Voyeur Nation Media, Privacy, And Peering In Modern Culture

by Calvert, Clay

• ISBN13: 9780813342368
• ISBN10: 0813342368
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-09
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

From 24-hour-a-day "girl cam" sites on the World Wide Web to trash-talk TV shows like Jerry Springer and reality programs like Cops, we've become a world of voyeurs. We like to watch others as their intimate moments, private facts, secrets, and dirty laundry are revealed. Voyeur Nation traces the evolution and forces driving what the author calls the "voyeurism value." Calvert argues that although spectatorship and sensationalism are far from new phenomena, today a confluence of factors -- legal, social, political, and technological -- pushes voyeurism to the forefront of our image-based world. The First Amendment increasingly is called on to safeguard our right, via new technologies and recording devices, to peer into the innermost details of others' lives without fear of legal repercussion. But Calvert argues that the voyeurism value contradicts the value of discourse in democracy and First Amendment theory, since voyeurism by its very nature involves merely watching without interacting or participating. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Clay Calvert is an assistant professor of communications and law and co-director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at Pennsylvania State University. He has published over twenty law journal articles in the past four years on First Amendment issues affecting the media, journalism, and advertising. He has a Juris Doctor from the University of the Pacific and a Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Peeping Tom Meets Jennifer Ringley	p. 19
The Social Forces Driving Mediated Voyeurism	p. 55
Priming the Economic and Political Pumps of Mediated Voyeurism	p. 91
Don't Look Now, but Somebody's Watching You	p. 121
Free Press, Free Voyeurs?	p. 133
Check Your Camera at the Castle Door	p. 173
Seeing Voyeurs in First Amendment Theory	p. 207
Conclusion	p. 239
Notes	p. 245
Index	p. 266
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