‘Public Connection’ and the Uncertain Norms of Media Consumption
Nick Couldry, Sonia Livingstone, Tim Markham
‘Public Connection’ and the Uncertain Norms of Media Consumption
Abstract
Our book “Media Consumption and Public Engagement” aims to disrupt the apparent divide between consumption and citizenship. In this paper we seek to advance that general move by examining the role of one term that lies hidden but crucial on both sides of the citizenship/consumption divide: media. The result will be, we hope, to open up an area of normative and empirical uncertainty about an often, but not always, ‘banal’ area of consumption – media consumption – and to consider its contribution to the maintenance of democratic legitimacy. This points to some interesting implications for just what is at stake in the consumption/citizenship divide, itself much more than a matter of academic precision.
Nick Couldry is professor of media and communications (Goldsmiths College, University of London). His research interests include media rituals and anthropological approaches to media; reality TV, celebrity and fandom; media and democracy; alternative and community media; media ethics; the intersection between media and surveillance. He is currently working on books on mediation and society and on voice.
Sonia Livingstone is professor of social psychology (London School of Economics and Political Science). Her research examines children, young people and the internet; social and family contexts and uses of ICT; media and digital literacies; the mediated public sphere; audience reception for diverse television genres; internet use and policy; public understanding of communications regulation; and research methods in media and communications.
Tim Markham is lecturer in journalism (Birkbeck College, University of London). His recent work focuses on the field of war correspondence. Ongoing research investigates the mechanisms underpinning professional identity and cultures of practice in war reporting, the misrecognised political effects of journalistic ethics, and the determinants of moral authority in the media. Tim is developing new research which questions whether new forms of journalistic production such as blogging are democratising journalism, and also works on theories of the body, gender theory and post-structuralism.