Media Frictions

List of Contributors

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Media Frictions

Annette Hill, Joke Hermes, Christine Geraghty and Simon Dawes

Part One: Frictions within media, communications and culture

Chapter One: De-Provincialising Media and Communications: Frictions in the New World Disorder

David Morley

Chapter Two: The Friction of the Social: Ambiguities in networked connections

Susanna Paasonen

Chapter Three: Silicon Valley and the Politics of Friction

Jakko Kemper

Chapter Four: Befriending friction. On how to build data literacy in times of generative AI

Joke Hermes

Part Two: Frictions within social and cultural environments

Chapter Five: Repulsive Media

Dylan Mulvin

Chapter Six: The frictions of concepts and actual actions: divide, escapism and roofless people's media use

Maren Hartmann

Chapter Seven: Performing access: the friction of finding yourself outside of gender

Lidia Pedro Sole

Chapter Eight: Juxtaposed frictions in an urban environment: a visual essay

Zaki Habibi

Part Three: Friction within audience engagement and genres

Chapter Nine: Authenticity Frictions: audience engagement with factuality and reality in streaming platforms

Annette Hill

Chapter Ten: The frictions of news engagement as political practice in the pro-Palestinian movement

Jian Chung Lee

Chapter Eleven: Friction in Television Drama: the case of Coronation Street (UK, Granada, 1960)

Christine Geraghty

Chapter Twelve: Once upon a Time: documentary stories about frictional pasts.

Ann Gray

Index

Biography

Annette Hill is Professor in Media and Communication, Jönköping University, Sweden. With 25 years’ experience of audience research, in over 100 publications, her work addresses transnational audiences for factual and fictional genres, live events, tourism and theatre, using multi methods and analytic dialogue with industry and citizen stakeholders. She is author of, most recently, The Companion to Media Audiences (with Peter Lunt, 2024) and Media Imaginaries (with Joke Hermes and Simon Dawes, 2026)

Simon Dawes is a Senior Lecturer at L’Institut D’ Études Culturelles Et Internationales (IECI) – and member of the research team, Centre D’histoire Culturelle Des Sociétés Contemporaines (CHCSC) – at l’Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) in France. He is the founding editor of the open access journal, Media Theory, the editor-in-chief of French Cultural Studies, and co-editor of the Media & Communication Studies Section of the Open Library of Humanities. He is the author of British Broadcasting and the Public-Private Dichotomy (2017), co-editor of Neoliberalism in Context (2019), and editor-in-chief of the journals Media Theory and French Cultural Studies.

Christine Geraghty is Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Glasgow and Honorary Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. She is the author of Now a Major Motion Picture (2008), My Beautiful Laundrette (2004) and British Cinema in the Fifties (2000). She sits on the board of Screen and is Book Reviews editor for Critical Studies in Television. 

Joke Hermes is Professor in Inclusion and Creative Industries, Inholland University of Applied Sciences and University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.. She has published widely on popular culture, audience research and feminist analysis of gender and diversity.  She holds the Erik de Vries Chair in the History of Dutch Radio and Television, and is the co-founding editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies. She is author of, most recently, Cultural Citizenship and Popular Culture (2024) and the Pocketbook of Audience Research (with Linda Kopitz, 2024).

As this important and challenging collection of essays make abundantly clear, the concept of friction is a valuable tool for thinking through a wide range of issues in the field of media and communications.  Frictions point us to what matters. The book provides insightful scholarship in making sense of the contemporary world.

Sue Turnbull, Honorary Professor, Communication and Media, University of Wollongong Australia

The idea of using the notion of ‘frictions’ as an exploratory point of reference for thinking critically about media comes off wonderfully well in this collection. The diverse implications of dynamic connection, tension, contradiction and opposition are pursued in a wide range of analytic and theoretical accounts. The book is an exercise both in disturbance and refreshment, allowing new distinctions to be drawn and new resemblances to be brought out.

John Corner, Emeritus Professor, University of Liverpool, UK