Theorising Media Power, Form and Subjectivity [Paperback]

In this book, John Corner explores how issues of power, form and subjectivity feature at the core of all serious thinking about the media, including appreciations of their creativity as well as anxiety about the risks they pose. Drawing widely on an interdisciplinary literature, he connects his exposition to examples from film, television, radio, photography, painting, web practice, music and writing in order to bring in topics as diverse as reporting the war in Afghanistan, the televising of football, documentary portrayals of 9/11, reality television, the diversity of taste in the arts and the construction of civic identity.

Theorising media brings together concepts both from Social Studies and the Arts and Humanities, addressing a readership wider than the sub-specialisms of media research. It refreshes ideas about why the media matter and how understanding them better remains a key aim of cultural inquiry and a continuing requirement for public policy.

Introduction

Part One

1. Power

2. Form

3. Subjectivity

Part Two

Section One: Terms of analysis.

4. Mediated Politics, Promotional Culture and the Idea of Propaganda

5. Ideology: A Note on Conceptual Salvage

6. Public Knowledge and Popular Culture

Section Two: Visuality and documentation

7. Documentary Expression and the Physicality of the Referent

8. Documenting the Political

9. Critical Social Optics and the New Audio-Visual Culture

John Corner is Visiting Professor in the Institute of Communication Studies at the University of Leeds and an Emeritus Professor of Liverpool University.