How Television Shapes Our Worldview

Deborah A. Macey; Kathleen M. Ryan; Noah J. Springer

doi:10.5771/9780739187050

Summary

Over the last half of the twentieth century, television has become the predominant medium through which the public accesses information about the world. Through the news, situation comedies, police dramas, and commercials, we learn about the world around us, and our role within it. These genres, narratives, and cultural forms are not simply entertainment, but powerful socializing agents that show the world as we might never see it in real life. How Television Shapes Our Worldview brings together a diverse set of scholars, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks to interrogate the ways through which television molds our vision of the outside world. The essays include advertising and public relations analyses, audience interviews, and case studies that touch on genres ranging from science fiction in the 1970s to current “reality” television. Television truly provides a powerful influence over how we learn about the world around us and understand its social processes.

Keywords

Search publication

Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2014
ISBN-Print: 978-0-7391-8704-3
ISBN-Online: 978-0-7391-8705-0
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 436
Product type: Edited Book

1. Contents No access
2. Acknowledgments No access
Chapter One. Introduction No access Pages 1 - 10
Chapter Two. A Bigger Screen for a Narrower View No access Pages 11 - 26
Chapter Three. Measuring the Messenger: Analyzing Bias in Presidential Election Return Coverage No access Pages 27 - 46
Chapter Four. Television, Islam, and the Invisible: Narratives on Terrorism and Immigration No access Pages 47 - 68
Chapter Five. “Your Dreams Were Your Ticket Out”: How Mass Media’s Teachers Constructed One Educator’s Identity No access Pages 69 - 86
Chapter Six. Defying Gravity: Fox’s Glee Provides a Bold Forum for Queer Teen Representation No access Pages 87 - 106
Chapter Seven. Friendship and the Single Girl: What We Learned about Feminism and Friendship from Sitcom Women in the 1960s and 1970s No access Pages 107 - 128
Chapter Eight. Epic Failures: Media Framing and the Ethics of Scapegoating in Baseball No access Pages 129 - 144
Chapter Nine. Eyewitnesses to TV Versions of Reality: The Relationship between Exposure to TV Crime Dramas and Perceptions of the Criminal Justice System No access Pages 145 - 170
Chapter Ten. Paramilitary Patriots of the Cold War: Women, Weapons, and Private Warriors in The A-Team and Airwolf No access Pages 171 - 192
Chapter Eleven. Lisa and Phoebe, Lone Vegetarian Icons: At Odds with Television’s Carnonormativity No access Pages 193 - 212
Chapter Twelve. Television and the Environment: More Screen–Less Green No access Pages 213 - 226
Chapter Thirteen. From Welby to McDreamy: What TV Teaches Us about Doctors, Patients, and the Health Care System No access Pages 227 - 246
Chapter Fourteen. Made Impossible by Viewers Like You: The Politics and Poetics of Native American Voices in US Public Television No access Pages 247 - 266
Chapter Fifteen. “Real” Black, “Real” Money: African American Audiences on The Real Housewives of Atlanta No access Pages 267 - 290
Chapter Sixteen. He Who Has the Gold Makes the Rules: Tyler Perry Presents “The Tyler Perry Way” No access Pages 291 - 306
Chapter Seventeen. Viewing 90210 from 12203: Affluent TV Teens Inspire a Cohort of Middle-Class Women No access Pages 307 - 330
Chapter Eighteen. The Construction of Taste: Television and American Home Décor No access Pages 331 - 350
Chapter Nineteen. Bordertown: Manufacturing Mexicanness in Reality Television No access Pages 351 - 366
Chapter Twenty. Cyborgs in the Newsroom: Databases, Cynicism, and Political Irony in The Daily Show No access Pages 367 - 382
Bibliography No access Pages 383 - 424
Index No access Pages 425 - 428
About the Contributors No access Pages 429 - 434
About the Editors No access Pages 435 - 436