Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn

The 'demotic turn' describes the increasing visibility of the 'ordinary person' in the media today.

In this dynamic and insightful book, Graeme Turner explores the 'whys' and 'hows' of the 'everyday' individual's willingness to turn themselves into media content through:

Celebrity culture,

Reality TV,

DIY websites,

Talk radio,

User-generated materials online.

Further analysing the pervasiveness of celebrity culture, the book develops the idea of the demotic turn as a tool for examining common elements in a range of media and cultural studies 'hot spots'.

Rejecting the idea that the demotic turn necessarily carries with it a democratising politics, this book examines its political and cultural function in media production and consumption across many fields - including print and electronic news, current affairs journalism, and citizen and online journalism.

Graeme Turner outlines a structural shift in the western media, and suggests that these media activities represent something much more fundamental than contemporary media fashion.