No Sense of Place: The Electronic Media on Social Behavior

By Joshua Meyrowitz

Book Overview

How have changes in media affected our everyday experience, behavior, and sense of identity? Such questions have generated endless arguments and speculations, but no thinker has addressed the issue with such force and originality as Joshua Meyrowitz in No Sense of Place. Advancing a daring and sophisticated theory, Meyrowitz shows how television and other electronic media have created new social situations that are no longer shaped by where we are or who is "with" us.

While other media experts have limited the debate to message content, Meyrowitz focuses on the ways in which changes in media rearrange "who knows what about whom" and "who knows what compared to whom," making it impossible for us to behave with each other in traditional ways. No Sense of Place explains how the electronic landscape has encouraged the development of:

-More adultlike children and more childlike adults;

-More career-oriented women and more family-oriented men; and

-Leaders who try to act more like the "person next door" and real neighbors who want to have a greater say in local, national, and international affairs.

The dramatic changes fostered by electronic media, notes Meyrowitz, are neither entirely good nor entirely bad. In some ways, we are returning to older, pre-literate forms of social behavior, becoming "hunters and gatherers of an information age." In other ways, we are rushing forward into a new social world. New media have helped to liberate many people from restrictive, place-defined roles, but the resulting heightened expectations have also led to new social tensions and frustrations. Once taken-for-granted behaviors are now subject to constant debate and negotiation.

The book richly explicates the quadruple pun in its title: Changes in media transform how we sense information and how we make sense of our physical and social places in the world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019504231X
• ISBN13: 9780195042313
• Release Date: December 1986
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Makes sense of 20th century chaos

This is a book that will make you say, "That's why that is," over and over. It takes many of the rapid changes and social movements of the last half century and shows how they are all in fact related to the development of tv and other media. It reads like a novel, too.

A solid framework in which to negotiate a mediated culture

Revisiting and moving beyond his predecessors, Meyrowitz's book provides a wonderful framework that allows the reader of any level to appreciate the role of mediated communication in shaping social spheres and orders...both historically and today. Written in a style that avoids the high-semantics of academia and avoids the vague poetics of McLuhan, Meyrowitz's book is perhaps most fascinating because of the fact that it was written fifteen years ago: before the internet boom, before the merger-mania of media conglomeritization, etc. In my opinion, Meyrowitz's ideas are still very relevant and are a true signifier of the brilliance of this text.

A leisury yet deep analysy of the impact of television

To understand the impact of media, you have two choiches: you decode McLuhan and DeKerkhove (at least try), or you read this book. Meyrowitz writes from the perspective of a child and of a socioligist of media, describing how television has changed forever the way we relate to space, both public and private. With theatrical recollections of family scenes from the 60's and cultured references to other studies Meyrowitz manages to make us look at TV and media in general as we never did before.

MUST READ, if interested in the impact of electronic media!

Joshua Meyrowitz takes the reader through a fantastic and comprehensive perspective on the impact of electronic media. Beyond McLuhan, Meyrowitz challenges the reader to consider the formulative role of media, irrespective of it's content. Meyrowitz clearly details the impact of electronic media on one's perception of place, and the unrecognized rearrangement of social forums. This book is a MUST READ for those interested in the impact of television and computer networking technologies on contemporary social life--if understood, it will forever change your perceptions of media