Self-Reference in the Media

Winfried Nöth, Nina Bishara, Winfried Nöth, Nina Bishara

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9783110194647
• eBook ISBN: 9783110198836
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book investigates how the media have become self-referential or self-reflexive instead of mediating between the real or fictional worlds about which their messages pretend to be and between the audience that they wish to inform, counsel, or entertain. The concept of self-reference is viewed very broadly. Self-reflexivity, metatexts, metapictures, metamusic, metacommunication, as well as intertextual, and intermedial references are all conceived of as forms of self-reference, although to different degrees and levels.

The contributions focus on the semiotic foundations of reference and self-reference, discuss the transdisciplinary context of self-reference in postmodern culture, and examine original studies from the worlds of print advertising, photography, film, television, computer games, media art, web art, and music. A wide range of different media products and topics are discussed including self-promotion on TV, the TV show Big Brother, the TV format "historytainment," media nostalgia, the documentation of documentation in documentary films, Marilyn Monroe in photographs, humor and paradox in animated films, metacommunication in computer games, metapictures, metafiction, metamusic, body art, and net art.

Table of contents

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Self-reference in the media:The semiotic framework
• Distortion, fabrication, and disclosure in a self-referential culture:The irresistible force of reality
• Modes of self-reference in advertising
• Metapictures and self-referential pictures
• “Absolut Anonymous”: Self-reference in opaque advertising
• The death of photography in self-reference
• Marilyn:A paragone of the camera gaze
• The self-reflexive screen: Outlines of a comprehensive model
• Nostalgia of the media / in the media
• Self-reference in animated films
• On the use of self-disclosure as a mode of audiovisual reflexivity
• The old in the new: Forms and functions of archive material in the presentation of television history on television
• There’s no business without show-business: Self-reference as self-promotion
• Computer games:The epitome of self-reference
• Self-reference in computer games: A formalistic approach
• Metacommunication in play and in (computer) games
• Self-reflexivity in computer games: Analyses of selected examples
• Looking through the computer screen: Self-reflexivity in net.art
• The artist and her bodily self: Self-reference in digital art/media
• Metafiction and metamusic: Exploring the limits of metareference
• Backmatter