John Fiske (media scholar)

John Fiske (born 1939)[1] is a media scholar and cultural theorist who has taught around the world, and whose areas of interest include cultural studies, critical analysis of popular culture, media semiotics, and television studies.[2]

He is the author of eight books, including Power Plays, Power Works (1993), Understanding Popular Culture (1989), Reading the Popular (1989), and the influential Television Culture (1987). Fiske is also a media critic, examining how cultural meaning is created in American society, and how debates over issues such as race are handled in different media.

Career

Fiske was educated in Britain. After graduating from Cambridge University, he taught throughout the world including Australia, New Zealand and the US. While living in Perth, Australia, during the 1980s and early 1990s, he was the general editor of the academic journal Cultural Studies and taught at Western Australian Institute of Technology (known as Curtin University as of 1986). He was a Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for 12 years.[3] He has since retired from academia.

Honors

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

Theory

Semiotics and television studies

Fiske is considered one of the first scholars applying semiotics to media texts following the tradition of poststructuralism, and coined the term semiotic democracy.

He is the author of works on television studies regarding popular culture and mass media. Fiske's books analyze television shows as "texts" in order to examine the different layers of meaning and sociocultural content. Fiske rejects the notion that assumes "the audience" as an uncritical mass, the theory that 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 texts differently.

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

Power

In Power Plays, Power Works (1993), Fiske argues that power “is a systematic set of operations upon people 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 economic constructs around which power functions in the contemporary Western world.[6] Rather than constituting a particular class or permanently-defined socio-political group, power blocs are unsystematic series of both strategic and tactical political alliances. These constantly-changing partnerships form whenever circumstances emerge that jeopardize the socio-political advantages of the members involved. They therefore arise and separate on an ad hoc basis (i.e., depending on the necessities of the moment), and their alliance 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 "the people." Such people may still possess power of their own, however it is a weaker power: what Fiske refers 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 is therefore inherently political, it is centrally involved in the distribution and possible redistribution of various forms of social power.

Bibliography
  • 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 Interpreting Television: 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 of Minneapolis Press. ISBN 9780816624621.
  • 1993. Power Plays, Power Works. ISBN 0-86091-616-2
  • 1996. Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S. Politics. ISBN 978-0-8166-2463-8.

Interviews and lectures

References
  1. Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
  2. Duvall, Spring-Serenity. 2012. "Fiske, John." Pp. 120–21 in Encyclopedia of Gender in Media, edited by M. Kosut. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. doi:10.4135/9781452218540.n51.
  3. "Faculty and academic staff granted emeritus/emerita status in 2000-01." UWMadison News. University of Wisconsin–Madison. 2000 August 29.
  4. "Television studies." 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. p. 97.
  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," Making Doctor Who Mean. Speaker to Animals.
  9. "'Surveillance and the self: Some issues for cultural studies'," Television: Past, Present, and Future. Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, The University of Queensland. 2000.

Further reading


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