John Fiske (media studies)

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John Fiske is a professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His areas of interest include popular culture, mass culture, and television studies. He is the author of eight books, including Power Plays, Power Works (1993), Understanding Popular Culture (1989), Reading the Popular (1989), and the textbook Television Culture (1987), which is widely used in television studies courses. As well, Fiske also acts as 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. In May 2008, Fiske received an Honorary Degree from the University of Antwerp.

[edit] Career

Fiske was born and educated in Britain. After graduating from Cambridge University he taught throughout the world including Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. He was the general editor of Cultural Studies at Curtin University in Western Australia, Australia during the 1980s to early 1990s. He is the author of books on television studies on popular culture and mass media. Fiske's books analyse television shows as "texts" to examine the different layers of meaning and sociocultural content. Fiske disagrees with the theory that mass audiences consume the products that are offered to them without thought. Fiske rejects the notion of "the audience" which assumes an uncritical mass. He instead suggests "audiences" with various social backgrounds and identities enabling 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 and the theory and text-based criticism. It also gives 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."[1] Fiske is considered one of the first scholars applying semiotics to media texts following the tradition of poststructuralism. DETAILS OF PRACTITIONER

John Fiske is a prominent Media and Communication theorist, often referred to as the 'father of television studies' (O'Regan, 2000), who co-authored the first venture into the cultural study of television as a medium, 'Reading Television' (Fiske and Hartley, 1978), amongst other titles.

Aside from his success as an author, Fiske has taken on various academic roles at tertiary institutions across the world, such as Curtin University in Perth (Frow, 2005).

Most recently however, he remains the acting Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (University of Queensland, 2000), passing on his expertise within the field.

He has now taken up antique dealing with his wife, Lisa Freeman (Freeman, 2007). They currently live in Massachusetts, USA, after Fiske, who was born in England, spent much of his career travelling between the United States, Britain and Australia (O'Regan, 2000).



HIS LIFE

John Fiske was educated in Britain, attending Cambridge University where he studied English Literature.

His long and illustrious career began when he became a Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies. He has since taught at universities all around the world.

In 1983, Fiske played a key role in establishing the Australian Journal of Cultural Studies during his time in Western Australia (Frow, 2005). The journal was aimed at creating "a platform for research and debate in cultural studies." Cultural studies being one of his specialities, Fiske also provided articles for the journal in 1983 and 1984 (Nandy, 2006)

In 1994, John Fiske and his wife Lisa Freeman established their own antiques shop - "Fiske & Freeman: Fine and Early Antiques'. Fiske is also the editor-in-chief of the New England Antiques Journal.

Despite his interest in and involvement with antiques, Fiske continues his studies of popular culture and continues his role as a Professor at the University of Wisconsin.

In 2000 he was granted Emeritus status as a Professor of Letters and Science/ Communication Arts after having taught at the University for 12 years (University of Wisconsin, 2000).



MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS

Through out his years of practice, John Fiske has written many theoretical books and over 100 scholarly articles on popular culture, television culture and media and communication. His books include:

Reading Television, 1978 Introduction to Communication Studies, 1982 Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture, 1987 Television Culture, 1987 Reading the Popular, 1989 Understanding Popular Culture, 1989 Power Play, Power Work, 1993 Media Matters: Race and Gender in US Politics, 1996

Fiske is internationally recognised as one of the most significant theorists in the area of television studies, he co-authored with John Hartley 'Reading Television', a 1978 book that pioneered television studies. (O'Regan, 2000)

Reading television was the first book-length study to analyse the purpose of television from a textual and cultural point of view with out viewing it as a product that is threatening social or moral wellbeing. (Fiske and Hartley, 1978)

Despite the high degree of technological advancements made in the last 30 years, Fiske's theories are still widely used and highly relevant to today's society.


CREATIVE ACTIVITIES AND INTERESTS


John Fiske has undoubtedly been, throughout his career part of what Richard Florida refers to as the 'creative class' (2001), or those who make a living from their creativity, in Fiske's case, his ability to harness new and innovative ideas.


John Fiske clearly has a passion for writing, having been the author or co-author of eight books as well as having written any number of articles over the years.

His work has largely revolved around adapting literary theory for modern mediums, developing upon Saussure's semiotic analysis, which is, in simple terms, the study of a system of signs within a text (Chandler,2001)

Fiske has shown his passion for travel by stating in the preface to his critically acclaimed work, 'Reading Television',

"One of the advantages of being an academic is that theories travel well, with only a touch of jet lag.

Consequently, over the last decade I have been fortunate enough to move freely among the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States" (Fiske, 1987).



PLACES OF CREATIVE ACTIVITY John Fiske's career, as previously mentioned, allowed for much intercontinental travel, and he has thus worked creatively in numerous places.

However, it can be said that Fiske was, during the height of his career as a theorist, working in what is referred to as 'project creativity' (Tims and Wright, 2007) in collaborating with many other experts within his field, such as John Hartley.

In a more geographical sense, he has worked amongst many different 'creative clusters' (Drake, G 2003), or rather, hubs of creativity, such as the numerous Universities which he staffed.

Whilst these creative clusters are believed to impact upon the innovation and exploration of intellectual property (Drake,G 2003 - or find better, other reference), there is an alternate view to explore.

It has been theorized that many creative practitioners work productively in secluded or individualized places (Drake, G 2003), and John Fiske has certainly alluded to preferring the tranquillity offered by the countryside to a busy, urban lifestyle.

Fiske, who has lived in the country for the majority of his life has commented on "how much we overlook when we allow our imaginations to be filled only with the noisy products of our contemporary culture" (Freeman 2007).



MOTIVATIONS, MISSIONS AND VALUES

John Fiske was motivated to study various mediums of popular culture because of his interest within those fields.

      "It began to dawn on me that the culture that most people live their lives with, the culture that affects them, that matters most, that they spend most of  their time with, is not so called high culture at all, but it is popular culture, mass culture, culture of everyday life, whatever. So that it is a mixture between a personal interest (I can't study anything that I'm not interested in, that I don't enjoy) and the realization that this was the most important form of culture in contemporary society."   (Muller, 1992)

John Fiske has been highly motivated by left wing politics and a desire to change society's views through out his career.

       "Because I'm a highly political person myself. My motivation, I suppose, has changed over the years. At one time it was closer to a fairly regular Marxist sort of desire to change capitalism. The desire to change is still there, but I don't think now that capitalism is vulnerable to overthrow." (Muller,1992)

In the first few decades of televisions social ascendancy, television was seen as a culturally damaging medium, blamed for social and moral ills. It attracted very little writing and the writings that were available consisted of a narrow range of negative opinions".(Fiske and Hartley, 1978)


John Fiske's mission, when first writing "Reading Television", was to make people aware of the important positive impact that television made on society.

In an interview with Mick O'Regan (2000) from ABC's Media Report, John Fiske said that himself and his collaborative partner for "Reading Television", John Hartley, both came out of an English Literature background.

     "We were convinced that something like television, normally disregarded, could be analysed with the same degree of detail, the same concern that it was something important, as had traditionally been applied to literature. And I think that book was the first one to treat television seriously, as an important part of our culture."

[edit] Bibliography

  • Understanding Popular Culture (1987) ISBN 978-0415078764
  • Television Culture (Studies in Communication Series) (1987) ISBN 0415039347
  • Reading the Popular (Aug 1, 1989) ISBN 978-0415078757
  • Power Plays, Power Works (1993) ISBN 0860916162
  • Reading Television (J. Fiske & J. Hartley) Routledge, (1996) ISBN 0415042917
  • Introduction to Communication Studies (Studies in Culture and Communication) (Oct 25, 1990) ISBN 0415046726
  • Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S. Politics (Mar 1996) ISBN 978-0-8166-2463-8
  • Remote Control : Television, Audiences and Cultural Power "Moments of Television: Neither the Text not the Audience" E. Seiter, H. Borchers, G. Kreutzner and E-M. Warth (eds.) (1989) ISBN 978-0415065054
  • Mass Media and Society "Postmodernism and Television" J. Curran and M. Gurevitch (eds.) (1991) ISBN 978-0340732014
  • Channels of Discourse, Reassembled "British Cultural Studies and Television" R. C. Allen (ed.) (1992) ISBN 978-0807843741

Chandler, D. 2001, Semiotics; The Basics, London: Routledge.

  • Drake, G. 2003, This place gives me space: place and creativity in the creative industries, Geoforum 34 (4): 511-524.
  • Fiske, J. Hartley, J. 1978, Reading Television, London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.
  • Fiske, J. 1987, Television Culture. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.
  • Fiske, J. 1989, Understanding Popular Culture, London: Routledge.
  • Fiske, J. 1989, Reading the Popular. London: Unwin Hyman Ltd.
  • Florida, R. 2002, The rise of the creative class and how it's transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life, New York, Basic Books.
  • University of Wisconsin, August 2000, Faculty and academic staff granted emeritis/emerita status in 2000/2001, http://www.news.wisc.edu/5209, accessed March 2008

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:tEo0x25Na9IJ:www.museum.tv/archives/etv/T/htmlT/televisionst/televisionst.htm+john+fiske+television+culture&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=15
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