Random sample
a Text: Writing, Reading and Th inking About Visual
and Popular Culture (Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2009);
John Fiske, Henry Jenkins, Kevin Glynn, Jonathan
Gray and Pamela Wilson, Reading the Popular (Rout-
ledge, 2011).
Realism Th at which is portrayed as ‘reality’ in art,
literature, theatre, fi lm fi ction or documentary
and photography. It constitutes an imitation of
perceived reality, a simulation. Because it is the
result of a range of choices concerning subject-
matter and aesthetics, realism is a construct of
reality rather than a reproduction of it, infl u-
enced by value and ideology and convention.
Socialist realism in Russian cinema, for instance,
focused on the realities of the lives of workers,
on the land or in factories, but such portraits of
reality were highly charged with the ideology of
the Soviet system in the ways that labour was
idealized rather than portrayed by means of a
critical reading of the system.
Susan Strehle in Fiction in the Quantum
Universe (University of Carolina Press, 1992)
suggests the use of the term ‘actualism’ rather
than ‘the old mechanistic reality’ because it
has ‘its roots not in things [or facts] but in acts,
relations and motions’. Th e term corresponds
to actuality, an approach pioneered by early
radio documentary-makers to allow real situ-
ations to be communicated with a minimum of
intervention from the programme-maker. Yet
however absent seems to be the hand of media-
tion, it is (in actuality) ever-present.
Peter Dahlgren in Television and the Public
Sphere: Citizenship, Democracy and the Media
(Sage, 1995) says of TV texts that ‘realism’ (his
inverted commas) is a ‘very central feature’ but
one which is highly problematical. We should
constantly remind ourselves, Dahlgren believes,
that ‘all representation involves construction’. In
discussing TV, the author talks of the ‘pleasure
of verisimilitude’. Essentially TV is ‘mimetic’,
imitating reality rather more than interpreting
it. In Dahlgren’s view this limits the potential TV
has for polysemy and thus, in this context, the
representation of alternative realities.
In ‘Reading realism: audiences’ evaluations of
the reality of media texts’, Journal of Commu-
nication (December 2003), Alice Hall poses six
tests of the authenticity of realism – whether the
text is plausible; whether it it typical and factual;
whether it convinces in terms of emotional
involvement; whether it achieves narrative
consistency; and whether it is sufficiently
persuasive of audience perceptions of what is
real. See topic guide under representation.
Reality TV Perhaps best described as ‘live docu-for example, in European broadcasting.
Following the removal from radio regula-
tion of the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ in the US by the
Reagan administration in 1987, the green light
was given to the kind of talk radio exemplifi ed by
Rush Limburgh (nicknamed ‘Th e Most Danger-
ous Man in America’). His show is broadcast
on over 600 radio stations nationwide with an
estimated 20 million listeners. Prejudiced, often
intolerant of contrary opinions, demagogic and
frequently anti-democratic in tone, shock-jock
radio has displaced other journalistic formats
such as current aff airs, at the same time having
marginalized traditional principles of balance
and objectivity in content and presentation.
Random sample See sampling.
Ratings See audience measurement.
Reaction shot When a person is being inter-
viewed on television there are regular in-cuts
where the viewer is off ered a glimpse of the reac-
tions of the reporter or interviewer – nodding,
smiling, acknowledging. When interviews take
place on location rather than in the studio, such
reaction shots are usually fi lmed separately and
edited-in later. See shot.
Readership See mediasphere.
Reading Just as, in modern usage, we refer to
text as any human-made artefact, rather than
merely a printed text, so we refer to reading as
a process which is a response to all texts. Use
of this term suggests a more positive, attentive
and interpretative reaction to a text rather than
merely looking. We read critically; we analyse,
while at the same time modern usage accepts
the more open nature of ‘readings’ – their
polysemy (or many-meaningness). A work, as
Roland Barthes has defi ned it, emanates from a
creator, an encoder – writer, artist, composer,
for example – but the text belongs in the sphere
of reading and thus becomes, as it were, the
property of the decoder. So readers may produce
different interpretations, different texts from
the same work, and their interpretations may all
diff er from that intended by the author.
It does not necessarily follow that all read-
ings are of equal value, for inevitably there
are informed as contrasted with uninformed
readings. Recognition of competence has to be
considered, and this would involve what Noam
Chomsky has termed ‘linguistic competence’,
as well as knowledge, experience, training
and a degree of empathy. Th e study of media
communication is largely about learning to read
competently, with perception and understand-
ing. See topic guide under textual analysis.
▶Jonathan Silverman and Dean Radar, Th e World is