Troubled closeness or satisfied distance? Researching media consumption and public orientation.

A key paradox at the heart of media phenomenology is that media are experienced as 'at once central and marginal to our lives', as Raymond Williams wrote. While Paddy Scannell, drawing on Heidegger, argues that broadcast media in particular invite ordi- nary people into a 'universe of discourse', Alain Touraine counters that there is no longer a public space into which to be invited. This article, through a reconsideration of Heidegger's writings on broadcast media, develops the complexities and ambiguities of nearness and distance which media produce. In particular, it draws on the qualitative and quantitative data of a recently completed UK project to explore how individuals experience and negotiate their relation (or lack thereof) to a public world and the role media play in sustaining or undermining this relation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]