Television and Everyday Life

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Television and Everyday Life
Television is a central dimension of our everyday lives and yet its meaning
and its potency vary according to our individual circumstances. Its power will
always be mediated by the social and cultural worlds which we inhabit. In
Television and Everyday Life,
Roger Silverstone explores the enigma of
television and how it has found its way so profoundly and intimately into the
fabric of our everyday lives. His investigation unravels its emotional and
cognitive, spatial, temporal and political significance.
Drawing on a wide range of literature, from psychoanalysis to sociology and
from geography to cultural studies, Roger Silverstone constructs a theory of
the medium which locates it centrally within the multiple realities and discourses
of everyday life. Television emerges from these arguments as a fascinating,
complex and contradictory medium, but in the process many of the myths that
surround it are exploded.
Television and Everyday Life
presents a radical new approach to the medium,
one that both challenges received wisdoms and offers a compellingly original
view of the place of television in everyday life.
Roger Silverstone
is Professor of Media Studies in the School of Cultural
and Community Studies at the University of Sussex. He is the author of 
The
Message of Television: Myth and Narrative in Contemporary Culture; Framing
Science; The Making of a BBC Documentary,
and (with Eric Hirsch) joint
editor of 
Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic
Spaces
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Television and Everyday Life
Roger Silverstone
London and New York

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First published 1994
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
© 1994 Roger Silverstone
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Silverstone, Roger.
Television and Everyday Life/Roger Silverstone.
p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Television broadcasting—Social aspects.
I. Title.
PN1992.6.S465 1994
302.23'45–dc20
93–32143
ISBN 0-203-35894-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-37150-X (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-01646-0 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-01647-9 (pbk)

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For Jennifer

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Contents
Preface
ix
Acknowledgements
xii
1