New publication från KOM: "Television’s undoing of social distancing"

Av Joanna Doona - Publicerad den 25 juni 2020

Annette Hill, professor in media and communication studies at KOM, has co-authored an piece in the European Journal of Cultural Studies with Joke Hermes, professor in media and communication at Inholland University, on the theme of television in times of social distancing.

The piece is called "Television’s undoing of social distancing" and focusses on how we engage with television during the 'cataclysmic event of Covid-19'. Television has reaffirmed its role as a providor of 'solace, daydreamning, social ritual, knowledge and storytelling'. It provides us with news and other live broadcasting about the pandemic, but also lets us re-watch old favourite shows and gather around lockdown centred programming.

While many different kinds of media are important to us at this time, television still holds some specific value in times of global crisis. Hill and Hermes write about how television works in a collecting fashion: 'the idea of "throwntogetherness’ by Doreen Massey (2005), where the confrontation of different elements, such as affects,objects, bodies, histories or stories, make and re-make a setting or situation. In this case, the throwntogetherness of lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemicenables us to see afresh the affect, materiality and affordances of television.'

Read the whole piece in European Journal of Cultural studies. Students and staff at LU can access the article though LU Library services.

Read more about Annette Hill's research.