Book Review: Sharon Marie Ross, Beyond the Box: Television and the Internet. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Television Reader: Critical Perspectives in Canadian and US Television Studies, 2013
The first article in this section, by Eileen Meehan , updates critical political-economy research on the audience commodity. Television networks, advertisers, and ratings firms continue to trade commodity audiences. But Meehan argues that there are many varieties of viewer experience: "[W] e approach television as users, drop-in viewers, channel surfers, multiple screeners, casual viewers, focused viewers, engaged viewers, members of interpretive communities, fan consumers, and selfprogrammers"(165). Meehan's discussion of these novel TV viewer experiences contrasts with the old notion that TV viewers are "passive." Since the channels of mass TV broadcasting only allowed TV shows to flow in one direction, from a dominant sender (TV network) to a passive receiver (TV viewer), the audience was often institutionally constructed as mass of passive receivers of TV shows. Though one-way transmission is still a component of contemporary TV, many TV scholars are now less interested in making arguments about what TV networks are ostensibly doing to the audience (whether that be brainwashing them or engineering their pleasure) and more interested in exploring what people are actively doing, saying, and expressing in relation to their favourite TV shows. Using Web 2.0 technology and social networking platforms (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter), millions of TV lovers ritualistically and collaboratively talk about TV shows, create fan websites full of fan fiction, blog about characters, spoil revelations of reality TV shows, and vote for their favourite "idol." Television's mass audience of the network TV era is quickly morphing into groupings of very interactive TV show users.
Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook 10(1): 123-137., 2012
Drawing on an analysis of three entertainment formats with a participatory element provided by new technology, the article discusses to what degree contemporary TV production is in transition as a result of technological convergence. A point of departure is the host–audience ‘parasocial’ relationship and experienced intimacy at a distance, which was already identified in the early days of television. The article argues that, with the introduction of digital return channels and the increased production of multi-platform formats, the audience has become an external production unit. Its members are expected to provide feedback to the programme, and the producers are dependent on their text messages and votes to be included in the narrative and thus have a certain degree of influence on the production. The hosts thus encourage viewers to engage via digital return channels, and use techniques such as pedagogic instructions, sales strategies and semi-private intimacy. As a result, TV production is increasingly about producing a dialogue with the viewers, and about facilitating ‘social TV’ experiences via second platform interactivity.
Text and Talk, 2019
Taking off from the Media Talk approach, this paper examines the communicative work of a Swedish sports webcast football show, Superlive, as an emerging form of web-based media format called Web-TV. This analysis is situated in a context in which broadcasting is going through fundamental changes, and broadcasters are rethinking their content in order to face the challenges arriving with recent decades' technological developments, and especially the fact that television is no longer restricted to being broadcast but can be distributed through the web and be received on PCs, tablets and mobile phones. In this 'post-broadcasting era' producers are searching for new ways of reaching audiences through creating new forms of audience address. Superlive is a good example of these changes and how broadcasters now explore the possibilities of producing television exclusively for the Web. The analysis shows that what is taking place in Superlive is clearly in contrast to the performances one could expect in the conventional broadcast. Through the participants' favoring of an interactional style characterized by informality and spontaneity, this show situates itself as backstage to the conventional forms of airings. As a result, this discursive space implies an interactional orientation to " co-presence " with the audience.
Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 2009
Th e concept of interactivity has been invoked as central to the contemporary digital media age. In conjunction with the increased importance of the 'diff used audience', one which is dispersed and fragmented, characterised by an 'always on' interaction with a proliferation of media forms, 1 this context has posed new challenges and questions for audience studies. Although the active audience paradigm, as well as academic work on fandom, had long since blurred the conceptual lines between production and consumption, the contemporary media context has prompted more explicit calls for a reassessment of the relations between viewer (or user) and text, as well as production and consumption, agency and authorship. As Henry Jenkins explains, now that consumers 'have become key participants in media culture; the debate now centres on 'the terms of their participation', not whether audiences are active or passive'. 2 Although largely associated with the move away from transmissional (one-way) models of communication, a great deal of ambiguity has surrounded the meanings of the term interactive-especially with regard to its relationship with text/audience negotiations from 'the past'. Yet in broad terms, the idea of an intervention in a text, as well as some form of reciprocal communication or feedback-'the ability for message receivers to respond to message senders'-has nevertheless emerged as a key point of discussion in debates about interactivity. 3 But there remains a question about the role of the historical here. In 1999, John Corner aptly observed how television studies had frequently worked with a 'frantically contemporary agenda'. 4 Although television historiography has since become a vital and visible part of television scholarship, the dialogue between television studies and television history remains limited. Helen Wheatley has recently referred to 'the short-sightedness of [television studies]. .. that oft en claims so much for the new without rigorous investigation of the apparently "old"'. 5 With respect to interactivity, and in tracing a trajectory from periodicals in the 1880s, confessional magazines in the 1920s, the rise of talkback radio, real life magazines in the 1980s, to the millennial event of Big Brother, Bridget Griff en-Foley has
Anàlisi.Quaderns de Comunicació i Cultura, 2018
Abstract In this paper I intend to revisit from a critical perspective some issues related to the contemporary landscape of fictional TV storytelling: scripted shows whose consumption and reputation have witnessed significant changes in the 21st century. My interest focuses on what I call “narrative plenitude”, the exceptional profusion of serialized fictions that are now available, anytime, anywhere, on the myriad of channels and platforms in the ever-expanding media environment. In this context, priority attention will be given in the article to the case of Netflix. In particular, I will try to unravel the coexisting mixture of gains and losses embodied in key aspects of the modus operandi embraced by the world’s leading streaming platform. Then I will address the problematic readiness of contemporary television studies to concentrate a great deal of scholarship on just a select body of scripted shows, which come under the category of ‘prestige TV’. I join the dialogue among others in the field who take issue with patterns of choice largely based on the questionable cultural divide between quality niche TV and ordinary broadcast programming. Furthermore, I make the claim that this tendency fails to account for the unprecedented amplification of the contemporary landscape of storytelling, as if television studies “can’t see the forest for the trees”. Keywords: storytelling system; narrative plenitude; Netflix; prestige TV
Web-TV as a backstage activity: Emerging forms of audience address in the post-broadcast era
Text & Talk, 2018
Taking off from the Media Talk approach, this paper examines the communicative work of a Swedish sports webcast football show, Superlive, as an emerging form of web-based media format called Web-TV. This analysis is situated in a context in which broadcasting is going through fundamental changes, and broadcasters are rethinking their content in order to face the challenges arriving with recent decades’ technological developments, and especially the fact that television is no longer restricted to being broadcast but can be distributed through the web and be received on PCs, tablets and mobile phones. In this ‘post-broadcasting era’ producers are searching for new ways of reaching audiences through creating new forms of audience address. Superlive is a good example of these changes and how broadcasters now explore the possibilities of producing television exclusively for the Web. The analysis shows that what is taking place in Superlive is clearly in contrast to the performances one c...