Reality TV
by: Derek Kompare / Southern Methodist University
How Hurricane Katrina can reshift how we define reality TV worth watching.
Tag: American Politics
War, Incendiary Media, and International Law (Part I)
by: John Nguyet Erni / City University of Hong Kong
The first of a three part series on media and warfare from a human rights perspective, this column focuses on defining what media/information intervention is.
Bring the War Home: Iraq War Stories from Steven Bochco and Cindy Sheehan
by: Aniko Bodroghkozy / University of Virginia
What Over There and the coverage of Cindy Sheehan can tell us about who has a stake in the current war in Iraq.
Extreme Health Care
by: Vicki Mayer / Tulane University
What’s behind Extreme Makeover’s contestants? Maybe more than just the desire to have their 5 minutes of fame.
The Media and Death: The Case of Terri Schiavo and the Pope
by: Douglas Kellner / UCLA
Why does the “Culture of Life” movement reek of death?
The West Wing–A Hyperreal, Not a Reality Show
by: Trudy L. Hanson / West Texas A&M University
The West Wing just might be more important than politics in real life. Is that necessarily a bad thing?
Television For Swing States
by: Henry Jenkins / Massachusetts Institute of Technology
How television can help to create common ground among citizens.
Watching Westerns in Old Europe
by: Patrick J. Walsh / Universität Passau
Americans are rich and they use the Western to explain why. So said one of my students in a class on the Western at the University of Passau in southern Germany.
Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy
by: Doug Kellner / UCLA
On March 10, 2004, when speaking to AFL-CIO union workers in Chicago, John Kerry said in what he thought was an off-mike comment: “Let me tell you–we’re just beginning to fight here. These guys are the most crooked, lying group of people I’ve ever seen.”
Can the Social History of Audiences Contribute to Media Reform?
by: Thomas Streeter / University of Vermont
Zephyr Teachout, formerly a staffer for Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign, recently published an open memo to the Democratic Party about using the internet to help rejuvenate the Party at the grassroots…
Overhaulin’ TV and Government (Thoughts on the Political Campaign to Pimp Your Ride)
by: James Hay / University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
These days, the expression “overhauling” is in the air (and “on the air.”)
The 2004 Presidential Election and the Dean Scream
by: Lisa Parks / UC Santa Barbara
What was missing in this campaign in my opinion was the lack of discussion of media industry reform, which is surprising given all the ammunition on the democratic side to address such issues.