Semiotic democracy is a phrase first coined by
John Fiske, a
media studies
Media studies is a discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history, and effects of various media; in particular, the mass media. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but it mos ...
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...
, in his seminal media studies book ''Television Culture'' (1987).
[John Fiske, ''Television Culture'' (Routledge, 1987).] Fiske defined the term as the "delegation of the production of meanings and pleasures to
elevision'sviewers."
Fiske discussed how rather than being passive couch potatoes that absorbed information in an unmediated way, viewers actually gave their own meanings to the shows they watched that often differed substantially from the meaning intended by the show's producer.
Subsequently, this term was appropriated by the technical and legal community in the context of any re-working of
cultural imagery by someone who is not the original author. Examples include
fan fiction
Fan fiction or fanfiction, also known as fan fic, fanfic, fic or FF, is fiction typically written in an amateur capacity by fans as a form of fan labor, unauthorized by, but based on, an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted ...
and
slash fiction
Slash fiction (also known as "m/m slash" or slashfic) is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on Romance (love), romantic or sexual attraction, sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex.Bacon-Smith, Camille. "Spock Among ...
.
Legal scholars are concerned that just as technology eases the process of cheaply making and distributing derivative works imbued with new cultural meanings available to wide public,
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...
and
right-to-publicity law is clamping down on and limiting these works, thus reducing their promulgation, and limiting semiotic democracy.
Prof.
Terry Fisher of
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...
has written about semiotic democracy in the context of the crisis facing the entertainment industry and in terms of the ability of people to use the Internet in creative new ways.
[William W Fisher, ''Promises to Keep: Technology, Law and the Future of Entertainment'' (Stanford University Press, 2004).]
See also
*
Détournement
A détournement (), meaning "rerouting, hijacking" in French, is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International, and later adapted by the Situationist International (SI),'' Report on the Construction of Situations'' (1957) t ...
*''
Textual Poachers''
*
Reader-response criticism
Reader-response criticism is a School of thought, school of literary theory that focuses on Reading (process), the reader (or "audience") and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primar ...
*
Reception theory
Reception theory is a version of Reader-response criticism, reader response literary theory that emphasizes each particular reader's reception or interpretation in making meaning from a literary text. Reception theory is generally referred to as a ...
*
Encoding/decoding model of communication
References
Further reading
*
Sonia KatyalSemiotic Disobedience 84 Washington U. L. Rev. (2006)
Media studies
{{media-studies-stub