James Curran

Tamar Liebes

Media, Ritual and Identity examines the role of the media in society; its complex influence on democratic processes and its participation in the construction and affirmation of different social identities. It draws extensively upon cultural anthropology and combines a commanding overview of contemporary media debates with a series of fascinating case studies ranging from political ritual on television to broadcasting in the third world.

Media, Ritual and Identity

Can the American media be blamed for the transformation of an ideologically cohesive society into a segmented society of pleasure seekers, startups, and subcultures? This book shows show how Israel's new television system, which has adopted American technologies, genres, as well as the economics of advertising and privatization, anticipates, leads, and celebrates the changes that have occurred in the country's political culture during the 1990s. The central aspects of Americanization are illustrated and analyzed via a series of case studies. The book looks at the increasing vulnerability of public broadcasting, the danger of action news, the construction of scandal, the Americanization of election campaigns, the victory of style over substance in Prime Ministerial debates, the political discourse of authenticity, and the genre of political talkshows, ending with the question of whether and how Americanized media are capable of coping with recurrent crises of national security.

Tamar Liebes

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