Resistance through Routines
Flow Theory and the Power of Metaphors
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7511033 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Seija Ridell (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 557-582 |
| Publication date | 1996-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Communication (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0267-3231 • E-ISSN: 1460-3705 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0267323196011004006 |
| OpenAlex | W2046610262 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 22 |
The article takes as its starting point the widely acknowledged tendency within contemporary media studies to shift the focus of interest from media texts more and more to the daily contexts of their reception and use. It sees the most extreme expression of this development in the `epistemology of the everyday' as put forward in Hermes' recent research programme. Based on a thesis of the `meaninglessness' of everyday media use, this programme can be viewed as a challenge to critical cultural audience research, most notably by implying that the routines of daily life not only accommodate the media and their genres but at the same time denude them of their power. In the article this challenge is assessed from the perspective of the critical cultural study of news reception by examining the untheorized status of the `everyday' within ethnographically inspired media studies. Here the metaphorical equation of daily life and television viewing with `flow' is used as a central illustration in order to also assess critically the usefulness of the flow metaphor itself in approaching empirically the use and interpretation of mass media. The article argues that such a narrow and unreflexive understanding of everyday activity, experience and meaning making forms an obstacle to redeeming the emancipatory and empowering promises of an `epistemology of the everyday
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Everyday life · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Mass media · Meaning (existential · Media studies · Metaphor · Obstacle · Order (exchange · Perspective (graphical · Power (physics · Sociology · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · Computer Science · Media Studies and Communication · Social Media and Politics · Cultural Studies · History
Viewing, reading, listening
Television
The politics of polysemy
Eyes out of your head
The interpretive turn in media research innovation, iteration, or illusion
Interpretive media study and interpretive social science
Ethnographic enigmas
Reception as flow
Audience Semiotics, Interpretive Communities and the ‘Ethnographic Turn’ in Media Research
The box on the dresser
Domestic communication — technologies and meanings
Television, ontological security and the transitional object
Qualitative audience research
Raymond Williams and the cultural analysis of television
The Social Semiotics of Mass Communication
Imagined communities
Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
Media, meaning and everyday life
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 1998 - 1998 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |