Consumer Culture and the Media

How did consumer culture become synonymous with westernised societies? Iqani argues that it is the way it is promoted by media texts. She provides a detailed analysis of publicly displayed consumer magazine covers and engages with big questions about the public, power and identity in mediated consumer culture.

'This book represents a milestone in the study of magazines. By developing an understanding of the public spaces of consumer culture, Mehita Iqani shifts the lens through which we think about magazines, showing the key role they play in 'selling' consumerism. A brilliant and original book, it is beautifully written and replete with vivid examples. It will be essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication studies, sociology, cultural geography and gender studies as well as anyone interested in the relationship between media, communication technologies and consumer culture.' - Rosalind Gill, King's College, London, UK

'Mehita Iqani's Consumer Culture and the Media is a fresh, fascinating and eloquently-crafted account of the enchanting power of magazines in the most unglamorous of places, the newsstand. It is a highly original contribution to the study of contemporary visuality that greatly enhances our understanding of concumer culture.'

• Lilie Chouliaraki, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, UK

  Autorentext
  MEHITA IQANI is a senior lecturer in Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a PhD in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.

  Inhalt
  Acknowledgements List of figures Media in Consumer Culture: An Introduction The Public, Identity and Power in Mediated Consumer Culture A Research Approach for Mediated Consumer Culture Media Retail Spaces as Multimodal Spectacles: The Case of the Newsstand Glossiness in Hyperreal Celebrity Portraiture Commodity Choice and Commercial Heteroglossia in Consumer Media Sexiness and Selling: Consumerism's Pornographic Imagination Paper Mirrors: Images of Ideal Consumers Media Strategies for Selling Consumer Culture: a Conclusion References Index