Preface

PART 1: A Theoretical Approach to the Nature of Media Scandal

How Scandal Research tends to treat the Achievement of Media Scandals

Scandal as Logic: Ideal and Sanction

Scandal as industrial Product and institutional Practice

Media scandals and what they are not

Video-truths

Comprehending Media Scandals from Media

Publicity Narrative as Precondition of Scandals

PART 2: What is Publicity, the Public Sphere?

Publicity as methodological Construct

Publicity as Simulacrum

Publicity and Meaning as Subsistence

Semiotic as Theory of formal and concrete Meaning

PART 3: Semiotic of Publicity

Publicity as Teleology

Legitimacy

Public Opinion as historical-cultural role relation

Public Opinion as Theatre

Public Opinion operates by constructing the Role of Enunciation Instance

PART 4: Publicity in Media Theory

Media functional or semiotic?

Is there a Need for a separate Semiotic Media Theory?

Signs of Society

Functions of the Three Correlates in the Media Sign

Technological Determination or Sign Process: the case of Televangelism

Godcasting: Meaning Apparatuses of Religious Self-display

PART 5: From Jubilation to Scandal

Religious Meaning outside of Public Opinion

Television Studies and Aesthetic Form

Media Construction of Religious Space and Time

The 'Call Forward'

Witnessing

PrayTV yields to PreyTV: Acts of Televangelist Authority

Primordial Scandal Religion

PART 6: Judgement: Bringing into a Scandal-Position

Scandal Technique

Investigative Journalism and Objectivity

Metatexts: Simplifying Sanctions in Public Opinion Texts

Metatext I: The Permission to Act

Metatext II: The Scale of Self-Realisation

Deduction of Classes of Scandal

Scandal of Destination

Scandal of Action

PART 7: The Course of the Scandal Pro-Gramme

Media Scandal Methods

Event: How Destination in the Shanley story created the Scandal

The role structure of the Shanley-story

Two discursive Scandal Constructions

Reality: News Practice between Reality Determination and satirical alienation

PART 8: Effect and Reality of Scandal

Scandal as Objectivity Effect

Objective Scandal Effects

Scandal as Effect

Critique of Subjectivity Approaches and Functionalism

Scandal Effect as Semiotic

Institutions as pragmatic Predetermination of Purpose

De-Legitimization of an Institution as Purpose of Media Scandals

Conclusion

Index
Bibliography

About the Author

Johannes Ehrat is a professor extraordinarius in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana.

Table of Contents

About the Author