taken place in what amounts to a re-invention of the
media over the last two decades.
Graeme Turner takes on the task of rethinking how media studies approaches
thewholeofthecontemporarymediascapebyfocusingonthreelarge,cross-platform
and transnational themes: the decline of the mass media paradigm, the ongoing
restructuring of the relations between the media and the state, and the structural
and social consequences of celebrity culture.
By addressing the fact that the re-invention of the media is not simply a matter
of globalising markets or the take-up of technological change, Turner is able to
explore the more fundamental movements and widespread trends that have sig-
nificantly influenced the character of what the contemporary media have become,
how they are structured and how they are used.
Re-Inventing the Media is a must-read for both students and scholars of media,
culture and communication studies.
Graeme Turner is Professor of Cultural Studies in the Centre for Critical and
Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. Among the leading figures
within media and cultural studies, his most recent books include Locating Television:
Zones of Consumption (2013) (with Anna Cristina Pertierra), and Television Histories
in Asia (2015) (co-edited with Jinna Tay).
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RE-INVENTING
THE MEDIA
Graeme Turner
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Firstpublished2016
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
andbyRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2016GraemeTurner
TherightofGraemeTurnertobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeen
assertedbyhiminaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,Designs
andPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor
utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinany
informationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthe
publishers.
Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintentto
infringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Turner,Graeme.
Re-inventingthemedia/GraemeTurner.
pagescm
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Massmedia--Studyandteaching.2.Massmedia--Technologicalinnovations.
3.Massmediapolicy.I.Title.
P91.3.T872016
302.23--dc23
2015012724
ISBN:978-1-138-02025-2(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-138-02070-2(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-67520-6(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
For Jackson …
who says he might read this one.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: Re-inventing the media 1
PARTI
Rethinking the media 17
1 Rethinking media theory 19
2 Entertainment, information and the ‘culture of search’ 38
PARTII
The media and the nation-state 57
3 The media, the nation and globalisation 59
4 Rethinking media regulation 74
PARTIII
The consequences of celebrity 91
5 The celebrification of the media 93
6 Intervening in the social: The function of celebrity culture 108
Conclusion: Teaching the re-invented media 124
Bibliography 137
Index 146
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ThisbookhasbenefitedgreatlyfromthemanyconversationsIhavehadwithother
media scholars, colleagues and friends over the last few years. For their interest,
conversations, advice, observations and occasional warnings, I want to thank Mark
Andrejevic, Sarah Banet-Weiser, James Bennett, Frances Bonner, Charlotte
Brunsdon,NickCouldry,MichaelCurtin,MichaelDelliCarpini,TerryFlew,Gerard
Goggin, Jonathan Gray, Melissa Gregg, Hari Harindranath, Tim Havens, James Hay,
Andreas Hepp, Sukhmani Khorana, Marwan Kraidy, Tania Lewis, Amanda Lotz,
David Marshall, Toby Miller, Meaghan Morris, Anna Pertierra, Jinna Tay,
Anthea Taylor, Serra Tinic, Zala Volcic and Barbie Zelizer. My good friend and
former colleague Mark Andrejevic has been particularly generous in reading draft
material. I also want to thank those who commented on these ideas at the various
conferences at which I presented papers: the ICA preconference on ‘Globalisation
andtheNation-State’inLondonin2013,organisedbyTerryFlew;the‘Television
in the 21st Century’ conference at the University of Michigan in 2013, organised
byAmandaLotz;the‘WhatIsTelevision?’conferenceinPortlandin2012,organised
by Janet Wasko; the second ‘Celebrity Studies’ conference held at Royal Hollo-
way, University of London, in 2014, organised by James Bennett, Sean Redmond
and Su Holmes; the ICA conferences in London and Seattle in 2013 and 2014
respectively; and the Society of Cinema and Media Studies conference in Seattle in
2014. I also pitched the book to a colloquium at the Annenberg School of Com-
munication at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, and benefited greatly from
the discussion. The proposal for the book was the subject of a workshop during
one of the Work in Progress sessions run by the Centre for Critical and Cultural
Studies at the University of Queensland, and I want to thank all of my colleagues
there who contributed to that discussion and thus to the book’s development, but
alsofortheircontributiontomakingthatCentresuchawonderfulplacetoworkfor
so many years.
Acknowledgements ix
This book draws on a long period of research on television and new media,
involving several transnational and comparative research projects on which I was
fortunate to work with some very talented, mostly early career, researchers, among
themJinna Tay,AnnaPertierra,Sukhmani Khorana,Zala Volcic,Mark Andrejevic
and Adrian Athique. Given the international character of the research, it could not
havebeenaccomplishedwithouttheparticipationofresearcherswiththelanguages
and cultural competencies for the research locations in Asia and Latin America. I
learnt a great deal from them that I could not have learnt otherwise and I have
benefited greatly from our collaborations. The interdisciplinary collaboration with
my colleague Anna Pertierra, the co-author of Locating Television, has beenespecially
rich andvaluable.That collaboration continues asweworkonfurther projects, but
ithasalso playedsomething ofaroleinthewritingofthisbook;thebenefitIhave
gainedfromlearning how tosee throughAnna’s eyesaswellasmineisconsiderable
and I am conscious of its influence even in a book that bears only my name.
Some of the material in this book has appeared in earlier and less elaborated
versionsand I wish to thank those who published these for the permission to make
use of them here. Part of Chapter 5 was published in a less developed form in
Journalism (Turner, 2014), and parts of Chapter 3 draw on elements of my chapter
inFlew,IosifidisandSteemers(2015)GlobalMediaandNationalPolicies:TheReturnof
theStateaswellasachapterinVolcicandAndrejevic’s(2015)CommercialNationalism.
The Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies has provided me with a congenial
space toget on with mywork sinceIstepped down asits Director in 2012, aswell
as the generous and impeccably efficient administrative support of Rebecca Ralph
andFergusGrealy.TheFacultyofHumanitiesandSocialScienceshasprovidedme
with financial support for my research and travel. Working with my editor at
Routledge, Natalie Foster, has, as always, been a pleasure. The two anonymous
reviewers of the proposal made some excellent suggestions that have resulted in a
significantly better book.
The final period of writing-up for this book was a little more awkward than
usual as it coincided with my rupturing my Achilles tendon and being immobilised
on the couch at home for much longer than I would have liked. The task of
completing the manuscript, not to mention the rehabilitation process, could not
have been possible without the love, care and patience of my wife, Chris, and it
was made more entertaining by the companionship of my son, Jackson.