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Hello all,
Just wanted to let you know about Graeme Turner’s recent book.
http://www.uk.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book233425&
If you’d like to see an inspection copy for teaching or a review copy for a journal, give me a shout. Hope it’s of interest!
Ordinary People and the Media
The Demotic Turn
Graeme Turner
“Graeme Turner is one of the most interesting and thoughtful writers in the field of media and cultural studies. Ordinary People and the Media is a book full of perceptive ideas and critical insights. Starting from the recognition that there has never been a time when so many ordinary people have been so visible in the media, Turner explores what this means for ordinary people, the media, and media and cultural analysis. This is a wonderful book that should be read by all serious students of contemporary media and culture” - John Storey, Director of the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland
“An outstanding intervention in contemporary debates about the emancipatory potential of the new media landscape. While ‘power to the people’ may be the rallying cry in an age of blogging, Web 2.0 interactivity, and reality TV, Turner cautions against confusing the ‘demotic’ with democracy. His deft analysis of how the media industries profit from the promotion of individualism and the ‘ordinary’ compels us to revisit fundamental questions of power, identity, and community” - Serra Tinic, University of Alberta
The 'demotic turn' is a term coined by Graeme Turner to describe the increasing visibility of the 'ordinary person' in the media today. In this dynamic and insightful book he explores the 'whys' and 'hows' of the 'everyday' individual's willingness to turn themselves into media content through celebrity culture, reality TV, DIY websites, talk radio, and user-generated materials online.Initially proposed in order to analyse the pervasiveness of celebrity culture, this book further develops the idea of the demotic turn as a means of examining the common elements in a range of 'hot spots' in debates within media and cultural studies today.
Refuting the proposition that the demotic turn necessarily carries with it a democratising politics, this book examines the political and cultural function of the demotic turn in media production and consumption across the fields of reality TV, print and electronic news and current affairs journalism, citizen and online journalism, talk radio, and user-generated content online. It examines these fields in order to outline a structural shift in what the western media has been doing lately, and to suggest that these media activities represent something much more fundamental than contemporary media fashion.
Contents:
Introduction: The Demotic Turn
Ordinary People: Celebrity, tabloid culture and the function of the media
Reality TV and the construction of cultural identities
Redefining Journalism: Citizen journalism, blogs and the rise of opinion
Talk radio, populism and the demotic voice
Revenge of the nerds: User-generated content online
The Age of Entertainment: Media and cultural consumption today
Michael Ainsley
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