Document Type
Article
Abstract
Kim Blank's "CNNing and Showdown Iraq," too, provides an innovative model for the interaction and mutual transfusion of case study and the work of theorizing. Although the backdrop to Blank's essay is CNN's cultural significance and the programming it ran under the "SHOWDOWN: Iraq" banner, it repeatedly returns to the busy intersection of media, technology, popular culture, and mass culture. Characterized by its author as "restless," the piece strategically employs a non-linear discursive strategy deliberately mimicking the practices of channel surfing and the constant interruption of the commercial break. It re-contextualizes, in other words, the critical perspective by re-inventing it through the habitual practices of popular or mass culture. The vision of ‘CNN’ which emerges out of this strategy is that of a signifier established by means of the network’s practices reproduction, self-representation, and self-promotion, and of its saturated presence in hardware, software, and various conduits of transmission.
Recommended Citation
Blank, G. Kim "CNNing and "SHOWDOWN: Iraq": News, New Media, and Popular Culture." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol. 5, no. 2, 2005, pp. 1–27.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol5/iss2/2
Included in
Broadcast and Video Studies Commons, Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Mass Communication Commons