Mourning News: Grief, Memory, and Television Viewership of 9/11 Open Access
Rosenberg, Leah Alice (2011)
Abstract
Abstract
Mourning News: Grief, Memory, and Television Viewership of
9/11
News footage of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade
Center and the
Pentagon building were broadcast widely across network and cable
television
programming. This dissertation explores in detail how a small group
of seventeen
participants viewed that news, both on September 11 and in the week
immediately
following the attack. Using in-depth interview responses, it
contributes to a larger body
of scholarship that seeks to understand what it is viewers actually
do while watching
news television during a national crisis. Qualitative in
methodology, this dissertation is
interdisciplinary in its approach, combining seminal works in
cultural studies, ritual
studies, and television studies to illuminate connections between
the social construction
of meaning, memory, and television viewing. Additionally, it offers
an historical analysis
of how interviewees viewed a number of significant American crises
in order to provide a
foundation for understanding the complex processes involved in
becoming an active
interpreter of the news. I argue against scholarly work that tends
to depict news viewers
as passive and unreflective consumers, helplessly viewing hours of
televised images on
September 11. On the contrary, for this study's interviewees, the
reasons for watching
were manifold, and reflect neither a mindless nor compulsive urge
to consume news on
9/11, but rather an intentional effort to employ an everyday
practice during an
extraordinary event. I conclude that, although it is an ordinary
practice, for the subjects
of this study, news viewing was also a complicated ritual that both
enabled and
constrained them in their quest for meaning about the crisis at
hand.
Mourning News: Grief, Memory, and Television Viewership of
9/11
By
Leah A. Rosenberg
M.A., Emory University, 2007
M.A., University of California, Irvine 1998
B.A., University of Maryland, College Park, 1994
Advisor: Gary Laderman, Ph.D.
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the
James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts
2011
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction 1
Chapter 1
Television in Ordinary Times: Recalling Pleasure, Place, and Family
37
Serious Pleasure: Memory and Television 40
Time and Place: Experiences of Viewing 55
The Way We Were: Family, Sociality, and Identity 64
Chapter 2
Remote Closeness: Viewing, Understanding and Using
News Television 73
Our House: The Evening News and Other Nightly Rituals 77
News as Social Practice: American Religious Culture 88
"And that's the way it is": Discussing the Significance of
Cronkite
and Stewart 93
Viewers Are Doin' It for Themselves 99
Chapter 3
Ways of Seeing: Mourning, Melancholia, and Nationally
Televised
Tragedies 110
Mourning 114
A Long Twilight Struggle: Mourning the Kennedys and King 118
Melancholia 132
Melancholic Object: The Challenger Explosion 135
Chapter 4
Betwixt and Between: 9/11 News Coverage and the Struggle to
Make
Meaning 148
Finding Out: Turning Toward the News 153
Catastrophe, Crisis, and Confusion 162
Betwixt and Between: The Stranded Audience 171
Chapter 5
Ruptured Place: Interpreting the Significance of 9/11 180
Place and Rupture 187
Stuck on Repeat 197
No Ordinary Life 203
Broken Bonds of Affection 209
Conclusion 219
Appendix A: Television Viewership Interview Questions 227
Appendix B: List of Interviewees 230
Works Cited 231
Document Outline
- Special Pages
- Abstract
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Conclusion
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- Works Cited
About this Dissertation
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