Resistance through Routines

Abstract

The article takes as its starting point the widely acknowledged tendency within contemporary media studies to shift the focus of interest from media texts more and more to the daily contexts of their reception and use. It sees the most extreme expression of this development in the `epistemology of the everyday' as put forward in Hermes' recent research programme. Based on a thesis of the `meaninglessness' of everyday media use, this programme can be viewed as a challenge to critical cultural audience research, most notably by implying that the routines of daily life not only accommodate the media and their genres but at the same time denude them of their power. In the article this challenge is assessed from the perspective of the critical cultural study of news reception by examining the untheorized status of the `everyday' within ethnographically inspired media studies. Here the metaphorical equation of daily life and television viewing with `flow' is used as a central illustration in order to also assess critically the usefulness of the flow metaphor itself in approaching empirically the use and interpretation of mass media. The article argues that such a narrow and unreflexive understanding of everyday activity, experience and meaning making forms an obstacle to redeeming the emancipatory and empowering promises of an `epistemology of the everyday'.

Keywords

everyday life flow metaphor meaning making media use (news) genre

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