The peculiar public of television

Abstract

Should viewers of television be considered as audiences or publics? The different meanings of these two terms are discussed in relation to audience and reception studies on the one hand, and work on fan cultures, ceremonial television and migrant communities on the other. A number of theoretical positions are reviewed and it is argued that, in the end, television may produce `pretend publics' and `publics for a day', but that at best its viewers constitute an `almost' public.

Socially Mediated Publicness: An Introduction

“…Anderson, 1983). Grassroots groups and communities have long used newspapers, television channels, radio, and even quilts to make themselves visible and to create new publics (e.g., Dayan, 2001;Harrison & Barthel, 2009). To the extent they could, people have always used media to create public identities for themselves, others, and groups.…”

“…Audiences have thus been treated as less significant than publics, which are seen as ''rational versus emotional, disinterested versus biased, participatory versus withdrawn, shared versus individualized, visible versus hidden.'' Dayan (2001) is among those who have argued that ''audiences'' are aggregates produced through measurement and surveillance, while ''publics'' actively direct attention. The interactivity and bi-directionality of social media demand directed attention in a way that watching television does not.…”

The Death of Margaret Thatcher and the question of the media event

“…All the elements of Dayan and Katz's theory were there, but not in the ways that were expected (e.g. Dayan 2001;Scannell 1999). This was because the extraordinary unscripted and unplanned dimension of the event, in which a popular mass appeared through the spectacle of its own effervescence, created and dominated the ritual that consecrated an experience of social belonging and subjective-subjunctive affect which, despite volumes of research, remains obscure.…”

Unifying and dividing processes in national media: The Janus face of South Africa

“…What this article describes as pressure from within the nation-state, or centrifugal tendencies, are caused by cleavages in society, which may manifest themselves in different forms of local ethnic mobilisation or in separatist movements at the sub-national or what this text refers to as the local level. Media is believed to be a most central actor in the construction of the nation state ill the everyday life of its citizens (c.f., e.g., Dayan, 2001 ).…”