Pleasure: active and reactiveA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWthe structure of our brain.’ See digital natives,
digital immigrants.
Play theory of mass communication In Th e
Play Th eory of Mass Communication (University
of Chicago Press, 1967), William Stephenson
counters those who speak of the harmful eff ects
of the mass media by arguing that first and
foremost the media serve audiences as play-
experiences. Even newspapers, says Stephenson,
are read for pleasure rather than for information
and enlightenment. He sees the media as ‘a
buffer against conditions which would other-
wise be anxiety producing’. Th e media provide
communication-pleasure.
Stephenson argues that what is most required
by people within a national culture is something
for everyone to talk about. For him, mass
communication ‘should serve two purposes.
It should suggest how best to maximize the
communication-pleasure in the world. It should
also show how far autonomy for the individual
can be achieved in spite of the weight of social
controls against him’.
The theory finds ready connection with
practices and reception in the online age of
information. In the words of Graeme Turner in
Ordinary People and the Media: Th e Demotic
Turn (Sage, 2010), ‘entertainment has become
the most pervasive discursive domain in twenty-
fi rst-century popular culture’. Th e burgeoning
trend has been to equate pleasure with public
participation, to reposition information as enter-
tainment by stressing audience engagement
and interactivity largely within the frame of
consumption. See consumerization. See also
topic guide under communication theory.
▶Johan Huzinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play
Element in Culture (Paladin, 1970); Pat Kane, The
Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Diff erent Way of Living
(Macmillan, 2004).
Pleasure: active and reactive Mary Ellen
Brown in Soap Opera and Women’s Talk (Sage,
1994) speaks of the active and reactive pleasure
of women viewers of soap operas. She argues
that ‘active pleasure for women in soap opera
groups affi rms their connection to a woman’s
culture that operates in subtle opposition to
dominant culture’. It is this ‘cult of the home and
of women’s concerns,’ says Brown, ‘recognized
but devalued in patriarchal terms, that provides
a notion of identity that values women’s tradi-
tional expertise’.
On the other hand, reactive pleasure, ‘while
not rejecting the connection women often
feel towards women’s cultural networks and
concerns, also recognizes that these concernsWith the apparent defeat of the pirates, and the
dismantling of their stations, there was clearly a
gap to be fi lled in the pattern of offi cial broad-
casting services. At the end of 1966 the Labour
government issued a White Paper containing
proposals that opened the way for the creation
of Radio 1.
That was not the end of pirate radio. A
widespread enthusiasm for radio broadcast-
ing independent of the duopoly was sustained
through the 1970s, and in the 1980s pirates began
popping up all over, making illegal broadcasts
from unlicensed transmitters in woodlands, on
hilltops, in back bedrooms, in garages or even
on the move. Today’s pirates continue, with no
less ingenuity, to evade the eff orts of authority
to curtail their activities, though the majority
of today’s ‘piracy’ is only an internet website
away. See blogging; commercial radio;
community radio; podcasting. See also
topic guide under broadcasting.
Pistolgraph See camera, origins.
Plagiarism From the Latin, ‘plagiarius’, meaning
kidnapper; the act of stealing from others their
thoughts or their writings and claiming them as
one’s own.
Plasticity: neuroplasticity and the Internet
Refers to the way in which stimuli can work on
and alter the activity of the brain. In relation
to media, concern has been expressed by a
number of writers that the internet can, with
prolonged and intensive use, rewire the circuits
of the brain. American neuroscientist Gary
Small with Gigi Vorgan published an infl uential
but much-challenged treatise on the eff ects on
plasticity of Net use in iBrain: Surviving the
Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind
(HarperCollins, 2008), stating that ‘perhaps not
since early man fi rst discovered how to use a tool
has the human brain been aff ected so quickly
and so dramatically’. Th e authors’ view is that,
‘As the brain evolves and shifts its focus towards
new technological skills, it drifts away from
fundamental social skills.’
The case was taken up in 2010 by another
neuroscientist, Nicholas Carr, in Th e Shallows:
How the Internet Is Changing The Way We
Think, Read and Remember (Atlantic Books).
Carr writes: ‘Dozens of studies by psychologists,
neurobiologists, and educators point to the
same conclusion: When we go online, we enter
an environment that promotes cursory reading,
hurried and distracted thinking, and superfi cial
learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy
access to vast amounts of information, it is turn-
ing us into shallower thinkers, literally changing