The importance of the daily experience of new information and communication technologies is highlighted by this timely volume. The book is based on work carried out in the European Media Technology and Everyday Life Network and is structured round a series of seven empirical case studies drawn from research within Europe. The application of this perspective draws attention not just to the significance of information and communication technologies for a mature understanding of the conduct of everyday life in contemporary Europe, but also for the significance of that understanding for the development of communication and information policy. The research makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the dynamics and evolution of a core dimension of European society as well as informing on-going and important debates on the nature of the relationship between the social and the technological in the information and communication arena.

This text offers a critical review of approaches and concerns that have recently defined the field of media research. The contributors to this volume analyze and reflect upon dominant themes and debates that have made media research an increasingly important element of political, social and cultural enquiry. Contributors drawn from the UK, USA, Canada and Belgium consider the relationships between media research and media policy in different national and international contexts. Focusing on the European Union, East-Central Europe, North America and Latin America, these chapters assess the impact of social, economic and political circumstances on policy debates and the shaping of a research agenda. The final chapter adopts a trans-atlantic perspective in tracing and analyzing the history of the medias role in reporting war. This survey firmly places media research in the wider context of political and social change and its analysis, and provides a defining but also questioning perspective on its achievements.

Suburbia. Tupperware, television, bungalows and respectable front lawns. Always instantly recognisable though never entirely familar. The tight semi-detached estates of thirties Britain and the infenced and functional tract housing of middle America. The elegant villas of Victorian London and the clapboard and brick of fifties Sydney. Architecture and landscapes may vary from one suburban scene to another, but the suburb is the embodiment of the same desire; to create for middle class middle cultures, middle spaces in middle America, Britain and Australia.
Visions of Suburbia considers this emergent architectural space, this set of values and this way of life. The contributors address suburbia and the suburban from the point of view of its production, its consumption and its representation. Placing suburbia centre stage, each essay examines what it is that makes suburbia so distinctive and what it is that has made suburbia so central to contemporary culture. _

International Media Research offers a rigorous and critical review of key approaches and concerns that have recently defined the field of media research. The contributors to this volume analyse and reflect upon dominant themes and debates that have made media research an increasingly important element of political, social and cultural enquiry. The book opens with an introduction which surveys the current state of the field, and continues with a critical evaluation of the work of the leading media scholar, Elihu Katz. It goes on to explore the relationship between media studies and adjacent fields: cultural studies and new work on gender and sexuality. Contributors drawn from the UK, USA, Canada and Belgium consider the relationships between media research and media policy in different national and international contexts. Focusing on the European Union, East-Central Europe, North America and Latin America, these chapters assess the impact of social, economic and political circumstances on policy debates and the shaping of a research agenda. The final chapter adopts a transatlantic perspective in tracing and analysing the history of the media's role in reporting war. This major survey firmly places media research in the wider context of political and social change and its analysis, and provides a defining but also questioning perspective on its achievements.

Suburbia. Tupperware, television, bungalows and respectable front lawns. Always instantly recognisable though never entirely familiar. The tight semi-detached estates of thirties Britain and the infenced and functional tract housing of middle America. The elegant villas of Victorian London and the clapboard and brick of fifties Sydney. Architecture and landscapes may vary from one suburban scene to another, but the suburb is the embodiment of the same desire; to create for middle class middle cultures, middle spaces in middle America, Britain and Australia.
Visions of Suburbia considers this emergent architectural space, this set of values and this way of life. The contributors address suburbia and the suburban from the point of view of its production, its consumption and its representation. Placing suburbia centre stage, each essay examines what it is that makes suburbia so distinctive and what it is that has made suburbia so central to contemporary culture. _

`Consuming Technologies provides an important contribution ... it raises significant issues with regard to the complexities inherent in the introduction of new technologies transforming our interpersonal environment.' - European Journal of Communication

"Television and Everyday Life" explores the enigma of television, and how it has insinuated its way so profoundly and intimately into our daily lives. The book unravels television's emotional, cognitive, spatial, temporal and political significance.
Drawing from a broad range of literature--from psychoanalysis to sociology, from geography to cultural studies--Roger Silverstone constructs a theory which places television in a central position within the various realities and discourses which construct everyday life. The medium emerges from these arguments as a fascinating, complex phenomenon of contradictions, yet the book explodes many of the myths surrounding what has been called "The Love Machine."
"Television and Everyday Life" presents a radical new approach to the medium, one that both challenges closely-held wisdoms, and offers a compellingly original view of where telvision sits in everyday life.

Television is a central dimension in our everyday lives and yet its meaning and its potency varies occording to our individual circumstances, mediated by th social and cultural worlds which we inhabit. In Television and Everyday Life, Roger Silverstone explores the enigma of television and how it has found its way so profoundly and intimately into the fabric of our everyday lives. His investigation unravels its emotional and cognitive, spatial, temporal and political significance.
Drawing on a wide range of literature, from psychoanalysis to sociology and from geography to cultural studies, Roger Silverstone constructs a theory of the medium which locates it centrally within the multiple realities and discourses of everyday life. Television emerges from these arguments as the fascinating, complex and contradictory medium that it is, but in the process many of the myths that surround it are exploded.
Television and Everyday Life presents a radical new approach to the medium, one that both challenges received wisdoms and offers a compellingly original view of the place of television in everyday life.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203358945

"Consuming Tecnologies" opens for analysis some crucial but rarely examined areas of social, cultural and economic life. At its core is a concern with the complex set of relationships that mark and define the place of the domestic in the modern world, and an explanation of the relationship between the domestic and public spheres as they are mediated by consumption and technology. Debate over the commodification and privatization of everyday life has been preoccupied with the impact of technological change on established social structures and cultural values. Yet much of the discussion has lacked any substantive empirical work on the understanding of modern industrial society: on the nature of consumption, and the contradictory significance of the domestic sphere. The contributors address these questions with a series of essays suggesting that in essence, information and communication technologies require us to see them as social and symbolic as well as material objects, crucially embedded in the structures and dynamics of our consumer culture.

Television: Technology and Cultural Form was first published in 1974, long before the dawn of multi-channel TV, or the reality and celebrity shows that now pack the schedules. Yet Williams' analysis of television's history, its institutions, programmes and practices, and its future prospects, remains remarkably prescient. Williams stresses the importance of technology in shaping the cultural form of television, while always resisting the determinism of McLuhan's dictum that 'the medium is the message'. If the medium really is the message, Williams asks, what is left for us to do or say? Williams argues that, on the contrary, we as viewers have the power to disturb, disrupt and to distract the otherwise cold logic of history and technology - not just because television is part of the fabric of our daily lives, but because new technologies continue to offer opportunities, momentarily outside the sway of transnational corporations or the grasp of media moguls, for new forms of self and political expression.

The importance of the daily experience of new information and communication technologies is highlighted by this timely volume. The book is based on work carried out in the European Media Technology and Everyday Life Network and is structured round a series of seven empirical case studies drawn from research within Europe. The application of this perspective draws attention not just to the significance of information and communication technologies for a mature understanding of the conduct of everyday life in contemporary Europe, but also for the significance of that understanding for the development of communication and information policy. The research makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the dynamics and evolution of a core dimension of European society as well as informing on-going and important debates on the nature of the relationship between the social and the technological in the information and communication arena.

After the very successful ECC-Book on "E-conomy" this new report of the European Communication Council (ECC) analyzes from various perspectives the profound societal and economical change of the media economy, initiated by digitalization and networking. Against the background of the current media history, it highlights for example the role of the Internet hype as a pathfinder in a modified media society. The key question is concerned with how the medial future will be like. The report examines effects and new perspectives in the area of economy, society, and politics. The aspects of behavior, business models, legal and regulation questions, self-conception of society and media economy are mooted by international authors to enhance the reader's understanding of the medial future and to disclose options for action.

'Television: Technology and Cultural Form is a powerful and original book which marked the beginning of a new breed of British accounts of television. Instead of focusing solely on the content of television programs, it examined the shaping effect of television's technological structures upon its characteristic forms.' - Graeme Turner, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland

'Television: Technology and Cultural Form changed the way people understand TV. For the first time, a sophisticated critic and historian looked at the all medium's aspects--as a domestic technology, an object of public policy, a fetish of capital, a series of texts, and a creator of audiences... It was the first classic of TV studies.' - Toby Miller, New York University

'This book is a classic because it inaugurated ways of thinking about a new technology - television - as part of everyday material culture which are even more pertinent to us now as we enter the digital age.' - Charlotte Brunsdon, University of Warwick

'A critical, insightful, iconoclastic and humane reading of television's first half century.' - Roger Silverstone, LSE

Das Buch analysiert die zentrale Rolle von Medien, Telekommunikation und Informationstechnologie als Antriebsfaktoren auf dem Weg in eine digitale Wirtschaft: der Internet-OEkonomie. Schon im Jahr 2005 wird die Halfte der deutschen Bevoelkerung online sein. Die in wesentlichen Teilen uberarbeitete dritte Auflage des Buches bezieht die aktuellen Entwicklungen des dynamischen Marktes ein. In der Neuauflage werden insbesondere die Themen OEkonomie der Aufmerksamkeit und Elektronic Commerce erweitert und fortgefuhrt. Auch der umfangreiche Datenanhang, der die wichtigsten europaischen Kennziffern liefert, wurde auf den neuesten Stand gebracht. Mit diesem Konzept und der internationalen Einbindung steht das Buch konkurrenzlos da. Die zukunftsbezogene Analyse macht es zu einem unverzichtbaren Standardwerk fur Industrie und Wissenschaft.

"It's easy to be snobbish about media culture; the great merit of Roger Silverstone's book is to make the reader understand just how important that culture is." --Richard Sennett, New York University "A remarkable book which argues for a new paradigm for the study of the media." --Daniel Dayan, Centre National de la Recherche "A persuasive and sophisticated discussion of the role of the media in modern life at the threshold of the twenty-first century." --Ellen Seiter, University of California "A very important book, one that moves media theory and argument on at long last. This is an attempt to get people to think differently about the media - not just when they are writing essays, but also when they are arguing about media in everyday life." --Simon Frith, University of Stirling The centrality of the media, all media, to human experience - from the conduct of everyday life, to the exercise of power, to the creation of culture - is inescapable. We live in an intensely mediated world. Yet the academic study of the media has rarely made its own insights accessible and relevant to those outside its own limited sphere. Indeed it is constantly under attack for its lack of rigour, aparent failure to address the needs of industry and its inability to tell us anything substantive about the world in which we live. Written as a manifesto and in order to set a new intellectual agenda, "Why Study the Media?" argues for the importance of the media in our culture and society, and the consequent necessity of taking the media seriously as an object of enlightened but rigorous investigation. At once human and humane, "Why Study the Media?" will be welcomed by all those in search of new ways of thinking about our mediated world.

"It's easy to be snobbish about media culture; the great merit of Roger Silverstone's book is to make the reader understand just how important that culture is." --Richard Sennett, New York University "A remarkable book which argues for a new paradigm for the study of the media." --Daniel Dayan, Centre National de la Recherche "A persuasive and sophisticated discussion of the role of the media in modern life at the threshold of the twenty-first century." --Ellen Seiter, University of California "A very important book, one that moves media theory and argument on at long last. This is an attempt to get people to think differently about the media - not just when they are writing essays, but also when they are arguing about media in everyday life." --Simon Frith, University of Stirling The centrality of the media, all media, to human experience - from the conduct of everyday life, to the exercise of power, to the creation of culture - is inescapable. We live in an intensely mediated world. Yet the academic study of the media has rarely made its own insights accessible and relevant to those outside its own limited sphere. Indeed it is constantly under attack for its lack of rigour, aparent failure to address the needs of industry and its inability to tell us anything substantive about the world in which we live. Written as a manifesto and in order to set a new intellectual agenda, "Why Study the Media?" argues for the importance of the media in our culture and society, and the consequent necessity of taking the media seriously as an object of enlightened but rigorous investigation. At once human and humane, "Why Study the Media?" will be welcomed by all those in search of new ways of thinking about our mediated world.

The information and communication technologies (ICTs) of the 1990s enable the electronic production and consumption of increasingly vast quantities of information. The effects are likely to be both unpredictable and contradictory, and will have consequences for business, governments, organizations and citizens. In this agenda setting book, a highly experienced interdisciplinary team describe and analyse the impact of these developments.