[Commlist] New book: Popularizing Japanese TV: The Cultural, Economic, and Emotional Dimensions of Infotainment Discourse

New Book:


  Popularizing Japanese TV


    The Cultural, Economic, and Emotional Dimensions of Infotainment
    Discourse, 1st Edition (Routledge)


        ByHakan Ergül <https://www.routledge.com/authors/i18290-hakan-ergl>

Over the past years, the view has emerged that Japanese TV is dominated 
by an infotainment mode of discourse. The book extends this view, 
detailing and interpreting the cultural, economic, and emotional 
dimensions of this communication phenomenon from an ethnographic 
perspective. It examines the complex ways in which infotainment works in 
an advanced capitalist society. As such, this is more than a book about 
Japan; it is a work that fits within media ethnography and cultural 
studies, and appeals to readers interested in the question of how 
television, at the heart of the global media stream, successfully turns 
into a persuasive, intimate, and powerful member of a televisual 
audience-family through carefully engineered televisual discourses, 
linguistic/non-linguistic component, audiovisual strategies, and 
economic and cultural elements.

Drawing on ethnographic observations in TV stations in two major cities, 
Sendai and Tokyo, the book reveals several essential components embedded 
within infotainment discourse. Thus, this book not only provides a 
panoramic picture of a core phenomenon in Japanese broadcasting since 
the 2000s but also discusses how both cultural discourses and economic 
considerations influence contemporary television broadcasting.


      Table of Contents

Introduction

1. "No TV. No Life!" The Centrality of Television and Infotainment in 
Contemporary Japan

2. Backstage Tales: Infotainment Under Construction

3. Television for Sale by Owner: The Political Economy of Infotainment

4. Infotainment, Intimacy, and Crafting a Televisual /Uchi/

5. Discussion, Implications, Conclusions


      Reviews

'Often the best insights come from the margins. We understand the 
familiar only when it is made strange. So it is with Hakan Ergül’s 
excellent, readable, well-organized, scholarly and insightful study. 
Hybridizing TV genres adapt to Japanese culture –– from sideshow to 
"wideshow" –– to create a unique emotional-physical space called /uchi/. 
Here, an intimate sense of "we" community grows out of commodified 
infotainment; the cultural out of the commercial. Read this book, and 
you’ll understand how popular television works. It’s a journey full of 
"danger and promise" for audiences and analysts alike.'

/— John Hartley, John Curtin Distinguished Professor, Professor of 
Cultural Science, Curtin University, Western Australia/

'[The] blending of information and entertainment Hakan Ergül examines 
and explicates in this timely, comprehensive and well-written book. It 
is of particular value because it not only examines the content of the 
pervasive "infotainment" shows, but also examines through the author’s 
first hand fieldwork processes of production and the conception of such 
shows, their role in the wider consumer economy of Japan, the subtle 
processes through which they influence the emotional structures of 
contemporary Japanese society, and very significantly, the way in which, 
in Ergül’s argument, they contribute to creating and reproducing an 
admittedly virtual, but nevertheless very real, sense of intimacy 
between actors/presenters and viewers, and between viewers themselves, 
who become part of a kind of a virtual community through "participation" 
in favorite shows. […] As the study of popular culture has moved to 
center stage in scholarly discourse, this book shows how it can be 
extended and deepened, while situating it in the field of Japanese 
studies and making it accessible to the scholar of comparative forms of 
popular expression and media.'

/— John Clammer, Professor of Sociology, O.P. Jindal Global University/

'Hakan Ergül’s book opens up an exciting new analysis of Japanese 
television from a perspective that has not before been approached in the 
English language. Although couched in the somewhat technical-sounding 
language of infotainment discourse, there is much to learn about Japan 
and its viewing public here too. Ergül’s research was with all aspects 
of Japanese television: viewing it, of course, but also conducting 
participant observation with those who make it and examining its impact 
on the regular viewers in one large but local venue in the Tohoku area. 
The analysis is placed in the context of a range of anthropological and 
linguistic studies of Japan in a way that demonstrates how the 
fascinating combination of information and entertainment that we can all 
watch when we visit Japan cleverly becomes a veritable part of the 
Japanese home. As the sub-title tells us, the book also reveals much 
about "the cultural, economic and emotional dimensions" of the process, 
and I recommend it as a brilliant insight into a quite ubiquitous area 
of Japanese life.'

/— Joy Hendry, Professor Emerita, Oxford Brookes University/


---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------