Describes three varieties of metatelevision: audience awareness and intertextuality or medium-reflexive structure; metagenericism or genre-reflexive structure; and autodeconstruction and ilinx or text-reflexive narrative. Metatelevision relies on the ability of the viewers to recognize artifice. (NKA)

Argues that critics are caught in the dialectical tension between "technology" and "art" in television research. Examines how this dialectic informs and constrains examination of television. Presents "rhetorical aesthetics" to support the claim that critics should draw inferences from practical consideration of…

Argues that the current popular negative critique of television, if examined carefully, reveals fundamental confusions concerning how print and television communicate information. Discusses the syntax of motion which distinguishes television from print, based on movement in space--a space that is both visual and acoustic. (SR)

Indicates that television news coverage of unemployment in early 1983 contained few explicit explanations. Reveals a diversity of thematic structures that (1) revealed the societal frameworks within which television journalists constructed their stories, and (2) raised question as to whether television acts as a disseminator of a "dominant…

Presents a qualitative methodology employing workshop sessions for studying audience assessment of the mass media's service to the public. Finds that viewers are capable of a sophisticated critique of television, and raises implications both for the politics of communication and for further reception studies. (MG)

Suggests a new academic perspective for investigating the nature of mass-mediated public controversies based on Stuart Hall's theory of articulation. This theory is appropriated to help identify the empowering associations made between the individuals and groups participating in the 1993 controversy over the embattled television program "NYPD…

Argues that texts may be especially rhetorically effective when the content, the medium used to convey the content, and the real life experiences that make the content relevant are formally or structurally similar. Suggests that formal linkage creates rhetorical effect, and uses Burke's theory of forms to explain the effect of formal links. (MS)

Argues that, up until recently, the whole of British television (public and private) was a public service system, that the 1990 Broadcasting Act and satellite channels have introduced greater competitive pressures, and that British television is moving to a commercial system in which there remains a subordinate public service element. (SR)

Addresses issues of culture, cultural politics, social power, and television audience in cultural studies. Argues that cultural studies as a field tends to analyze all cultural interpretation in terms of struggles between dominant and subordinate groups and that the text-centered approach of cultural studies misses much of television viewing's…

Finds that "PM Magazine" emphasized and promoted a dominant personal success value system revolving around recognition, achievement, financial success, excitement, and physical attributes. Argues that this value system existed because it appealed to a particular demographic, making the program highly marketable to national advertisers,…

Examines articulations of "egalitarian" courtship in romantic comedy films of the 1930s and 1940s and recent television series resurrecting their conventions. Gauges the extent to which such texts are open to a negotiated reading that recontextualizes heterosexual monogamy in anarchic rather than patriarchal terms. Suggests that the…

Views competition in terms of a corporate drive for profit and as a way in which television news workers make sense of their jobs and socially construct their world. Argues that through these competitive norms and practices, news workers inadvertently help legitimate the societal status quo and perpetuate corporate control of the media, with…

Defends the importance for media study of a descriptive and evaluative scholarship grounded in old-humanist perspectives. Uses the television miniseries "Lonesome Dove" as a case study to argue that media texts, like literary works, can and should be evaluated according to the criteria of "formal mastery" and "intellectual coherence." (SR)

Claims that most television research ignores the connections between its symbolic and economic influences. Argues for an integrated approach that views television as both a commodity and an artifact. Describes five analytical categories that researchers could use to provide information illuminating these relations to the public. (JD)

Analyzes research about the mass communication audience and describes a theoretical and methodological framework for further empirical studies. Discusses the (1) explanatory value of qualitative research; (2) social and cultural implications of the reception process, with special reference to television; and (3) applications and social relevance…