Fiske, John

John Fiske (1939–) is a cultural theorist best known for his advancement of television studies, critical analysis of popular culture, and cross-cultural investigations of the production of meaning and the creation of publics. With books such as Reading Television (coauthored with John Hartley), Fiske became established as one of the most influential media scholars of the late 20th century.

Fiske received his B.A. and M.A. from Cambridge University in England. After teaching communications and cultural studies in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, he retired as professor emeritus of communication arts from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 2000. In addition to having written numerous book chapters and journal articles, Fiske is the author of both his own books and coauthored works with Graeme Turner, John Hartley, and Bob Hodge. He was the founding editor of the journal Cultural Studies in 1987, and he served as the editor of the book series Studies in Communication and Culture.

Situated in an interpretive paradigm, Fiske's works exemplify the interdisciplinary critical analysis of popular culture that deconstructs latent meanings and the social construction of culture and consumers. A source of inspiration to practitioners of the emerging discipline of cultural studies, Fiske's work critiques power structures in media representations of gender, race, and class that influence collective understandings of reality.

Fiske's critiques of popular culture specifically focus on the characteristics of Western, patriarchal, capitalist societies. He illustrates the ways in which popular culture is not simple entertainment but is integral to power relations. His work views popular [Page 120]culture as a constant struggle between dominant and subordinate forces, and agency and resistance. Fiske's analysis of English-language popular culture is an extension of the work of European theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Roland Barthes, Stuart Hall, Mikhail Bakhtin, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault. Fiske turns the lens of European analysis on cultural artifacts that circulate in the United States and Australia.

In the book Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S. Politics, Fiske advances the argument that there can be no distinction between “real” events outside media. Rather, media events such as the O. J. Simpson trial defy traditional binaries between news and entertainment, highbrow and lowbrow culture, or public and private realms. Instead, they exist across the media sphere and are constructed through and by media and consumers as they travel through culture. Fiske investigates the ways in which low-tech communications are used by marginalized peoples to negotiate and counter mainstream, dominant messages.