Traditionally, communication research regarded mass media content as strictly divided between fact and fiction. On the one hand, there were the "serious" genres of reality-oriented news and current affairs, and on the other hand, entertainment genres oriented to lighthearted "escape" into fantasy stories. Recently however, scholars have come to believe that news coverage is also a kind of storytelling. Whether scholarship is only following developments in the profession or foreseeing the trend -- the product of the increasing commercialism of conglomerate ownership -- journalism is increasingly concerned with entertaining -- that is, with telling a good story. At the same time, entertainment is co-opting the reporting of "real life."
Paying attention to this ongoing interaction of genres, this special issue:
* raises questions about the implications of narrativity for the functions of Western journalism,
* demonstrates that present-day questions about the implications of narrativity for "objective" reporting already were central to the relationship between leaders and public in ancient time,
* asks how story forms affect the public's right to know, and the role of journalism in providing a forum in which multiple points of view are given voice,
* questions whether narrative presentation narrows the opportunity to construct an oppositional view -- to provide the type of information that questions the establishment and its story, and
* is concerned with the dramatic elements in press and television news.
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Zielgruppe
Für höhere Schule und Studium
Für Beruf und Forschung
ISBN-13
978-0-8058-9981-8 (9780805899818)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Volume 4, Numbers 1 & 2, 1994.
Contents: T. Liebes, Narrativization of the News: An Introduction. M. Gurevitch, A.P. Kavoori, Global Texts, Narrativity, and the Construction of Local and Global Meanings in Television News. J. Lewis, The Absence of Narrative: Boredom and the Residual Power of Television News. J. Shandler, "This Is Your Life": Telling a Holocaust Survivor's Life Story on Early American Television. S.J. Sherwood, Narrating the Social: Postmodernism and the Drama of Democracy. P. Smith, The Semiotic Foundations of Media Narratives: Saddam and Nasser in the American Mass Media. H. Nossek, The Narrative Role of the Holocaust and the State of Israel in the Coverage of Salient Terrorist Events in the Israeli Press. T. Liebes, Crimes of Reporting: The Unhappy End of a Fact-Finding Mission in the Bible.
