ABSTRACT

This book, first published in 1992, challenges the elitism and cultural pessimism of much Anglo-American and Continental cultural debate with regard to the role and power of transnational media practices. In a series of ten innovative essays, an international group of media researchers explores a wide range of cultural practices across national borders and the cultural politics associated with these everyday practices and debates.

part I|48 pages

Media cultures: the historical process

chapter Chapter 1|25 pages

Citizens, consumers, and public culture

chapter Chapter 2|21 pages

Modernity and media panics

part II|96 pages

National and transnational media cultures

chapter Chapter 3|19 pages

Electronic communities and domestic rituals

Cultural consumption and the production of European cultural identities

chapter Chapter 4|20 pages

Barbarous TV international

Syndicated Wheels of Fortune

chapter Chapter 5|20 pages

French-American connection

A bout de souffle, Breathless, and the melancholy macho

chapter Chapter 6|18 pages

More than just images: the whole picture

News in the multi-channel universe

part III|61 pages

Popular audiences and cultural quality

chapter Chapter 8|20 pages

Intertextuality and metafiction

Genre and narration in the television fiction of Dennis Potter

chapter Chapter 9|18 pages

Semiotics by instinct

‘Cult film’ as a signifying practice between audience and film

chapter 10|21 pages

Cultural quality: search for a phantom?

A reception perspective on judgements of cultural value 1