Television’s playfulness is a sign of its semiotic

democracy, by which I mean its delegation of production

of meanings and pleasures to its viewers. The reading

relations that it invites are ones of greater or lesser

equality. Its unwrittenness means that it does not set

itself up as the authority (the pun between “author” and

“authority” is far from accidental): it has no singular

authorial voice proposing a singular way of looking at the

world. The author role is delegated to, or at least shared

with, its viewers. Television is a producerly text that

invites a producerly set of reading relations: the

production of meaning is shared between text and

viewer so that television does not preserve its authorial

power and privilege.

By foregrounding its authorial role and therefore its

textuality, it offers the viewer access to its discursive

practice. In sport and news, for instance, the discursive

struggle of the author function that is involved in making

sense of events as they happen is made visible and

therefore accessible. Showing events, or rather

representations of them, alongside their narrativization

into commentary or news story, opens up the process of

that narrativization, and the difference between it and

the “live” events differently represented by the camera

make the process of representation visible and thus part

of the meanings and pleasures of the program.

In sport the authorial role is played by the commentators

— but their “story” is told as the viewer watches the

game “live.” This “live” game is, of course, still mediated

but it has a higher modality than the commentary, and

any contradictions between the high modality of the (less

written) game and the low modality of the

commentator’s story of the game invite the viewer to

disagree, to produce his or her meanings (and one has

only to watch a football game with a group of fans to see

how eagerly this invitation is accepted). Television sport

sets itself up to be disagreed with, its producerliness

invites viewer-made meanings. This invitation to disagree

can be part of the authorial function, as when two or

more of the on-screen commentators/experts offer

different “stories” of events in the game. More

importantly, however, television’s own discursive

repertoire gives to the viewer authorial knowledge and

the power to produce meanings that goes with it. The

constant flow of background and statistical information,

of replays from all angles and at all speeds, of

diagrammatic explanations of tactics, all give the viewer

the insider information that is normally the preserve and

privilege of the author, to be released by him/her in

controlled doses throughout the progress of the

narrative. We don’t need [Michel] Foucault to tell us that

knowledge and power are closely linked, though he was

the first to propose that the matrix of

knowledge/power/pleasure formed one of the most

important forces in society. The sharing of authorial

knowledge and authorial power is productive of

pleasure.

John Fiske. Television Culture: Popular Pleasures and

Politics. London and New York: Routledge imprint of

Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa PLC business. 2010.

Pages 235-236.

Semiotic democracySemiotic democracy is a phrase first coined by John Fiske, a media studies professor, in his seminal mediastudies book Television Culture (1987).[1] Fiske defined the term as the "delegation of the production ofmeanings and pleasures to [television's] viewers."[1]:236 Fiske discussed how rather than being passivecouch potatoes that absorbed information in an unmediated way, viewers actually gave their own meaningsto the shows they watched that often differed substantially from the meaning intended by the show'sproducer.

Subsequently, this term was appropriated by the technical and legal community in the context of any re-working of cultural imagery by someone who is not the original author. Examples include fan fiction andslash fiction.

Legal scholars are concerned that just as technology eases the process of cheaply making and distributingderivative works imbued with new cultural meanings available to wide public, copyright and right-to-publicity law is clamping down on and limiting these works, thus reducing their promulgation, and limitingsemiotic democracy.[2]

Prof. Terry Fisher of Harvard Law School has written about semiotic democracy in the context of the crisisfacing the entertainment industry and in terms of the ability of people to use the Internet in creative newways.[3]

DétournementTextual PoachersReader-response criticismReception theoryEncoding/decoding model of communication

1. John Fiske, Television Culture (Routledge, 1987).2. See, e.g., Siva Vaidhyanathan, 'Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto'

(2006) 20 Cultural Studies 292.3. William W Fisher, Promises to Keep: Technology, Law and the Future of Entertainment

(Stanford University Press, 2004).

Sonia Katyal, Semiotic Disobedience (https://ssrn.com/abstract=1015500), 84 WashingtonU. L. Rev. (2006)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Semiotic_democracy&oldid=988619295"

See also

References

Further reading

This page was last edited on 14 November 2020, at 07:22 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By usingthis site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the WikimediaFoundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

John Fiske (media scholar)John Fiske (born September 12, 1939 in Bristol, England, died July 12, 2021)[1] was a media scholar andcultural theorist who taught around the world. His primary areas of intellectual interest included culturalstudies, critical analysis of popular culture, media semiotics, and television studies.[2]

He was the author of eight academic books, including Power Plays, Power Works (1993), UnderstandingPopular Culture (1989), Reading the Popular (1989), and the influential Television Culture (1987). Fiskewas also a media critic, examining how cultural meaning has been created in American society, and howdebates over issues such as race have been handled in different media.

CareersHonors

TheorySemiotics and television studiesPower

BibliographyInterviews and lectures

ReferencesFurther readingExternal links

Fiske was born and educated in Britain. He received a BA (Honors) and MA in English Literature fromCambridge University, where he studied under the renowned leftist literary and cultural critic and activistRaymond Williams, who influenced Fiske's intellectual thinking throughout his life. While at Cambridge,he was a member of the Cambridge Footlights amateur dramatic club as a peer of several of MontyPython's founding members.[1]

After graduating from Cambridge University, he taught in the United Kingdom and throughout the worldincluding Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Positions he held included:

Principal Lecturer at Sheffield Polytechnic, where he designed the first undergraduatedegree in Communication in the United KingdomPrincipal Lecturer in Communication at the Polytechnic of Wales, where he supervised thefirst Ph.D. candidate in Communication in the United KingdomPrincipal Lecturer in the School of Communication and Cultural Studies at Curtin Universityin Perth, AustraliaProfessor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, from which heretired

Contents

Careers

While living in Perth, Australia, during the 1980s and early 1990s, he was the general editor of theacademic journal Cultural Studies while he taught at Western Australian Institute of Technology (known asCurtin University as of 1986). He was a Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for 12 years.[3]

John Fiske retired from academia in 2000 and settled in Vermont, where he began a second career as anantiques dealer trading as Fiske & Freeman: Fine and Early Antiques. His specialty was seventeenth-century English oak furniture. He was the editor-in-chief of The New England Antiques Journal andfounding publisher of the online Digital Antiques Journal.

Fiske published several books on seventeenth-century furniture including Living with Early Oak and WhenOak Was New.[1]

In 2000, Fiske was granted emeritus status by University of Wisconsin–Madison as a Professor of Lettersand Science/Communication Arts after having taught at the University for 12 years.[3] In May 2008, Fiskereceived an Honorary Doctoral Degree from the University of Antwerp.

Fiske was one of the first scholars to apply semiotics to media texts following the tradition ofpoststructuralism, and coined the term semiotic democracy.

He is the author of works on television studies regarding popular culture and mass media. Fiske's booksanalyze television shows as semiotic "texts" in order to examine the different layers of meaning andsociocultural content. Fiske rejects the notion that assumes "the audience" as an uncritical mass, the theorythat mass audiences consume the products that are offered to them without thought. He instead suggests"audiences" as being of various social backgrounds and identities that enable them to receive textsdifferently.

Fiske's 1987 textbook on television, Television Culture, introduces the subject of television studies byexamining the economic and cultural issues, as well as the theory and text-based criticism, involvingtelevision. It also provides an overview of the arguments by British, American, Australian, and Frenchscholars. It was "one of the first books about television to take seriously the feminist agenda that has beenso important to the recent development of the field."[4]

In Power Plays, Power Works (1993), Fiske argues that power "is a systematic set of operations uponpeople that works to ensure the maintenance of the social order…and ensure its smooth running."[5]

Through the book, Fiske coined the term "power bloc" in reference to the social and political economicconstructs around which power functions in the contemporary Western world.[6] Rather than constituting aparticular class or permanently-defined socio-political group, power blocs are unsystematic series of bothstrategic and tactical political alliances. These constantly-changing partnerships form whenever

Honors

Theory

Semiotics and television studies

Power

circumstances emerge that jeopardize the socio-political advantages of the members involved. Theytherefore arise and separate on an ad hoc basis (i.e., depending on the necessities of the moment), and theiralliance is specific to matters of social, cultural, historic, and/or imminent relevance.[6]

Those who fall outside of the bloc—and fall under its "authority"—can be understood as the notion of "thepeople." Such people may still possess power of their own, however it is a weaker power—what Fiskerefers to as a "localizing power".[6]

In Understanding Popular Culture (1989), Fiske maintains that culture is integral to social power:[7]

Culture (and its meanings and pleasures) is a constant succession of social practices; it istherefore inherently political, it is centrally involved in the distribution and possibleredistribution of various forms of social power.

1978. Reading Television, with John Hartley. London: Methuen & Co. ISBN 0-415-04291-7.1982. Introduction to Communication Studies, Studies in Culture and Communication.ISBN 0-415-04672-6.1984. "Popularity and Ideology: A Structuralist Reading of Dr Who." In InterpretingTelevision: Current Research Perspectives, edited by W. D. Rowland Jr. and B. Watkins.[8]

1987. Television Culture, Studies in Communication Series. London: Methuen & Co.ISBN 0-415-03934-7.1989. Reading the Popular. London: Unwin Hyman Ltd. ISBN 978-0-415-07875-7.1989. Understanding Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-07876-4.1992. "British Cultural Studies and Television." In Channels of Discourse, Reassembled,edited by R. C. Allen. ISBN 978-0-8078-4374-1.1994. Media Matters: Everyday Culture and Political Change. Minneapolis: University ofMinneapolis Press. ISBN 9780816624621.1993. Power Plays, Power Works. ISBN 0-86091-616-21996. Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S. Politics. ISBN 978-0-8166-2463-8.

1990/1991. "An Interview with John Fiske (https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/bl/article/view/24922/28877)." Border/Lines 20/21(Winter):4–7.2000. "Interview with John Fiske (https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/mediareport-1999/professor-john-fisk/3476232#transcript)," with Mick O'Regan. The MediaReport. Australia: ABC Radio National.2000. "'Surveillance and the self: Some issues for cultural studies'" (lecture), Television:Past, Present, and Future.[9]

1. "In Memoriam" (http://www.fiskeandfreeman.com/). Fiske & Freeman: Early English OakFurniture and Accessories. Retrieved 2021-07-17.

2. Duvall, Spring-Serenity. 2012. "Fiske, John." Pp. 120–21 in Encyclopedia of Gender inMedia, edited by M. Kosut. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Bibliography

Interviews and lectures

References

doi:10.4135/9781452218540.n51 (https://doi.org/10.4135%2F9781452218540.n51).3. "Faculty and academic staff granted emeritus/emerita status in 2000-01 (http://www.news.wi

sc.edu/5209)." UWMadison News. University of Wisconsin–Madison. 2000 August 29.4. "Television studies (https://archive.is/20130418214630/http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/T/

htmlT/televisionst/televisionst.htm)." Museum of Broadcast Communications. 2013.5. Fiske, John. 1993. Power Plays, Power Works. ISBN 0-86091-616-2. p. 11.6. Kincheloe, Joe L. 2008. "Questions of Power and Knowledge. In Knowledge and Critical

Pedagogy." Ch. 5 in Explorations of Educational Purpose 1, edited by J. L. Kincheloe.doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-8224-5_5 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-8224-5_5). p. 97(https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-8224-5_5).

7. Fiske, John. 1989. Understanding Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-07876-4. p. 1.

8. "John Fiske: Popularity & Ideology: A Structuralist Reading of Dr Who (https://speakertoanimals.wordpress.com/television/doctor-who/making-doctor-who-mean/popularity-and-ideolog/)," Making Doctor Who Mean. Speaker to Animals.

9. "'Surveillance and the self: Some issues for cultural studies' (https://web.archive.org/web/20060826155406/http://www.cccs.uq.edu.au/events/television/program/abstracts/fiske.html),"Television: Past, Present, and Future. Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, TheUniversity of Queensland. 2000.

Glynn, Kevin, Jonathan Gray, and Pamela Wilson. 2011. “Reading Fiske and Understandingthe Popular,” in John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 2nd Edition (pp. xxxix-lvii).London: Routledge.Hancock, Black Hawk. 2016 May 25. "From Media Matters to #blacklivesmatter: Black HawkHancock discusses John Fiske (Part One) (http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2016/05/from-media-matters-to-blacklivesmatter-black-hawk-hancock-discusses-john-fiske-part-one.html),"edited by H. Jenkins. Confessions of an ACA-FAN.Jenkins, Henry. 2011. “Why Fiske Still Matters.” Pp. xii–xxxviii in Reading the Popular (2nded.), edited by J. Fiske. New York: Routledge.—— 2016. "Henry Jenkins on John Fiske (https://grandparentsofmedialiteracy.com/read-chapter-10)." Pp. 138–52 in Exploring the Roots of Digital and Media Literacy through PersonalNarrative, edited by R. Hobbs. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Henry. 2010 June 16. "John Fiske: Now and The Future (https://civic.mit.edu/2010/06/16/john-fiske-now-and-the-future/)." Center for Civic Media. US: Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

Academic Family Tree: John Fiske (https://academictree.org/polisci/tree.php?pid=556999)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Fiske_(media_scholar)&oldid=1034042165"

This page was last edited on 17 July 2021, at 12:23 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By usingthis site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the WikimediaFoundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

Further reading

External links