The Tabloid Culture Reader

Overview

• What is tabloid culture?
• How do tabloid media prompt debates about values and ethics?
• Can we respond positively to the ‘tabloidization’ of culture?
• What is so appealing about the rhetoric, attitude and posture of tabloid culture?
• Which theories and concepts can help us analyse and understand tabloid media?

This wide-ranging and accessible Reader provides a useful introduction to the historical and contemporary debates about the values, ethics and pleasures of tabloid news, entertainment and culture.

Arranged thematically, the book addresses definitions and debates, values and ethics, carnival and excess, celebrity, gender and sexuality, production and the audience. With specially written introductions to the volume and to each section, the Reader features key writings from leading scholars in the field. Essays explore the history and origins of tabloid culture and concepts such as the press, magazines, shock-jocks, the public sphere, reality and talk show television, photojournalism and voyeurism, and examples used include:

• heat magazine
• Loaded and men’s lifestyle publications
• Jackass
• The tabloid life of O.J. Simpson
• Big Brother’s Jade Goody

Each section is followed by recommendations for further reading.

Contributors: Mark Andrejevic, Feona Attwood, Karin Becker, S. Elizabeth Bird, Anita Biressi, Frances Bonner, Kate Brooks, Martin Conboy, Mark Deuze, John Fiske, Bob Franklin, Des Freedman, Kevin Glynn, Laura Grindstaff, Jostein Gripsrud, Bridget Griffen-Foley, Su Holmes, Patricia Holland, Leon Hunt, A. M. Jönsson, Jason Kosovski, P. David Marshall, Victoria Mapplebeck, Heather Nunn, Henrik Örnebring, Mark Pursehouse, Graeme Turner, Pamela Wilson.

Biographical note

Anita Biressi is Head of Film, Media and Cultural Studies in the
School of Arts, Roehampton University, UK.

Heather Nunn is Reader in Media and Cultural Studies in the School of Arts, Roehampton University, UK.