Pter Csig:

Downbreaking News Toward a Dramaturgical Approach to Popular Media and Public

Communication
1. Introduction: when factual media becomes object of popular taste judgements
The tabloidization of news programmes has not ceased provoking heated debates whether
popularized routine news coverage (still) satisfies the needs of democratic citizenship (Graber 1994).
However, although these debates have not lost of their intensity, an increasing amount of data and
commentary suggests that TV news have lost the power and significance it was so self-evidently
attributed in the past era of broadcast television. Accordingly, the above question whether popular news
are disabling or enabling, so central in normative debates (Sparks 2000), has been obsoleted by recent
developments in media. With the rise of a new post-documentary (Corner 2000) discourse in popular
factual media on the one hand, and the dissolution of evening newscasts audience, on the other (Turow
2003), the standard TV news format increasingly presents itself as an enclave in the programme flow,
inherited from a past media era. Of course, news producers complaints about their difficulties in keeping
audience attention date back to the beginnings of popular TV. Seen from this point of view, intensifying
pressures to offer highly appealing content represent only another step of a long process. True enough, the
conventional editorial strategy of news makers has always been focused on calculating the dose of
attractive content which is enough to grab audience attention. However, increasing market pressures
and fragmentation in popular media obsolete this strategy. Editorial attempts to adjust TV news to the
supposed requirements of competitive popular media have not successfully hindered the decline of the
standard genre of news.1 As I will argue, this failure results from deeper, structural factors which shape
the uses of popular factual media in the new media environment. I will also argue that the decline of TV
news presents itself less in shrinking audience ratings than in the low efficiency of the genre to affect the
audience, in comparison to infotainment programmes.
The following paper addresses news increasing rootlessness in the recent environment of
popular media where highly dramatized programs compete for audience applause. What stands behind
TV news loss of importance is, it will be argued, its inability to attract a group of enthousiasts who
would be willing to engage with it as their favourite programme, who would be ready to appropriate
and cultivate the discourse it offers. In the competitive, multi-choice and fragmented environment of
popular media, no producer of public discourse can evade the challenge of creating drama, gaining
momentum (Blumler Kavanagh 1999) and activating audience engagement. Engagement has become
object of an increasing number of media studies and, paralelly, has been declared the real buzzword of
21th century market research.2 Audience engagement has been attributed a similarly important role by TV
network producers, increasingly moving toward the spectacular (Kellner 2003), toward must-see and
formula-breaking programming (Jancovich Lyons, Creeber), toward event television
(Hesmondhalgh 2002:243) and cult programmes like CSI, Seinfeld, or Lost, giving a new impetus to
declining networks in America (Spain 2006). These new directions suggest that in the era of increasing
media fragmentation, engagement becomes the key aspect of audience attachment and responsiveness,
consequently, a key mediator of media power.
The ultimate role of audience engagement in the recent competitive media environment brings
new light to the power and reception of factual media. Conventionally, factual media power has been
grasped as the tacit, transparent, repetitive production of mediated reality. However, what recent media
transformations have brought to the fore is not the transparent but the visible and the unmissable:
highly expressive, engaging and dramatized formats invading everyday factual media. The empirical
evidence to be presented in the following essay challenges the conventional wisdom that factual media
would effect people by playing upon the illusion of its verisimilitude. Although this illusory veracity of
news does exist, it will be argued, it may hamper, instead of enabling, news to be effective. For, in the
recent competitive popular media environment, media power is mediated by those popular taste
discrimination practices through which people engage with cultural products they find more attractive and
valuable than others. News, seen by viewers as a mere window to the world, is simply out of the

game, beyond the above taste judgements. Treating news neither good, nor bad, just a fair collection of
events, the viewer rarely engages with it as his or her favourite program. Although the above naive
equation of news with quasi-unmediated events implies significant audience loyalty, this loyalty
implies at the same time the unability of the audience to judge TV news by their particular aesthetic
character. Consequently, TV news have not achieved the status of a particular popular cultural object
that can be liked or disliked. In spite of all efforts to turn TV news more attractive, the genre of news is
vaining in the competition with new infotainment programmes, which have been much more successful in
achiveving the status of popular cultural object.
2. Media attendance in a dramaturgically oversaturated media environment
In Hungary, the political establishment-controlled production of public information was in 1997
entirely subverted by the distribution of broadcasting rights to international media corporations, triggering
a pervasive process of media commercialisation.3 As in other countries, media privatization has almost
self-evidently raised the question: how has the radical intrusion of commercial actors into the public
sphere affected the quality of political discourse? Is media commercialisation empowering or disabling?
Is it healthy or not for democracy? These questions have inevitably led to the proliferation of antagonistic,
media-pessimistic and media-optimistic (Schulz, Zeh and Quiring 2005) narratives. Neither of these
narratives will be applied in the following text. Instead, what will be highlighted is that, in spite of their
opposition, these narratives have shared one prominent attribute: they both have interpreted
commercialization as the intensification of the dramaturgical power of the media.4
In the followings, the common recognition will be taken as a starting point that market-driven
popular media are saturated, in an unprecedented way, by the means and techniques of dramatization.
Private television channels have imported from popular entertainment a sophisticated arsenal of
dramaturgical intensification: emotional overloading, tension-raising, intense moralization, the topoi of
the victim, the hero or the sinner, and other means of performative communication. The cultural codes of
dramaturgical condensation (Alexander 2006, Alexander et al 2006) have become the lingua franca of
the public sphere dominated by the popular media.5 Moralizing, sensational, playful, negative, emotional,
testimonial all these aspects of recent public discourse result from its adaptation to what Altheide and
Snow (1979) have defined as media logic: the logic of intense dramatization.6 The fulfillment of media
logic signals the emergence of mass media as an autonomous power center (Mancini Swanson
1996:11), which, then, has resulted in the rise of a widened (Meyrowitz 1985:310), mediaconstructed (Blumler Kavanagh 1999:211) public sphere, a common discursive space where politics
and popular culture conjugate (Wernick 1991:148). In this over-dramatized cultural sphere, popular
media offers the audience an inescapable flow of highly appealing, powerful, compelling stories of
public relevance: forms of witnessing (Peters 2001) and testimonial performances, intensely negative
campaign ads, moving everyday parables of life politics, ironic talk-shows or passionate debates of
presidential candidates.
In this over-dramatized media environment, political and media actors enact dramaturgical selfperforming strategies (Corner Pels 2003) similar to those applied in popular performing arts music,
film and theatre.7 This fusion between popular culture and politics consists in the fact that both
popular media and politicians are engaged in creating works of popular fiction which portray credible
worlds that resonate with peoples experiences (Street 1998:60).8 As an ultimate consequence of the
assimilation of public discourse with popular art performances, the cathartic reception practices
characterizing performing arts get increasing salience in peoples everyday consumption of public
discourse and factual media. Similarly to artistic performances (see Boulton 1960 ref. by Alexander 2006,
Frith 1996), popular factual media offer audiences harsh emotional experiences, involve them, and make
them form their identities anew.
In the past era of broadcast television (mostly state-controlled), such cathartic practices were not
self-evidently present in everyday factual media consumption. They were mainly confined to heavily
ceremonialized and establishment-controlled media formats like media events (Dayan Katz 1992).
Nowadays, after the emancipation of popular media from political control, the production of heavily
dramatized stories has become ubiquitous. The routine overdramatization of public discourse addresses
citizens in a role similar to that of the theater audience, thirsting for the cathartic effects the dramatized
performance may bring to them. As I will later argue, the intense dramaturgical saturation of media brings

to the fore the deep similarities between receiving factual media and attending dramatized
performances. This essay addresses what attending popular media means, and how it relates to the
aesthetic/cathartic reception of artistic performances. However, there is no place here to explore in detail
what vision of media power the above argument and the metaphor of attendance suggest, this is to be
done in a forthcoming study.
The main argument of this article is that the above kinship between media reception and theater
attendance does not apply to the consumption of TV news. People may watch them, but do not attend
them. This lack of engagement is due to the fact that TV news are not able to keep up with the above
trends of intense dramatization. Their dramaturgical deficit does exist, even if, as it has often been
pointed out, TV news editors create dramatic and narrative tension by the same means than those applied
in fictional TV genres (see Grabe Zhou 2003, Bruner 1998, Newcomb Hirsch 1994). Paradoxically,
editors may be able to present particular news stories with a strong narrative and dramaturgical power,
however, TV news itself, as a programme, is not perceived at all as particularly appealing or attractive by
audiences. In spite of editors intense attempts to dramatize or sensationalize news content, peoples
relation to the TV news, even if they watch them every day, has nothing in common with the practices of
attending performances. Watching news lacks a wish for common experience, a thirst for catharsis,
focused attention, emotional involvement, constant comparisons with other worse or better
performances, comparison of an actor with other actors and with his/her own previous performances, an
urge for immersion, a wish for secession from the ordinary. In fact, nothing is more ordinary than
watching news.
Mainstream theories on factual media have deduced news power from the above ordinariness.
This normal, self-evident ordinariness or transparent veracity has been regarded as the key of news
power to impose a normative definition of how the world is and should be like. This model has its roots in
a literary, reading model of media reception. However, the ordinariness of TV news gains an ultimately
different meaning if we grasp media reception by the analogy of attendance. Obviously, people do not
attend a performance they would presume to be ordinary, without a particular appeal. Seen from this
angle, TV news are expected to pale effectless if people just watch them without attending them,
without expecting them to be more attractive than other programmes, without applying to them the same
taste judgements with which they discriminate between good and bad popular cultural products
(Fiske 1996, Frith 1998). As our data from 2002 demonstrate, this is what happened to TV news in
Hungary. Their effects were evaded, because people did not recognize them as appealing, did not relate to
them emotionally and did not use them in building their identities.
3. The fading power of news in the era of popular media
The crisis of legitimacy of the news as a social institution in its role of dissemination of
information about and interpretation of events is certainly a burning question for the future of
democratic politics (Carpignano et al. 1993:96). TV news low dramaturgical power may be a key reason
behind its declining importance. With the proliferation of infotainment and factoid genres, TV news has
lost its privileged place and became one among the many infotainment programmes competing for the
audiences attention. The traditional evening news format is unsuccessful in this competitive context, in
spite of its adaptation to commercial pressures. It falls short of more explicit, mobilizing, enchanting
factual (infotainment and other) genres. In the USA (Jones 2005) or the Netherlands (van Zoonen
Holtz-Bacha 2000), talk shows have recently been reported to take the place of news, with their power to
offer greater narrative content that news cant provide (Ellis 1999:57-58). Other accounts have
highlighted how new and rising news formats like the FOX channel or talk radio are dethroning the
standard evening news programme. An increasing number of researchers have warned that infotainment,
and even entertainment, programs do have a public relevance (Delli Carpini Williams 2001, Hermes
1998, 2005, Corner Pels 2003, Dahlgren 1995, MacDonald 2000, Jones 2005). Accordingly, new,
popular factual genres may be more influential for audiences civic identities than TV news, in spite of
the latters almost totemic role in the research of factual media.
Previous empirical research has failed to demonstrate robust, prevailing and strong effects of
commercial TV news either positive or negative (Norris-Sanders 2001, Norris 2000).9 This uncertainty
has been reflected in many reviews summarizing the recent transformations of the media (Blumler
Kavanagh 1999, Mazzoleni Schulz 1999, McQuail 1992, see Angs comments on McQuails as a

spongue theory [1998]). Of course, empirical media research has always been objected to for revealing
only small, equivocal and inconsistent, or heavily context dependent effects (Delli Carpini
2004:421; see also Livingstone 1996). However, this uncertainty seems to hold particularly for news in
the context of market-driven, popular media. A particularly telling example is the general disinterest in
news of younger generations socialized into the new media context. Far from merging into an escapist
consumerism (Graber 2003, Buckingham 2000, Branhurst 1998), young people build their political
identities on other resources, and do not care too much for news, which, in Kevin Branhursts words,
floats past them, unanchored (1998:216). The above lack of audience response is in sharp contrast with
news editors constant efforts to make their programs more interesting, digestible and relevant for people.
Matthew Baum, contemplating the contingent effects of soft news, has wittily formulated media
researchers dilemma, asking whether it is the evidence of absence, or the absence of evidence of
effects that has emerged from previous research (Baum 2003). This question opens up two different
paths. The first one accepts the absence of evidence view, and calls for the collection of more
reassuring evidence than previous research (Schulz et al. 2005:78, Zaller 1996). I will pursue the other
path, considering the uncertainty of previous research not as a deficiency, an absence, but as a positive
finding that commercial TV news discourse does not have robust effects on audiences. Leaning on
empirical data taken from Hungary in 2002, I will present reasons why the standard evening news
programmes of the two leading broadcast private televisions (RTL Klub and TV2) have not affected
audiences dispositions, in spite of their more tabloid style. As we shall see, neither has public service TV
news succeeded in having an effect on its audience.
4. News without fans a dramaturgical explanation of news lack of effect in Hungary
The following empirical analysis aims to reveal the underlying causes behind TV news
inefficiency in Hungary, 2002. As we shall see, TV news lack of an echo was really unique: out of all the
media outlets and programmes examined, only TV news has proved, in Branhursts words, entirely to
flow past the audience. By contrast, other factual and infotainment programmes have affected viewers
political agenda perceptions and civic dispositions (like interest in and knowledge about politics). Relying
on focus group and survey evidence, I will argue that the difference between TV news and other
programmes efficiency results from their apparently unequal potential to arouse viewer engagement.
The empirical research was carried out in the early spring of 2002, during the middle period of the
parliamentary election campaign. By triangulating content analysis, focus group discussions and survey
research, I have tried to gain a comprehensive view on how people consumed factual media and political
information four years after the appearance of the commercial TV channels. I have content-analysed the
three leading evening news programmes (on m1, TV2 and RTL Klub) and the two leading political
newspapers (the left-wing Npszabadsg and the right-wing Magyar Nemzet). I have revealed the organs
genre characteristics, their ideological bias and issue agenda. I have also analysed two infotainment
programmes on the channel RTL Klub. The first is called Fkusz (Focus), a human-interest daily
infotainment magazine. The other, called Heti Hetes10, is a politics-centred weekly comedy panel
programme, in which popular journalists and actors comment on politics. Another type of factual
programming has also been analysed: information magazines on public and private television, devoted to
giving background information on various political, campaign and human-interest issues.
In the focus group and the survey research I have explored how peoples reliance on the above
news sources affects their civic involvement, their political affiliations and their knowledge about the
most important public issues. 17 focus group discussions were conducted with middle-class Budapest
residents between the end of February and the middle of March 2002. The composition of the focus
groups was varied by peoples preferences for news organs and political affiliations. The representative
survey research was conducted soon after the focus group discussions finished.
Three dispositional factors have been examined by survey methods: agenda perception (the
importance attributed to particular public issues), civic involvement (like knowledge level, interest in
politics and readiness for participation) and political engagement (several aspects of party affiliation).
These ultimate factors of peoples dispositions have been measured with dozens of variables. Table 1
provides a very rough map of the correspondences between these dispositional factors and peoples media
consumption habits. In the columns the media variables can be found, representing peoples (selfreported) frequency of consumption of various TV programmes and newspapers. Table 1 consists of 4
rows: the first row reveals to what extent peoples social status influences their media consumption; the

other rows show how the consumption of each programme relates to audiences civic involvement,
agenda perception and political engagement. I will present general symbols expressing the average
strength of coefficients generated in exhaustive quantitative research, including factor analytical, logistic
and linear regression methods.11 The number of bubbles (from 0 to 3) expresses the relative strength of
interrelations.
TABLE 1
The striking evidence revealed by Table 1 is that of all the above programmes and organs, only
private TV news have proved not to affect audiences at all. Viewers dispositions did not mirror the
unquestionably more tabloid negative, scandalous and populist coverage private TV news provided.
TV news resonated with viewers dispositions neither in a negative (apathy, privatism, cynicism) nor in a
positive sense (interest, distance). They have not proved able to turn peoples attention to crime or the
political horse-race, either. Interestingly enough, the public service news programme has affected neither
viewers civic involvement nor their agenda perception the two crucial factors for democratic
citizenship.12 M1 news has not proved capable of cultivating a more politics and information-oriented
attitude in viewers. Apart from TV news, all programmes have affected the civic involvement and the
agenda perception of their audience. Considering the productivity of infotainment programmes, the
inefficiency of TV news needs explanation. Why have Fkusz, Heti Hetes, newspapers and the other
programmes been shown to affect audiences, and why could such correspondences not be revealed at all
in the case of TV news?
The above survey findings closely correspond to the ultimate difference revealed by focus group
discussions between the reception of TV news and infotainment programmes. Focus group participants
were prone to engage in heated discussions about all kinds of programmes except TV news. 13 The low
efficiency of TV news revealed in survey research has been mirrored in its low capacity to make focus
group participants engage in heated debates. The lack of polarization of likers and dislikers has been
a key aspect of TV news low productivity. In the case of infotainment programmes, the energy fuelling
focus groups discussions lied in a polarisation process through which participants were divided in two
opposing groups of fans and haters. Whether fans or haters, people stood up for their cause, allied
with others they sympathised with and together re-performed the discourse of their favourite media or
political actors. Haters have not proved less loyal than fans; they related trustfully to other media
discourses and performers. Of course, lovers and haters, both engaged and emotionally involved,
substantially differed from those bystanders who simply did not find the given issue or programme
interesting enough to be debated. Bystanders kept their distance and let others produce and contest
discourses. Meanwhile, likers passionately elaborated arguments for defending their favourite
programme and attacking others. This engagement of likers has been the key point of the productivity
of TV programmes. The above process of dramatized polarisation (cf. Dayan 2002b) has proved to be
quintessential in the production of knowledge and identities in the focus group discussions. Ultimately,
people polarised themselves following the splits of public discourse and media: left vs. right, elitism vs.
populism, political vs. apolitical, private TV versus public TV.
Infotainment programmes have proved to be extremely productive and polarizing, and have
stimulated heightened debates. Participants easily recognized the narrative and genre characteristics of the
two programmes. Why do (not) you like the programme?, proved an easy question, triggering real
discursive blasts. In many cases, it was enough to mention the name of Fkusz or of Heti Hetes to
activate the work of the identity-formation of fans and haters. From group to group, participants
discussing these programmes polarized themselves along a very similar pro and con axis. Likers and
dislikers engaged in heightened debates, cited particular experiences and activated common knowledge.
The intensity of the debates and the participants willingness to ally with fellow sympathisers clearly
suggested that in part they were reproducing previous discussions. In the disputes about the two
infotainment programmes likeability, trustworthiness and verisimilitude, sympathisers re-performed
and not simply reproduced the programmes dominant values and realities (cf. Dayan and Katz 1992).
In sharp contrast with infotainment programmes, private TV news has not triggered debate and
polarisation. Their viewers discussed them with much less emotion and energy than they invested into
talking over other programmes. The discussions about private TV news proved to be rather unproductive:
sparse, unemotional, and unfocused. Participants discussed general themes like news-watching habits,
shuttling back and forth between various issues rather than focusing on the news itself. Most people

simply did not have any idea about whether or not they liked the news programme. Consequently, they
were not able to engage in discussion about the news, either. They came up with some banal comments
(e.g. news presents what happened today), in sharp contrast with their emotionally overloaded discussions
about infotainment programmes. In focus group discussions, at least four factors of dramaturgical
condensation have emerged along which intense and productive debates have differed from
unproductive discussions (for a similar attempt to measure the intensity of viewer engagement, see
Russell et al. 2004). Discussions about private TV news performed rather poorly in each of these
dimensions. The four factors identification, polarisation, focus and recall all proved essential in the
dramatized production of discourse in focus groups. These factors characterize the intensity of
engagement with popular cultural performances in general, and are equally fundamental, as well, in
factual media reception, if we grasp this latter in terms of attendance, as it has been foreshadowed in
the introduction. I can only draw a rough picture of these dimensions here.
Identification, as theorized by Liebes and Katz, equally implies the of and the with meanings
of the word: it represents peoples engagement with a discourse they have recognised as attractive (e.g.
Liebes Katz). Identification is self-evidently interwoven with a double process of polarisation: if a
programme is recognised as appealing, there is a good chance that, on the one hand, it will be contrasted
with other, less preferred or even despised, programmes, and that, on the other, it will fuel a debate
between likers and haters. These processes have been absent in most of the discussions about private TV
news programmes. Focus group participants relative perplexity when asked about how they liked TV
news has manifested itself in two ways. Either they simply evaded the question, or they chose the
opposite tactic and associated a wide range of positive attributes with the news programme they regularly
watched, without expressing a clear preference for any of them.
Instead of illustrating the above perplexity of participants, let me here quote a non-typical opinion
about private TV news, which may be even more illuminating. According to accounts sympathetic to
popular media, ordinary people feel enabled by its personal and populist tone, and its human interest
focus. Accordingly, womens attachment to human interest programmes would be a resistance to the
dominant value hierarchy that appreciates news and hard information and is tailored to male social roles
(Morley 1992). We have found only a very few cases underlying this interpretation: some private TV
news likers have asserted they found these programmes empowering. These people have identified
themselves with the programme and contrasted private news with old style, elitist and grey news
discourse. Consider the opinion of Sra, TV2 viewer and politically undecided.
1.excerpt. A non-typical attitude to private TV news
Sra

TV2 news approaches things from more diverse standpoints, everybody can get a word in, it
gives access to many more groups, even my son watches it, because there are interesting things in it
it is not so austere as the news was before, when people did not understand what was going on
politics and stuff I dont care about it is more colourful, informal, I feel more that it talks to me

Private TV news discourse in this case seems to be especially productive: Sra recognised TV2
news as talking to her, talking in her name, and engaged herself in intense identifying and polarising
utterances in which she addressed some of TV2 news dominant meanings its less political, more
informal and human interest focus and contrasted it with the news from before. However, the
engagement of Sra, as our focus group discussions clearly demonstrated, can by no means be generalised
to the majority of private TV news viewers. Most viewers proved to be unaffected by private TV news
genre characteristics and reported to watch them simply to get informed about what happened today.
The concept of news for most participants meant the recent events of the outside world, and not a
particularly structured programme. Unlike Sra, most viewers did not have elaborated opinions about the
news framing strategies, narrative specifics or thematic focus. Explicit self-identification with private TV
news proved to be as rare as clear-cut preferences for one private TV news programme over another.
The above absence of identification and polarisation in most of the discussions about private TV
news has been reflected in the low level of focus and recall. These factors represent the extent to
which a performer monopolises audiences attention: focused discussions do not deflect even for a single
moment from the issue at stake, while the high level of recall signifies that participants rely heavily on the
performers discourse as a resource of examples, facts, stories and arguments. The following excerpt
clearly exemplifies how people, when asked about private TV news, were often strikingly unwilling to
talk about the programme itself.

2. excerpt
Moderator
Kroly

Most of you have mentioned RTL Klub news. What do you think about this programme?
The programme just comes, with all the other programmes which are popular and people just
stay there. I find these programmes more up to par
()

Attila

I agree with Kroly that the editing of the programme I mean the order of the programmes one
after the other, I mean Among Friends14
Fkusz
Fkusz
Yes, my permanent daily agenda is news, and then Who is who...
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to be
Once I had an argument with someone that he doesnt watch it because he doesnt like Vg.15 I
told him I dont watch it because of Vg, but that so many questions arise
He hosts the programme well
Vg is very good
va, please, what do you
I like Vg very much
I mean, what do you think about RTL news?
Oh yeah, the news, well, thats the most interesting one
I think it is more objective than TV2: what I noticed is that maybe it presents the news more
objectively
(silence)
OK, so could you tell me, how do you feel about m1 news?
(silence)
I dont watch it Fkusz starts just then
Thats the lesser reason, for m1 is very biased
Fkusz speaks in more length about the same things that can be seen and listened to on the news
Fkusz expounds, maybe and they come one after the other, not far away from each other like
morning and evening, but with only a half hour difference.
We will return to Fkusz later, but Pter, you said that you watched m1 news
On the whole, I find RTL a bit meant for effect; concretely, Fkusz has been mentioned
(.)

Anita
Irn
Attila
Rzsi
Anita
Attila
Irn
va
Moderator
va
Moderator
va
Anita
Moderator
Anita
va
Attila
Moderator
Pter

As the above, extremely unfocused discussion and other similar ones have highlighted, private TV
news programmes are only rarely chosen deliberately by people looking for some particularly appealing
news content. Most viewers watch the news as part of the flow of the surrounding programmes. By
contrast, when the same people talked over the infotainment programmes, they were not deflected even
for a single moment from the issue. Their discussions about infotainment programmes were full of
polarised identifications and disidentifications, sympathisers re-performed the programmes discourse,
their imagination was caught by the stories, images and arguments offered by the performer, while
dislikers expressed their doubts, and all these activities arose rather spontaneously.
The focus group which found that people are uncertain about the genre characteristics of news
programmes has been spectacularly verified by survey research in which we examined how people
perceive TV news genres. Survey respondents were asked to characterise the three news programmes
with adjectives expressing possible genre attributes. The ten attributes were the following: reliable,
understandable, dynamic, cares about the problems of the everyday person, sensational, hosts
are sympathetic, doesnt want to persuade, interesting, information-rich, superficial. In each
case, survey respondents were asked to name the TV news programme they felt corresponded most
particularly to the given attribute.16 Out of the data received, I have composed thirty dummy variables,
each of which has expressed whether or not a respondent found that a TV news programme corresponded
to one genre attribute (e.g.: TV2 news is/is not interesting). These thirty variables have been factor
analysed and, thus, the general trends of peoples news genre perception have been revealed. The results
of the factor analysis are presented below in Table 2.
What we might have expected, starting from earlier tabloidization research, is that private TV
news viewers will mainly appreciate the comprehensibility, human character and curiosity of their news
programmes. We might also have supposed that public service news watchers will mostly highlight the
richness and reliability of information as important, and view private news with disdain for its

sensationalism and superficiality. In short, we might have expected that the serious vs. tabloid
dimension, so much highlighted in previous research, would be reflected in viewers preferences for
news. If the majority of people had perceived this difference, an outstanding factor should have emerged.
In the case of this hypothetical factor, positive soft news attributes of TV2 and RTL Klub news
(interesting, human, etc.) should have been opposed to two groups of variables: to positive hard news
attributes of m1 news (information rich, reliable, unbiased) on the one hand, and to belittled soft news
characteristics (sensationalism, superficiality) attributed to the two private channels on the other. What we
see, instead, is that viewers unselectively connected all the possible positive attributes to the news
programme they regularly watched (the strength of the coefficients has been almost equal for each factor).
Three factors have emerged, each explaining an equal part of the total variance (around 13%), and each
expressing a very general and diffuse preference for one of the three TV news programmes.
TABLE 2
The three factors indicate that peoples preferences for the three TV news programmes are rather
characterless. Respondents, by affirming each genre attribute at the same time, have tried to hide the fact
that they lack clear genre preferences this behaviour has often been present in focus group discussions,
also. The focus group findings I have presented corroborate that the above three news preference factors
have not emerged from survey respondents meaningful engagements, but from their rationalising tactic
simply to translate their news watching practices into the language of attitudes and preferences.
TABLE 3
As Table 3 clearly demonstrates, each news preference factor expresses the regular consumption of one
news programme and the infrequent consumption of the two other programmes. Those expressing a
preference for one news programme have been shown to watch neither of the two others. As the moderate
negative correlations (-0,08, -0,16) suggest, this is the case even with news on the two private TV
stations: although their discourse was rather similar, regularly watching one of them has not implied an
affirmative disposition toward the other.
6. Illusory transparency and verisimilitude in the new media environment
Most of focus group and survey participants could not recognize TV news genre characteristics.
They simply accepted TV news programmes as they were, as a fair and transparent collection of the
events of the day. Paradoxically, this nave stance emerged only in relation to TV news, the only
programmes not affecting audience dispositions at all! People regarded TV news as a window on the
world taken for granted, and, at the same time, evaded their effects. Meanwhile, other programmes did
affect their viewers dispositions, even if their veracity and reliability were much less self-evident for
viewers, as the heated debates between likers and haters clearly demonstrated. On the whole, the
efficiency of media was not identical to its uncontested veracity (and, on the other hand, neither did
the recognition of some programmes political bias guarantee that their effects would be resisted; Csig
2007b). These findings challenge the conventional wisdom that factual media would effect people by
playing upon the illusion of its verisimilitude.
Dominant conceptualizations of factual media power have grasped it as a silent influence on the
ultimate process of perception and meaning making, by shaping the categories and frameworks
through which audience members perceive socio-political reality (Blumler Gurevich 1982:262; c.f.
McLeod Kosicki McLeod 2002:217, McQuail 1992, Morley 1992, Philo 1990, Lewis 1991, Kitzinger
1993, Gerbner et al. 1984, Iyengar-Kinder 1987, McCombs Gilbert 1994, Pan and Kosicki 1993:70).
This consensual model (Katz 1980:133) has defined factual media power as the production of
naturalized representations (cf. Allan 1999:87, Hall 1997). The illusory transparency of media
discourse, expressed by metaphors like mirror or window, has been regarded as quintessential in the
power of media to influence perception and identity. The central role of media transparency has been
expressed in the frequent use of synonymous concepts like veracity, verisimilitude, referential
illusion or veridical effect (for reviews, see Dahlgren 1995, Hartley 1982, Grisprud 2002, Allan 1999).
In the followings, this model will be referred to as the reality effect model.

The above model of strong and subordinating media effects has been heavily attacked in the last
two decades. Alternative conceptualizations have highlighted that the new media environment opens a
place for far more individualized media use (McQuail 1992, Delli Carpini Williams 2001, BlumlerKavanagh 1999). Other efforts have further refined the classical U&G model (e.g. Perse 1994).
Poststructuralist and ethnographical media research has announced the death of dominant meanings,
claiming that they get necessarily hijacked by audiences local cultural context and practices (Ang
Hermes 1995 Alasuutari 1999, Abercrombie Longhurst 1996). Several understandings of audiences as
active have been complicit with the reality effect model: questioning it empirically, but relying on it as
a self-evident theoretical model to be confuted. On the whole, audience activity has remained opposed to
large-scale media effects. Following this trade-off, many researchers have kept supposing, as Sonia
Livingstone has critically pointed out, that the ways in which viewers selectively interpret what they see,
depending on their own experiences and cultural background undermine media effects (Livingstone
1996:318, for similar criticisms, see Katz 1996:19).
Neither of the above approaches can grasp the empirical findings presented above. For, although
people did evade TV news power, they did not eschew other programmes address which affected and
mobilized large and socially heterogeneous audience segments. Moreover, the above evasion of TV news
effects did not at all imply an active or critical stance. It would be highly simplistic to explain TV news
inefficiency purely by its limited capacity to bring reality effects on active and competent audiences.
This interpretation would be at odds with peoples apparent naivety regarding TV news. People were
navely and uncritically loyal to TV news which, in spite of this loyalty, were unable to profit from it.
Their audiences did not cultivate programme-specific dispositions or values. These findings contradict the
mainstream reality effect model. They demonstrate that large-scale media effects cannot be restricted to
the uncritical acceptance of the frames, representations or agendas presented by the media.
7. Attending media towards a dramaturgical model of media power
Why were TV news unable to affect people, those who accepted them as real and truthful? This
seeming ambivalence may be resolved by disconnecting nave loyalty to media and exposure to its
effects. For passive and nave acceptance implies not only a potential openness to influence, but also a
lack of care and inspiration to get activated and mobilized by media. This alternative explanation brings
the problem of dramaturgy and engagement to the fore. In the following, TV news lack of effect will be
traced back to its weak dramaturgical power to attract a group of engaged viewers which would recognize
them as attractive and meaningful performances worth to attend.
The above findings presented lead towards a dramaturgical approach that considers the cultural
products of media not as texts to be read, but as performances to be attended. While the reality
effect model grasped media power as affecting the passive general audience, dramaturgical approaches,
inspired by the metaphor of theatre, focus on those active and responsive segments of people who are
willing to attend the performance and get taken over by its power. The theatre analogy may
fundamentally challenge mainstream understandings of media power as subordinating the passive
receiver. For theatre audiences do not simply receive a play, but attend the performance hall, they do
not simply accept the world of the play, but invest mental energies into stepping into it, deliberately
and selectively plunging into the aesthetic experience the performance offers (Marinis Dwyer 1987).
Along these distinctions, the very concept of media power can be rethought in the framework of social
drama, catharsis, and ceremonial performance (Dayan-Katz 1992, Alexander 2006, Frith 1996, 1998,
Turner 1969, Schechner 2003). There is no place here for systematically deploying a dramaturgical
approach to factual media power, its relation to the reality effect model and its embeddedness in the
competitive environment of popular media. Only those dramaturgical insights will be presented here
which may help illuminating why TV news uncontested veracity led to its relative powerlessness
compared to other programmes.
Approaches starting from theories of dramaturgical action and ceremonial anthropology have
focused on the role of media in, less the maintenance, than the transcendence of the ordinary: the
creation of a sacred, liminal, space, where a subjunctive orientation to idealized values is enacted, and
ordinary reality reconsidered (Cottle 2006, Dayan Katz 1992, Alexander 2006). Dramaturgical
approaches, from their earliest forms like Burkes (1957) or Goffmans (1990 [1959]) dramaturgical
theory, have been relying on the analogy of theater in exploring how modern, mediatized forms of

sacrality are produced and used. Along the theater analogy, four points may be highlighted as relevant
for our exploration of veracity, news and popular factual media.
First, theater theories mostly agree in the fact that theater performance requires the audience to
actively and critically invest mental efforts into establishing belief in the reality of the play (Schechner
2003, Boulton 1960). Accordingly, the play brings cathartic effects on the audience only through the
latters intense and close cooperation with the performer. Cathartic reception of performances, if
achieved, amalgamates subordination and agency, misrecognition and recognition, mannered rhetorical
force and perceived authenticity (Frith 1996:109, 115; Pels 2003). As argued by Roger Silverstone,
popular media may trigger similar engagements, which fuse agency and effects, and are not
decomposable into presence or absence, activity or passivity (Silverstone 1994:170).17 Along this
argument, the effects of mediatized public discourse may be rethought as mediated by the emotionally
intense engagement and self-activation of audiences, who behave more like attending a programme
than merely reading or receiving it.
Secondly, the above argument projects an imaginary figure of the effected receiver, which is
hard to reconcile with the reality effect model. While this latter has envisioned a couch potato passively
swallowing heavy doses of the media flow18, a dramaturgical approach would imagine affected
audiences as passionately discussing media at home or the workplace, in the belief that what they are
debating is really important. In these discussions, audiences dramatize their attachments to cultural
products and perform it to their fellow audience members: draw conclusions, exaggerate, use irony,
find the moral of the story, blame, show care, present typical storylines and characters, and so on. Dayan
and Katzs analysis of practices of festive viewing has been an outstanding attempt to understand these
local, diasporic (1992:145) re-enactments which make a media event not a spectacle, but a concert of
performances (1992:140). Simon Frith theorizes music consumption as saturated by similar performative
practices: in his view, music listening is not a mere act of reception. People make meaning of music
and enjoy it by re-enacting its valued characteristics: as listeners, we perform the music for ourselves,
Frith argues (1998:204). In such moments of everyday dramatized re-enactment, people surrender
(Katz 1996:16): they offer their trust to media performers, and display this attachment to their peers.
The third point is that the above approach transcends the conventional opposition of
passive/subordinate receivers and more active ones, and the conventional understanding of these
latter as bringing to media what is their own (either as individuals or as parts of local cultures), instead
of accepting what is brought to them by media. What is emphasized, instead, is the contrast between the
active, engaged and effected believer and the reluctant and passive bystander who evades media
effects and any sort of self-involvement. The polarization of lovers and haters, a dramaturgical
mechanism fuelling all of our focus group discussions, is a divide inside the group of believers, whose
overall engagements are either in line with, or in opposition with the narratives and meanings offered by a
particular programme.
The aesthetic judgements by which likers distinguish themselves from haters and
bystanders do not stand alone: as Simon Frith argues, they are amalgamated with ethical and morality
judgements (1998:67-74), and also, it has to be added, with an awareness that they are not solitary acts,
but represent shared experiences with like-minded others enacting similar discriminations. These
discriminatory practices are aimed to overcome fragmentation and achieve an imaginary fusion with
performers and fellow audience members (Alexander 2006). Consequently, moments when aesthetic and
cathartic effects emerge do not relate to the uninvolved, passive and repetitive swallowing of the
ordinary media flow. On the contrary, people affected by dramatized media performances try to overcome
fragmentation and distance, stop and suspend media flow. The establishment of faith through
engagement is achieved by various practices of suspension, including the imaginary deactivation of
distance between performer and receiver, the abandonment of ordinariness, and the suspension of
disbelief. The catharsis and faith triggered by performing arts have been long ago associated with the
deliberate permissiveness of audiences willing to reach poetic faith, as Coleridge has first declared two
centuries ago. Suspending disbelief is an attitude traditionally attributed to audiences of artistic
performances especially imitative art , to listeners of stories in general, to players enjoying games and,
finally, to fans who can belong to each above category. Seen from a dramaturgical angle, the willing
suspension of disbelief (for Goffmans similar arguments see Burns [1992:304], see also Galgut 2002)
is an inevitable factor in the symbolic traffic between media and audiences.
Engagement has been understood above as taste discrimination and an intentional, imaginary
deactivation of distance between performer and audience. This implies an element of recognition: a

programme, to trigger engagement, has to be recognized as more attractive and likeable than others. This
recognition enables people to activate their emotional and cognitive energies, invest themselves into the
discourse (c.f. Grossberg 1992), let themselves be led by its dominant meanings and re-perform the
discourse to their fellows in their local life contexts.
Transparent texts do not activate the above recognition, and, according to the dramaturgical model
applied here, audiences cannot re-perform a discourse the presence of which they ignore.19 Consequently,
transparent texts will pale without effect, will be objects of viewers selective perception, their meanings
torn up by the receivers alternative, more explicit, self-identifications. From a dramaturgical point of
view, no self-identification with a discourse can happen without the identification of the discourse as
attractive and productive. Accordingly, the effectiveness of a discourse is inseparable from peoples
willingness to get affected, from their intentions about the given media performance: why to watch/read
it, what to look for in it, how to judge it, whom to watch/read it with, whom to talk to about it, and so on.
TV news in Hungary have proved to be inefficient because people never asked themselves such
questions, they simply accepted TV news as they were.
The representational practices of private and public TV news in Hungary were not peculiar
enough to turn a group of viewers into enthusiasts who would have passionately cultivated their
discourse. News, perceived as transparent windows to the world, has not become the object of those
everyday discussions in which people elaborate their emotional relation to and expectations about
programmes and actors of media (whats good and whats bad in RTL Klub News?, why do I watch
it?, do I like it?, is it better than TV2 News?, does it speak to and for people like me?). Of course,
people were interested in particular issues presented by the news, but they were entirely indifferent to TV
news itself as a particular programme with specific genre characteristics. This lies behind focus group
participants perplexed, mannered and incidental reactions when asked about news. People did not invest
mental energies in understanding what a news programme is, if it is good or bad, reliable or unreliable,
and why. This unmotivated, elusive glance (cf. Ellis 1982) of viewers hindered TV news in becoming
productive and efficient. In contrast to infotainment programmes, TV news did not trigger dense,
emotionally overcharged and productive discussions through which likers could have cultivated and
further elaborated the programmes discourse. TV news low productivity was due to the fact that their
reception completely missed the passion of audiences attending, and discriminating between, dramatized
performances.
7. Conclusion: popular taste discrimination and factual medias dramatic productivity
As the above presented inefficiency of TV news demonstrates, regular and repetitive exposure to
media may not be the most important factor mediating factual media power in the new media
environment. Although TV news hit relatively high audience scores, which suggests they are popular,
they have proved to be at the same time particularly unpopular in terms of their inability to heighten
audience emotions. This underlies Simon Friths warning that the intensity of engagement with and the
frequency of exposure to media may be entirely independent from each other, not to be conflated by the
common umbrella term of popularity (c.f. Frith 1998:48). This turns attention from repetitive
exposure to cathartic engagement. In popular media, just like in theater, the rise of cathartic effects is
not a matter of how many times the receiver sees the same play. In the competitive environment of
popular media, only programmes recognized as likeable can attract an engaged group of viewers who
would be willing to cultivate their discourse (the implications to classical Agenda Setting theory are
presented in Csig 2007a). In this context, factual media texts, to be productive, have to be explicit,
harsh and attractive: easily recognisable and discernable by audiences.
Conventional theorising of factual media power has focused on how a media programme
(re)presented the world, and bracketed off why people actually have chosen to watch that particular
program over others. The reality effect model has focused on what distinctions media set between
social classes, between the important and the unimportant, between spheres of us and them, and
whether these distinctions can be imposed on receivers. By contrast, the dramaturgical approach I am
arguing for is interested in what distinctions people set between media programs, and how do they
discriminate what is good, appealing, speaking to them and for them from what they find bad and
indifferent, devoid of dramatic power. The more competitive the media environment, the more these
popular discriminatory practices pervade the consumption of all cultural products, from factual media to

popular music (Frith 2003, Fiske 1996). The more factual media and public discourse is amalgamating
with popular taste cultures (Corner Pels 2003, Street 1998, van Zoonen 2004) and popular
discriminatory practices, the more media power is getting mediated by peoples engagements with the
attractive, and not simply by their exposure the unnoticed.
In a competitive media context, it is not the ordinary media flow, but its suspension, which
embodies large-scale media effects. In the era of extreme media abundance, media flow is flowing in
too many directions for the audience could be simply taken by it. It is water cooler programs, cult
shows, small and large media events and pseudo-events which have a chance to turn peoples media
exposure into engaged media attendance. The above heightening of emotions is a key aspect of what
the dramaturgical approach mostly focuses on: the cathartic productivity of factual media discourses
the intensification of discussions about them, the focusing of attention, the polarization of likers and
dislikers, the creation of new knowlede and identities, the will of audiences to activate themselves and
engage (c.f. Fiske 1996:34).20
In spite of all attempts to heighten news content, the standard evening news format is simply not
productive enough in the above terms of dramaturgy. Several factors impede TV news in becoming object
of engaged taste discriminations. Weak viewer engagement with news is inscribed into the very raw level
of the TV channels programme structure. News are the only programmes the place of which is never
accentuated by promotional means. Never advertised themselves, TV news are becoming the place where
infotainment programmes are promoted by tie-ins. For example, RTL Klub news hosts orient people every
evening to the days Fkusz edition, for a more detailed coverage of some human interest issues. These
advertisements are devoted to increase peoples receptivity, motivation and attention, and thus may serve
as efficient amplifiers of dramaturgical media effects. By contrast, news programmes are never taken to
the focus of audiences identities and taste judgements: their presence in popular television contradicts the
logic of audience-maximizing cultural production.
The above ambiguous status of TV news is mirrored in the ambivalence and openness of their
content. As previous research has made it clear, TV news editing is constantly confined by the necessity
of balancing out contradictory requirements (Hallin 1986, Graber 1994:504). Some of these latters are
prescribed by explicite regulations or implicite expectations enacted by the state. Others are dictated by
market pressures: originally protected from Nielsen ratings pressures, news programmes are increasingly
subbmitted to the same criteria as entertainment programming (Moog Sluyter-Beltrao 2001). As a
consequence, TV news have to be detached without losing their attractivity. They have to be appealing,
but not biased politically, so as not to lose other-minded audiences. They have to feed audiences populist
attitudes with scandals without making them completely bored of politics. They have to present complex
issues in an easily digestible language, and so on. The necessary adoption of contradictory genre elements
hampers tabloidizing TV news in reaching textual closure and performing a well-recognizable
discourse.
The above urge of conventional TV news to maintain an internal pluralism and relative balance
(Kunczik 2001) is becoming outdated in the market-like, promotional environment of popular media
which favours the external pluralism of competing, partisan, expressive, harsh media forms. The
extensive attacks in the name of new journalism against the objectivity standard clearly react to the
rise of a plural media environment (Dahlgren, see also Cohen Eliot 1997: 59-63 and Iggers 1998:66,107
ref. by Bajomi-Lzr 2003) where consensual norms of journalism do not prevail any longer. The old
understanding of news as integrating the general public into a dominant political culture (Katz 1996b)
surrenders the place to a more segmentary vision of factual media effects. The last decades media
success stories like FOX, talk shows, South Park, Ali G, Michael Moore, Stephen Colbert or Rush
Limbaugh emblematize the increasingly partisan, expressive face of new infotainment media, intensely
fictionalizing public discourse. This process certainly challenges democratic politics and public discourse,
of which TV news has been ceased to be the main depository.
Failing to reach dramaturgical closure and trigger engagement, the conventional evening news
format is loosing of its power to channel public discourse. It may be adapted to new developments, but it
does not project the future of popular media. Given the low dramatic productivity and weak effects of
TV news, a critical defense of democracy from the dumbing down of news may not be the most
appropriate reaction to the recent transformations of media. The real threats and promises of popular
media lie elsewhere and not in news. In lack of this recognition, it is to be feared that an overly defensive
advocacy for classic forms of factual media discourse will pale, like TV news itself.

TABLES:
Table 1 The interrelations between media consumption and social status, civic involvement, agenda perception and political
affiliation.
How often the respondent watched/read
public
private
RTL
TV2
m1
Heti
Fkusz Npsza Magyar
info
info
Klub
(private (public) Hetes
human
badsg
Nemzet
progs.
progs.
(private )
news
talk
interest (left-w. (right-w
) news
news
show
prog.
paper)
paper)
Social status relation to

media consumption habits

Civic involvements relation

to media consumption habits

Agenda perceptions relation

to media consumption habits

Political affiliations relation

to media consumption habits

Table 2

A factor analysis of 30 variables expressing preferences for news programmes.

factor 1
(m1 news
preference)

m1 news is (has) the most

Rtl Klub news is (has) the

most

Reliable
Understandable
Dynamic
Caring about everyday
people
Sensational
Likeable hosts
Unbiased
Interesting
Information rich
Superficial
Reliable
Understandable
Dynamic
Caring about everyday
people
Sensational
Likeable hosts
Unbiased
Interesting
Information-rich
Superficial

factor 2
(rtl klub news
preference)

factor 3
(tv2 news
preference)

0.60
0.74
0.75
0.62
0.76
0.59
0.80
0.79
0.26
0.64
0.72
0.68
0.61
0.67
0.55
0.72
0.74
0.21

0.21

TV2 news is (has) the most

Reliable
Understandable
Dynamic
Caring about everyday
people
Sensational
Likeable hosts
Unbiased
Interesting
Information-rich
Superficial

0.60
0.65
0.70
0.64

% of the total variance explained

14%
ULS extraction method, Varimax rotation; only coefficients above 0.2 are presented

0.20

0.68
0.53
0.69
0.73

13%

12%

Table 3.

The correlation of news-watching habits and the personal scores on the three news preference factors.
factor 2
factor 1
(rtl klub
(m1 news
news
preference)
preference)
m1
news
0.38
-0.26
The frequency of
rtl klub news
-0.23
0.34
watching
tv2 news
-0.19
-0.16
Pearson correlation coefficients, all significant at 0.01 level.

factor 3
(tv2 news
preference)
-0.16
-0.08
0.28

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The title of my study, downbreaking news, refers to a typical aspect of the vulnerabilities of TV news to adapt to the
new media environment. The example of breaking news represents that it is not enough to multiply ad infinitum the
dramatic elements which intensify news content and trigger audience attention. Originally, breaking news referred to a real
suspension of the programme flow and presumed the audiences intense attention to the live coverage of outstanding events.
Reacting to the hyper-competitivity of the recent media environment, editors have attempted to capitalize on the attention
grabbing potential of the term. However, the permanent useage of breaking news has inflated the terms original meaning,
which now expresses hardly more than the headlines of the day. This projects a change in the reception of the term, as well,
as expressed by a media expert: I am so sick of 'breaking news,' I have almost quit watching TV. It has been so overused
that no one pays attention anymore (Greeley 2006).
2
See www.consumerengagement.com, or Nielsens highlights, presenting their own engagement research at
http://www.nielsenmedia.com. For other companies measuring engagement, see (Clegg 2006)
3
Two commercial TV channels, RTL Klub (owned by Bertelsmann) and TV2 (SBS Broadcasting), established an
oligopolistic position only a few months after their appearance. By now, the two private channels control some 60-70% of
the total viewing time in Hungary. Meanwhile, the three public service TV channels (m1, m2, Duna TV) lost most of their
audiences, due to their uniquely low performance in providing high quality programming, and their constant subordination
to the government of the day. The broadcast m1, the satellite m2 and Duna TV, with an aggregate audience share oscillating
between 10 and 20%, have been endangered in their very existence (Sksd Bajomi-Lzr 2003). The number of people
using traditionally respected sources of information like public service news programmes, televised debates of intellectuals
or serious political newspapers has considerably declined. The two private televisions have imported most of the genres and
programmes which saturate popular television over the world. New formats of factual television call it infotainment,
hybridised, post-documentary, negative or human interest have almost all appeared in the private media in
Hungary.
4
Critical accounts have contested the negative, cynical, sensationalist, populist, overly moralizing,
emotional tone of popular news, and the consecutive scandalization, spectacularization, fictionalization,
personalization and informalization of public discourse. These processes have been thought to seclude receivers from
access to the structural features of society and politics (Patterson 1996:97; Cappella-Jamieson 1996; Blumler 1997;
Dahlgren 1995:60; Franklin 1997:8; Sparks 1992:41, 2000:28-29). Positive approaches to popular news have not been less
sensitive to the medias intense dramaturgical saturation. Sympathetic accounts have welcomed the playful, ironic tone
and carnivalesque nature of popular media, its human interest emphasis, its power to re-engage the alienated and to
reintegrate the excluded into the realm of politics. Popular media has been claimed to empower people by legitimating
lay testimonies and serving as an emotional resource in coping with everyday role conflicts and morality dilemmas
(Becker 1992, Glynn 2000, Fiske 1987, Jones 2005, Brookes 2000, Street 1998, Langer 1998, van Zoonen 2003b). Less
normative approaches have equally grasped media commercialization in terms of dramaturgical intensification, by
accounting for how emotional and testimonial TV genres maintain cultural citizenship (Hermes 1998, 2005, MacDonald
2000), or by exploring trends of celebrification and the consecutive style revolution taking place in politics (Corner
Pels 2003:8).
5
The dramaturgical saturation of factual and infotainment media has been taking place in an era when conventional
relations between politics and society are transforming, as suggested by reports about the pale of traditional class and
ideological cleavages (Carter et al. 1995, Bennett 2003), the radical drop of strong party identifiers in the last 30 years
(Crewe Thompson), and the widely documented increase of distrust in politics. In a profoundly distrustful and
ideologically uncertain context, the more subtle technologies of dramatization, emotional intensification and aesthetic
enhancement are increasingly shaping the discursive battle for public authority and authenticity (c.f. Corner Pels 2003).
6
This adaptive process has been defined as mediatization, which, importantly, is taking place not only in politics
(Mazzoleni Schulz 1999): factual media itself is getting mediatized (that means dramatized and intensified), given that
it is not exempted any longer from ratings pressures.
7
Certainly, this process is not without dangers for democratic politics. It would be highly incautious, however, to take
traditional criticisms related to aestheticized politics, and announce the victory of regressive escapism and obsessive
irrationalism in politics. As I have argued elsewhere, the conjunction of politics and popular culture results not in
manipulation or passivity but in a new aesthetic productivity, new discursive mechanisms creating political knowledge
and identifications. When, for example, political actors celebrate themselves by promotional techniques borrowed from
popular culture, the audience may get polarized to likers and dislikers, instead of simply being seduced by the harmonious
aura created by the politician.
8
Other scholars have gone even further, pointing out that the production and reception of public discourses are increasingly
determined by the logic of fandom and celebrity (Marshall 1997), projecting a fan democracy (van Zoonen 2004).
Uncautious criticism related to the irrational and obsessive nature of fandom should be avoided in this case, either. For,
recent research on fandom has freed this notion from the cellar of obsessive teenager escapism and rethought it as a
particularly distilled form of those productive forms of cultural consumption that characterize the reception of cultural
products and performances (Fiske 1992, Grossberg 1992b, Frith 1996, Hills 2002).
9
Pippa Norris work could be cited here as an exceptionally powerful illustration of this argument. Norris has been brave
and generous enough to publish all kinds of empirical findings, which have been either ambivalent in themselves or in

contradiction to her own earlier findings.

10
Its original is called Sieben Tage, Sieben Kpfe in Germany.
11
Detailed research documentation can be requested from the author.
12
The only feature of the three news programmes that did affect audiences was the pro-government bias of the public
service TV news. m1 news exerted a political mobilizing effect, what is not too surprising given the almost propagandistic
address of the programme. Much more striking is that those who watched m1 news and sympathized with the government
have proved to be aware of the programmes bias! This highly ambivalent relation of viewers to m1 news evokes the
similarly ambiguous stance of audiences of dramatized performances. Thus, as I have argued elsewhere, a dramaturgical
approach is inevitable in understanding the mobilizing effects of m1 news.
13
Unfortunately, we do not have much focus group data about public service news.
14
Among Friends is a daily soap opera at RTL Klub.
15
The host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire in Hungary.
16
Respondents could name as many as they wanted of the three news programmes, m1 news, TV2 news and RTL Klub
news.
17
However, performers cannot self-evidently count on audiences energy investments. People will step into the world of
the performance only if gratified by high emotional and aesthetic experiences. The same recognition stands behind the early
claim of U&G studies that media influence is mediated by the motivations and emotional states of the audience. It is worth
to evoke here Elihu Katzs long-forgotten warning that even the most potent of the mass media content cannot ordinarily
influence an individual who has no use for it (Katz 1959, quoted in Rubin 2002). This thesis of Katz has little in common
with the active audience and weak effects stance that his works have been attributed by many. (A typical criticism is
that of Kubey, claiming that Katz is not interested in what television does to people, only in what people do to television
[Kubey 1996:194]). Katzs argument highlights less the lack of media influence than its necessary mediatedness by
audience gratifications. This point has been taken further by Alan Rubin who has reconceptualized cultivation effects as
active engagement with, and not passive subordination to, media content (Rubin 2002).
18
It is important to point, again, that this model itself was heavily debated inside the mainstreams of media research. Its
importance results less from its widespread acceptance, than from its perception as the ultimate model of media effects
which has to be empirically verified or refuted.
19
This idea is absolutley antithetical to Judith Butlers theory on performativity (Butler 1997a). This warns how much the
notion of performance and performativity has been overused in the last decades.
20
To use Fiskes distinction, it might be argued that in the popular media environment, factual media effects work less by
tacitly structuring reception, as imagined by the mainstream understanding, than by triggering productivity.