Abstract
The V-chip provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 represent a new form of media regulation in the USA. Promoted in response to complex institutional, legal, and social developments, the device will formally disperse responsibility for programme content control to the multiple sites of television production and reception. The V-chip will likely limit choices for most users as a result of the ideological commitment to 'family values' underlying its practical implementation. Invested in the V-chip's technological and discursive construction are processes of regulation designed to determine the representational limits of television texts, prescribe the formation of familial identities and the arrangement of domestic relations, and reproduce social norms. The V-chip legislation is not a universally empowering technology as its proponents claim and its normative assumptions presume, but operates to privilege certain viewers' values over others.
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