Patrick Barwise, A. S. C. Ehrenberg: Television and Its Audience (1988)
Filed under book | Tags: · audience, mass media, television
This book by two leading experts takes a look at the nature of television, starting from an audience perspective. It draws on over twenty years of research about the audience in the United States and Britain and about the many ways in which television is funded and organized around the world.
The overall picture which emerges is of: a medium which is watched for several hours a day but usually at only a low level of involvement; an audience which views mainly for relaxation but which actively chooses favourite programmes; a flowering of new channels but with no fundamental change in what or how people watch; programmes costing millions to produce but only a few pennies to view; a wide range of programme types apparently similar to the range of print media but with nothing like the same degree of audience ‘segmentation’; a global communication medium of dazzling scale, speed, and impact but which is slow at conveying complex information and perhaps less powerful than generally assumed.
The book is packed with information and insights yet is highly readable. It is unique in relating so many of the issues raised by television to how we watch it. There is also a highly regarded appendix on advertising, as well as technical notes, a glossary, and references for further reading.
Publisher Sage Publications, 1988
ISBN 0803981546, 9780803981546
206 pages
PDF (updated on 2013-3-28)
Comment (0)Nicholas Cook, Mark Everist (eds.): Rethinking Music (1999)
Filed under book | Tags: · criticism, music theory, musicology
Rethinking Music offers a comprehensive re-evaluation of current thinking about music. In this book, 24 distinguished musicologists, music theorists, and ethnomusicologists review different dimensions of musical study, revealing a range of concerns that are shared across the discipline: the nature of musicological practice, its social and ethical dimensions, issues of canon and value, and the relationship between academic study and musical experience.
Publisher Oxford University Press, 1999
ISBN 019879004X, 9780198790044
Length 574 pages
Tony Schirato, Jen Webb: Reading the Visual (2004)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, image, visual culture
An engaging guide to the skills needed to analyse images of all kinds, and a lucid introduction to the emerging field of visual culture.
From the body to the ever-present lens, the world is increasingly preoccupied with the visual. What exactly is the visual’ and how can we interpret the multitude of images that bombard us every day?
Reading the Visual takes as its starting point a tacit familiarity with the visual, and shows how we see even ordinary objects through the frameworks and filters of culture and personal experience. It explains how to analyse the mechanisms, conventions, contexts and uses of the visual in western cultures to make sense of visual objects of all kinds.
Drawing on a range of theorists including John Berger, Foucault, Bourdieu and Crary, the authors outline our relationship to the visual, tracing changes to literacies, genres and pleasures affecting ways of seeing from the Enlightenment to the advent of virtual technology.
Reading the Visual is an introduction to visual culture for readers across the humanities and social sciences.
Publisher Allen & Unwin, 2004
ISBN 1865087300, 9781865087306
224 pages
PDF (updated on 2013-12-9)
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