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PP 304
Protest on Television: Contesting the Past and Present in Popular Cultural Narratives
A. Robertson
1
1
Stockholm University, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm, Sweden
Contemporary protest is often intertextual, and references to protests in other places and times have become essential features of activist repertoires.
Protesters in Hong Kong, for example, raised their voices in 2014 not just to call for democracy, but also to sing an anthem from Les Misérables that demon‑
strated a kinship with the 19
th
century revolution immortalized by Hugo. The historical Guy Fawkes figure has been a regular participant in protests across
the globe ever since the allegorically masked revolutionary was first seen masterminding a mobilisation against a fascist British state in V for Vendetta.
The uprising represented as spectator sport is a trope that runs through popular culture from Spartacus to The Hunger Games. The screen is a common
denominator in all such accounts, with films like these ending up on television, disseminated in the same flow as news reports, in entanglements of com‑
memoration and remembering. This phenomenon is the point of departure for the paper proposed here. It presents one component of a larger project
comparing televisual narratives of dissent across time, space, media culture and genre. The project as a whole seeks to observe and reflect on the semiotic
seepage between what can be thought of as media discourses of ‘today’ (global television news), ‘yesteryear’ (media coverage of protests throughout
the past century) and ‘elsewhere’ (the imaginative renditions of the political purveyed by popular culture). Television is understood here in its broadest
sense, as a phenomenon that is public broadcaster (be it traditional European programming or global outlet), streaming service (such as television-drama
award-winners Netflix and Amazon Prime) and digital archive (Youtube serving as a platform both for professional television journalists and audiences who
share digitised versions of favourite films). The paper addresses this jostling of the new and the old, and of elite and grassroots accounts of protest on tele‑
vision. Narrative scholarship provides both the theoretical foundation and methodological approach. The comparative analysis (between representations
of protest in different genres and different historical periods) is structured by categories borrowed from Labov &Waletsky (1967) and by an operationalisa‑
tion of Chatman’s notion of 'discours' (Chatman 1978, 1990). It is argued that the study of popular cultural representations of protest can provide insights
into howwell television has met the challenge of representing the people who feel that political representation and professional journalism has failed them
- the protesters who take to the streets, and screens, of the world. The characterization and narrative settings of popular cultural narratives, it is suggested,
provide tools for understanding complex political situations that news reports of protest cannot. Historical comparison of such narratives, moreover - and
not least the study of remakes - sheds light on how political and social change has been understood in different historical periods.
PP 305
The Inclusion of Turkish Television into the Everyday Life: A Socio-Cultural Analysis
C. Dural Tasouji
1
1
çukurova university, communication sciences, adana, Turkey
The studies on broadcasting history and television history focusing on radio and television programs and broadcasting policy are usually restricted within
the scope of institutional history (Scannel, 2004); therefore social history and cultural aspect are kept in background. Socio-cultural history of the media
points out the production, using and owning the television, and acknowledges television as an entity in everyday life. Addressing the television as a social
and cultural device just like the other pioneer technologies makes the everyday life observable (Williams, 2001; 2003).This study offers a double reading on
the history of everyday life that the inclusion of the media into the society goes along with the history of the media itself. This double reading process lets
us explain the discontinuities on the everyday life routines based on the television. Becoming part of the everyday life, television creates its own space both
in social life and at homes. Television, as forming domestic spaces at homes, creates a production area and also becomes a “symbolic field of production”
(Bourdieu, 1993) in both cultural and material sense. Television’s cultural production is based on its programming and its material production is based on
the other materials, furniture and so on that television caused to be consumed. In this study a socio-cultural analysis of the first years of Turkish television
in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and a double reading process is applied on the everyday life of the first terms of television and the history of television
that participating as a cultural device of the everyday life. Within the scope of the study personal memories on television are collected through in-depth
interviews to figure out how television became as a lived experienced.The study figured out the inclusion of television to the social life ofTurkey, introducing
with the television, starting to use the television, competing with the technology, becoming audiences, composing the public and private spheres as in area
television watched. As a result, the study presents that in Turkey, audiences since they first met the television fell under scene’s spell, and the programs that
popular culture criticisms based on then. This interest on television also becomes long lasting that shaped the life style of audiences as they plan the daily
routines and form the in/out door areas according to TV. Also television becomes as a welcomed communication technology and marking tangible capital.
PP 306
The Role of Audience Participation in the Construction of Liveness in the Spanish Post-Broadcast Television
I. Bergillos
1
, R. Franquet
2
1
CESAG - UP Comillas, Communication Studies, Palma, Spain
2
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Audiovisual Communication and Advertising, Bellaterra, Spain
The construction of liveness or the creation of a sense of shared experience has been one of the most important features of television since its inception.
On the one side, it is a strategic element of television programming and on the other, it provides an aesthetic value to programs that seek to highlight their
supposed live nature or the presence of its audience (Bolin, 2005, Bourdon, 2000, Couldry, 2003, Gripsud, 1998, Levine, 2008, Ytreberg, 2009). However, in
the post-broadcast era it is difficult to define how traditional broadcasters encourage liveness. Changing consumption habits and the redefinition of the re‑
lationship between audiences and texts pose challenges to broadcasters, which must balance their efforts in maintaining the liveness of their program‑
ming flow and, at the same time, strengthen the shared experience of the content available on stock. In that sense, many broadcasters rely on audience
participation to generate those spaces that maintain the liveness of its programs (Deller, 2011). Twitter and Facebook have proven to be important partners