The Sound Bite Society : How Television Helps the Right and Hurts the Left

ISBN-13: 9780415936620 / Angielski / Miękka / 2001 / 230 str.

Jeffrey Scheuer

Opis

Richard Nixon hammed it up on Laugh-In, Bill Clinton hung out on MTV, and talk shows are now regular stops on the campaign trail. Television doesn't just affect politics - it is politics. In The Sound Bite Society, Jeffrey Scheuer argues that the rise of television is responsible for the decline of the American left. Political argument was simplified to quick, telegraphic sound bites as it shifted to television, and the more simplistic it became, the more the rules of engagement favoured the right wing. Television's visual and rhetoric conventions are biased towards simplicity, Scheuer claims, making it the perfect vehicle for conservative messages advocating a simpler theory of government that supports personal autonomy, less bureaucracy, and limited regulation.

Recenzje

"...refreshing. Whatever your political persuasion, however, The Sound Bite Society offers an interesting... take on what shapes the politics of television." -- NationalJournal.com
"Irrespective of whether one fully agrees with Scheuer's thesis, [The Sound Bite Society] will be very useful in stimulating active discussion in classes dealing with political communication and the media." -- Susan Tyler Eastman, Communication Booknotes Quarterly
"... a true intellectual discourse, an essay in the realm of ideas." -- The Jerusalem Post
"Thoughtful, in many ways amazing. Part polemic and part rainbow of dazzling insights." -- Victor Navasky, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, The Nation
"The most searching book I have seen on television's assault on our psyches and our society. Scheuer emerges as not only a first-rank scholar of the media but a philosopher of the media." -- Daniel Schorr, Senior Analyst, National Public Radio
"Beautifully written and powerfully argued...social criticism of the best kind." -- Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study
"Breaks new intellectual ground...deeply incisive." -- Chicago Tribune
"Valuable..." -- James Fallows, Washington Monthly
"Exceptional...unusually well-argued and supported." -- The Eye, Toronto
"An insightful but profoundly unsettling volume." -- Dissent
"Scheuer aims to intrigue and provoke and he does [so] on every page." -- Boston Review

Spis treści

Introduction: The Politics of Electronic Information Chapter 1: The Ascent of the Electronic Right Chapter 2: Shouting Heads: The Language of Television Chapter 3: Video Games: Television and Reality Chapter 4: Complexity and Ideology Chapter 5: Critical Vision: Television and the Attentive Society Notes Selected Bibliography

O autorze

Jeffrey Scheuer writes about politics and media. His criticism and commentary has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and Dissent. He lives in New York City.