by Kevin Walker
University of California, Berkeley
1992

* Headline in the Weekly World News, April 17, 1990

The tabloid press is wildly popular in the U.S. The National Enquirer, oldest and largest of the six national tabloids, has a higher circulation than any newspaper in the country. It is the second-largest weekly periodical after TV Guide, and one of the ten most profitable items in supermarkets. For better or worse, tabloids are truly a part of American culture, a "unique information hybrid".1

Tabloids have obvious differences from the so-called mainstream press; but there are important similarities. Not least is a common history: the first widely popular and inexpensive newspapers in this country were the sensational papers of Hearst and Pulitzer, (yet ironically the namesake prize of the latter is never awarded to a tabloid). The Enquirer is a member of the American Newspaper Association. Another tabloid, the Star, broke the story of an alleged extramarital affair by presidential candidate Bill Clinton -- a story that mainstream news organizations subsequently picked up, and which set the tone for much of subsequent coverage of the campaign. The tabloids are perhaps a better subject for study than mainstream papers, since they openly embrace the characteristics that other papers are often assumed to be moving toward, and which critics are constantly trying to expose -- sensationalism, the influence of television, a focus on celebrities, etc.

Yet for all their appeal, the tabloids have been largely overlooked by researchers. The few studies done on the tabloids have focused on specialized topics, such as the coverage of science,2 or on specific issues.3 Few researchers have tried to link the tabloids to their societal context, or studied the effects they might have on readers. This paper provides a broad conceptual model for studying tabloid newspapers as they relate to society and to their audiences. I will present some theoretical and methodological suggestions for discerning whether a certain ideology is reproduced in the tabloids, and whether this might have any effect on readers. This paper will also serve as a review of much of the research done on the tabloids, since there has been so little.

Theoretical Assumptions

I will use concepts and methods from an eclectic mix of sources: British cultural studies, the French structural linguists and deconstruction theorists, and the technology-driven theories of Marshall McLuhan and his successors. A common assumption of all of these schools of thought is that there is no objective, empirical truth: each individual constructs reality through language or other cultural meaning systems. But while the audiences are viewed as active, the "texts" they read may delimit the range of possible interpretations, though not necessarily determine them. Stuart Hall's categorization of "dominant", "negotiated" and "oppositional" readings is useful in this regard. Critics have charged that this type of theoretical approach is too subjective and abstract, that it tries to extract too much from what are merely light and trivial sources of information and entertainment (such as the tabloids). Critical theorists might counter by charging the critics with defensive criticism with which to protect the "dominant ideology". I believe the work of critical theorists and other liberal-minded scholars should be regarded as providing another view, an "oppositional reading" of a particular cultural phenomenon. I support Todd Gitlin's call for a "cubist sociology" which seeks to recognize as many disparate views as possible.

There are three levels of analysis in the model I propose: that of the culture or "dominant ideology"; that of the medium or the "text"; and that of the audience. At all three levels there are considerations of infrastructure (including economic and technical considerations, or "hardware," to use computer jargon); of content ("software") and the values within it; and of the audience, ("users") and their own value systems. All three of these are linked at every level of analysis, and should, ideally, be studied along with a fourth element: change over time.

The Dominant Ideology

Discerning a single "dominant ideology" which underlies much of popular culture is a subjective and inherently political process. The perpetuation of such an ideology is often assumed by Marx-inspired critical theorists to be part of a conspiracy by a few elites to dominate the lower classes. While this may be the perceived effect, I do not believe that governmental, business and media executives actively conspire in such a way. The prevailing values that are reproduced in media content and other cultural products have more complex roots -- in the technological and economic organization of the media; in the cultural values which preceded certain media and reside outside of them; in the audiences as well as the elite, and everyone in between. The resulting ideology is the unintended result of collective, mostly subconscious values: it what Adam Ferguson called "the result of human action but not the execution of any human design".4

What then, is this dominant ideology? Critical theorists try to construct it from the values that penetrate a variety of cultural products and which endure over time. In short, it is an ideology of patriarchal capitalism. It is pervaded by overlapping sub-ideologies of masculinity, materialism, individualism and the middle class, as John Fiske describes.5 Herbert Gans' concept of "enduring values" is useful here. These include ethnocentrism, "altruistic democracy", "responsible capitalism", "small-town pastoralism", individualism, and moderatism.6 In his study of the mainstream press, Gans' methodology -- combining an ethnography of journalists and a content analysis -- is excellent. But for my purposes, it shall be reversed: since Gans has discerned those values from news content, I will use those derived values, along with the ones Fiske describes, as a starting point, and try to see if they prevail in the tabloids. There should be flexibility to alter and add or drop the values, as the analysis proceeds. As Hall stressed, the dominant ideology, or the values within it, are probably not inevitably, invisibly embedded into audiences. These considerations will be covered more in depth in the discussions about the text and the audience. Methodologically, Gans and others have already done much of our work at this level. Having described some testable values and the ideology under study, we now need to measure whether these reside in the tabloids.

Mass Culture

First, we should distinguish between the dominant ideology in general and the phenomenon of mass culture in particular. Dwight MacDonald's work is useful here.7 He groups cultural products into "Masscult", "Midcult" and "High Culture." (The first two are shortened to drive home the point that they are corruptions of the superior High Culture). Tabloids, of course, rest squarely in the "Masscult" category. Masscult, he says, is not simply a popular form of high culture, but more of a parody of it. He differentiates it from folk art: whereas folk art (such as jazz or regional crafts) was walled off from High Culture and often a reaction against it, Masscult is seen as a debased form of High Culture that is created by elites for the masses; one comes from below, the other from above. ("Midcult" is deemed to be a superior form of Masscult or a corruption of High Culture.) Emphasizing personality, MacDonald says, is one way Masscult bridges the distance between people, and this is apparent in the tabloids, as we will see.

John Tomlinson adds that the media are the main means of "massifying" people, through the "selective construction of social knowledge".8 Herbert Marcuse goes further to suggest that the media produce "euphoria in unhappiness" among the masses by creating "false needs" over which individuals have no control, because they lack autonomy to make real choices.9 But this argument not only assumes that the audience is passive, it is also somewhat elitist, assuming that only intellectuals can discern or dictate what "real needs" are. All of the above theories also tend to lump audiences together as homogeneous "masses" instead of individuals who actively form subjective meanings. But each contains useful elements: MacDonald refers more to cultural products than to audience when he speaks of Masscult, and though his model is hierarchical, vague, and perhaps dated, his categories serve our purposes; at the very least, they show how the boundaries betwen the three categories have become fuzzy in the digital, postmodern era. Tomlinson emphasizes the importance of selection of content in the formation of an ideology. And Marcuse shows that perhaps individuals are not so "free" in their choices -- that the dominant ideology can place limits on individual autonomy.

The Medium -- Technological Considerations

The mass media are both a function of, and an agent of change in, the type of society they are in. The rise of electronic media has brought about a "decline in print-supported notions of delegated authority, nationalism, and linear thinking," according to Joshua Meyrowitz, extending the work of McLuhan and Harold Innis.10 In addition, as new media develop, there is a synergistic "dialogue of forms" in which the new medium changes existing ones.11 This is apparent in the adoption by the tabloids of television conventions such as the unstructured presentation of a mishmash of disparate information; and conversely, the adoption by television of the tabloid style in sensational news programs. The tabloids' function as a source of gossip and publicity make them, along with TV, an effective means of enforcing social and moral norms, as we will see.

Mark Poster takes the ideas of McLuhan and Innis even further. He says that new media "refigure the subject's relation to the world" by changing the configuration or "wrapping" of language. Drawing from Marx, he conceives of "modes of information" which shape our experience. Information has become a priviledged term, Poster says, and the "informed" individual is a new social ideal. So tabloids should not be regarded as strictly "print media", but observed from "the situation of the present," that is, the electronic/digital mode of information.12

How does this mode of information affect us as users of media? Meyrowitz says that media such as the tabloids expose "backstage behavior," breaking down walls of privacy to create a new type of "middle range behavior". Jean Baudrillard goes further, and perceives a "hyperreality" in which "the medium and the real are now in a single nebulous state whose truth is undecipherable". He sees the media not as "means" but more as a direct part of cultural experience, which in turn affect that experience. In his view, individuals use their real experiences and their mass-mediated ones to define each other, and the result is a dissolution of the barrier between them. He also -- and this relates directly to the tabloids -- speaks of the new "obscenity" of images: "the most intimate processes of our life become the virtual feeding ground of the media," and this "explodes the scene formerly preserved by the minimal separation of public and private". This extreme visibility of all phenomena, he says, alters our sense of cultural boundaries, but can also make all experience seem "flat", robbing events of their significance.13 In this sense the evolution of the media continues the process Alexis de Toqueville called the "mingling of public and private life".14

At the technological level of analysis, Gans' ethnography of journalists is one methodological option. My own experience working in radio and TV has shown me that media personnel will tend to use their technology to the fullest, often before the implications are known. Competition continually lowers the threshold of acceptability; indeed, we never cease to be amazed at what television brings us. A thorough ethnography of a tabloid newsroom would be fascinating.15 Meyrowitz, Poster and Baudrillard provide hypotheses to be tested at the level of technology. Might the tabloids discourage "linear thinking" and cause individuals to lose a "sense of place"? Might they help to turn people into voyeurs and exhibitionists, or sensitize them to previously outrageous events? These assumptions need to be tested at the levels of the text and the audience, to which I now turn.

The Tabloids as Text

The commercial media are not only part of the communication process, they are part of the institutional capitalist structure in the U.S., and they are among the most profitable enterprises. The parent company of the Enquirer and Weekly World News had revenues of $160 million in 1987.16 I will use examples from a random sample of four issues of the Enquirer. The Enquirer has a particularly interesting history: Its founder, Generoso Pope, Jr., worked for the CIA's Psychological Warfare Unit before originating the tabloid genre in the U.S. in the 1950s.17

The tabloids qualify as what Althusser calls "Ideological State Apparatuses," capitalist institutions that are autonomous yet linked through "an unspoken web of ideological interconnections".18 They are particularly linked, by their content, to entertainment television and the movies, and the meanings readers get from them are read back into those media. It seems certain that they would herald the ideology of patriarchal capitalism in their pages. A methodology for analyzing the values should employ semiotic and structuralist textual analysis, linking "signifiers" -- words, pictures, themes, icons, etc. -- with the values they signify. This method "recognizes that the signifieds exist not in the text itself, but extratextually, in the myths, counter-myths, and ideology of their culture".19 In this transfer of signs from one object to another, closure is assumed to occur in the reader's head, usually subconsciously.

This brings up the chain of interpretation or translation that is involved in reading a tabloid. A tabloid journalist interprets/translates information for the reader that has been obtained from a celebrity, say, or from another source who told the reporter what a star said or did. The story is made to fit the strictures of the medium. Layout editors aid in this. Readers interpret it once more, forming a subjective meaning. There may be an additional step, if a reader relates the story in conversation to another person, or reproduces it in writing or behavior. The reader also may use the information about the star when seeing her or him on television or in a film. In this sense, the information makes a circular route back to the celebrity, having been altered with every new interpretation. This is particularly true if a large number of people hear the same story and it affects the celebrity's popularity, that prized quality that makes a star a star.

A researcher, too, makes an interpretation of a text, but in a different way. Just as the journalist translates the story into terms understandable to readers, the researcher translates the text into the abstract jargon of academia, adding his or her own interpretations just as a journalist or reader does. But the academic sits in a "priviledged position" by virtue of his or her training and societal standing. As Michel Foucault says, an academic text "re-presents" a discourse in a certain way, using an explicit or implicit "master discourse" as a source of power and authority.20 In the passing of information from one individual to another, it helps if the sender and receiver both share a common "referent system" of assumptions, definitions, and perhaps, values.

Most discourse is constituted in language. This is what the French deconstructionists have concentrated on in their structural analyses: Derrida says that language is a mere copy of mental reality21, and Foucault says it reveals "secret movements of understanding".22 The language of the tabloids is often printed in bold type, and contains a great deal of hyperbole, pathos and strong opinion. A cursory glance through the Enquirer, for example, reveals many patriarchal words, such as descriptions of women as "curvy" or "leggy". Terms like "love child" imply a disdain for out-of-wedlock births. And the consistent use of "whopping" to describe sums of money reveals not only a glorification of materialism, but a reflection that readers are assumed to have relatively low incomes. Opinionated terms like these leave little room for divergent readings.

Mark Allen Peterson suggests that tabloid language intentionally exaggerates that of the mainstream press. In this way, he says, it parodies their rhetorical strategy of "objectivism". The mainstream press, by focusing on true "mainstream" issues, on events or people that threaten the social and moral order; and by relegating marginal stories to other sections of the paper or omitting them altogether, frame what is ordinary and taken-for-granted in America. Conversely, the tabloids, Peterson notes, "specialize in tales of the marginal". The individuals and events that stand outside the cultural mainstream, are the "mainstream" of the tabloids. "If regular news is a frame," he says, "then tabloid news is a frame of a frame: the 'figure' of the mainstream news becomes the 'ground' for the tabloid press." Instead of defining a "center," the tabloids define what it is not.23

Enduring Values in the Enquirer

Let us take a closer look at the ideological content of the Enquirer. First it is important to note that the paper's content was once more gory and racy than it now is. Until the late 1970s, the paper was mainly sold at newsstands to a mostly male audience, and the content reflected this, with sexually suggestive photos and stories of bizarre and often bloody happenings. As street-corner newsstands declined in America, the Enquirer moved into supermarkets, and shifted its content to appease both women readers and supermarket managers wary about having a controversial product on display. The bloodiness was toned down, and more consumer-interest and good-news stories were added. The Weekly World News, the Enquirer's sister publication, has taken over the latter's role as purveyor of the outrageous and bizarre. The Star, by contrast, tends to focus on upbeat articles on celebrities and self-help advice. This triadic structure is repeated in the National Examiner, Sun and Globe, all owned by Globe International.24

"Who speaks" in Enquirer stories is not always clear. Sometimes, as in stories of individual heroism, a named person is quoted, or even credited with writing the story. In stories about celebrities, most often it is unnamed sources who tell the story, such as "a friend of ___", or "a source close to ___". This is a convention used by the mainstream press as well, though far less often. But the veil of "objectivity" common in mainstream news media is very much evident in the Enquirer. Reporters' language is often opinionated and emotion-laden, but claims about celebrities are often attributed only to other sources. The illusion of a detatched observer still holds.

Levin, Mody-Desbareau and Arluke came up with some interesting findings in their content analysis of four tabloids. They found that the celebrities depicted in them are overwhelmingly young and white, with males slightly outnumbering females. This overrepresentation, they say, conforms to the tendency of all commercial media to focus on groups which hold power. They also found that 73 percent of articles were positive in tone, though we have seen that individual papers differ. They conclude:

Levin et al are provide a rare systematic content analysis of tabloids. But their analytical strategy is a bit too narrow for our purposes, since they look only at "targets of gossip". In addition, they do not elaborate on the "prevailing norms and values" they discuss. We need to expand our analysis in order to try and detect the dominant ideology of patriarchal capitalism in the text.

Gans' "enduring values" are a good starting point. Another useful concept is the one Daniel Hallin developed for analyzing coverage of the Vietnam War.26 He describes a "Sphere of Consensus" in which news stories fall squarely within accepted norms, (in his case, governmental attitudes, but for our purposes the Sphere of Consensus may be broadened to include the "dominant ideology" previously described). The "Sphere of Legitimate Controversy" is where argument and challenge occur in articles, but still within the dominant ideology. Here, some of Gans's enduring values might be challenged, such as individualism or small-town pastoralism; but the core values such as "altruistic democracy" and "responsible capitalism" are untouchable. The "Sphere of Deviance" is where the line is drawn -- outside of it are stories that challenge the very foundations of patriarchal capitalism. While the mainstream press hovers between Consensus and Legitimate Controversy, the tabloids dwell mostly in Legitimate Controversy, never in the Sphere of Deviance. The Enquirer may decry the slow pace of government or the wastefulness of companies, but it never challenges the authority of the president or the corporate system.

The notion of authority in the Enquirer means harsh justice for criminals and ridicule of government waste. E.J. Whetmore writes that in the Enquirer, "government officials (the Enquirer calls them 'burro-cats') are crooks living off the sweat of the working people, while the courts set criminals free to roam the streets and prey on their unsuspecting victims, who are often Enquirer readers."27 My brief analysis revealed similar themes, as these headlines show: "Outrageous! Bureaucrats free this sex monster -- and he brutally rapes again"; "Slimy bureaucrats waste your tax $$ on earthworm study". But I also found an article written by "America's 'hanging judge'" entitled, "Make a wrong move and I'll throw you in jail". This gives a negative picture of bureaucrats and "university eggheads," but firm respect for authority. But note that these stories, while polemical, don't challenge the enduring values -- they are well within the Sphere of Legitimate Controversy.

Related to stories about justice are ones that raise alarm. For instance, "Beware! Rock music videos can wreck girls lives"; "Warning! The pill can ruin your sex life". These show conservative "family" values, and are all based on preliminary studies that were correlational, not causal. But there are also articles saying, for instance, that TV can be good for children, or that sexual fantasy is healthy. This combination of warning articles and "good news" appears to send a conflicting message, but still serve to define a cultural center. And looking closely, a reader might conclude that television is good, but music videos are bad; that fantasy is O.K., but birth control is not. Gans' values of small-town pastoralism (a yearning for a purer past) and moderatism are upheld.

On religious themes, the Enquirer never strays from the Sphere of Consensus. In four issues, I found two articles written by the Rev. Billy Graham, (a close ally, incidentally, of the president). They were entitled, "The power of prayer -- and how to make it work for you" and "What heaven is really like". There was another by the Rev. Robert Schuller. On the other side, there is an article entitled, "'Addams Family' star obsessed with a cult leader accused of beatings and sexual abuse". The "cult leader" is Werner Erhard, founder of the "fanatical" est organization. A photo (from the film) shows the star, Raul Julia, in a red robe, holding four large knives. The "preferred reading" of these articles is that Christianity is the only true religion; all others are "cults".

Gossip, which takes up most of the Enquirer's pages, also tends to define what is unacceptable. I call this "moral gossip". For instance, Burt Reynolds is berated for yelling at his daughter on a set; as is Brooke Shields' mother, who chastised her daughter for gaining weight. Much of the gossip, in fact, concerns image, since this is such an integral part of being a celebrity. Close tabs are kept on celebrities' weights, what they wear in public, and with whom they are seen. The importance of image is also extended to readers, with self-help articles such as, "Safe new treatment gets rid of facial and body hair".

Closely related to this is the value of materialism. Dollar figures abound in the gossip pages, and rich stars are often called "penny pinchers". An article about "thrifty New Englanders" who come up with innovative ways of saving money casts them as some strange breed. Consumption is the message here: the more money you've got, the more you should spend. Class is an underlying theme throughout the entire paper, in stories about overpaid executives, on government waste of "your tax $$", and in stories of how rich celebrities are "just like us" despite their wealth. But class, or other social groups, are rarely discussed as a whole. The focus is always on individuals. Gans separates individuals in the news into "knowns" and "unknowns". The "knowns" in the Enquirer are, of course, celebrities, and the focus is on their trivial domestic matters: on how, despite their wealth and fame, they have flaws. "Unknowns" are overwhelmingly heroes of some sort. And they are mostly men. Women tend to be housewives who have some strange tale to tell; or celebrities, or their wives (or "gal pals"). A story on entrepreneur Lillian Vernon is entitled, "Pregnant housewife starts tiny business on kitchen table -- and builds $160 million empire".

Sex still abounds in the Enquirer. Levin et al found that 44 percent of gossip about celebrities was about sex and romance, while 25 percent related to their jobs.28 The shift to a more female audience is shown, for instance, in a report of a poll of women showing that 70 percent want more sex than they are getting. Yet there remains a weekly photo of an up-and-coming starlet, scantily clad, of course. There is a photo-laden article on the battle of swimsuit calendars. Voyeurism and fantasy are accepted, but anything other than monogamous heterosexuality is deemed deviant. There are stories on a bride who used to be a man; on a dance-show host's charge that Merv Griffin "ripped off my clothes for gay sex"; on "Elvis' secret gay life". A strange twist appears in a story on country singer Randy Travis. It says that the Enquirer and other papers received an anonymous letter saying he was gay. But instead of running the story as is, the paper turned it around and allowed Travis to respond (he denied it), then ran a story denouncing the "creep" that started the rumor.

Racially, the Enquirer is predominantly white, not just due to the demography of celebrities, but in its stories of "unknowns" as well. In the three stories of "unknowns" containing blacks in my four-week sample, one was on poor kids taking up chess; another was on a bride whose dress was made entirely of human hair; the third was about the killer who was set free only to rape again. This low incidence of people of color probably does not reflect the paper's readership; it certainly doesn't reflect people who shop in supermarkets. Gans' value of ethnocentrism receives another boost in the following story: "Honest Injun! High-tech computer whiz lives in primitive teepee".

How does the Enquirer know who its readers are, anyway? The paper says it does no reader research, relying on trial and error, and on the letters it receives (which number over a million a year). It solicits responses with contests like "photo of the week" or "$10 for happy thoughts". Elizabeth Bird, in her study of how tabloids treated John F. Kennedy, found that the tabloids simply "pick up readers' (and others') existing ideas and beliefs, restating them in narrative form, performing much the same function as the teller of an urban legend".29 To fully explore the ideological effects tabloids have on their readers, we need to look at the readers themselves.

The Audience

A text's content is not as important as its relationship with the audience. Textual analysis tries to penetrate superficial meanings to try to discern underlying values. But this process is subjective -- it results in one hypothesis out of many. Each reader forms his or her own meanings based on experience, and social and historical surroundings. In Ien Ang's study of the popularity of the TV program Dallas, her reading varied greatly from some of the other readers she contacted; even Ang herself had more than one reading of the program. Many of her respondents also had such conflicting feelings: they often recognized the capitalist ideology of the program, but buried their feelings or felt guilty at watching.30 This relates to the broader contradiction of the public regularly condemning the press's intrusion into private lives, while eagerly devouring the tabloids and their TV counterparts. Just what makes a cultural product such as the National Enquirer so popular?

First we need to know something about Enquirer's audience. Is it predominantly lower class, or everyone that goes to supermarkets, or perhaps merely "inquiring minds," as the paper's TV commercials said? What little research has been done has shown that the readers are not a homogeneous group. Deborah MacDonald's 1984 doctoral dissertation depicts an average reader that is a female with a high school-level education who watches about two hours of TV a day and makes less than $10,000 a year.31 Alison Head, in a more recent dissertation, conlcuded that tabloid readers are "information poor" -- they have high information-seeking behavior but low information-seeking skills. The poor in general, she says, don't seek information that can help them because they don't realize that many of their problems are solvable by using helpful information.32

In our capitalist economy, a visitor to the supermarket (an interesting social phenomenon in itself) can pick up an issue of the Enquirer, or walk a few yards and get a mainstream paper, or any number of other publications, for that matter. Why do so many choose the Enquirer, and what effect might it have on their lives, individually and collectively, and over time? Having formulated a theory and method for uncovering the ideological values in the paper, we now need to turn to whether, and how, readers incorporate those ideological messages with their own ideologies.

A text such as the Enquirer

But is mere popularity a sign of ideological power? This is the Marxist view promoted by the Frankfurt School. It assumes that readers unknowingly adopt the "false consciousness" that resides in the repeated themes I have just discussed. A more active conception of the audience is necessary.

One analytical possibility is to explore the functional aspects of reading the tabloids. The function of gossip in general is important in this regard. The anthropologist Max Gluckman has shown how, in small societies, gossip is connected to the maintenance of unity in a group, and serves to define a group's moral standards. Knowing certain gossip gives one a sense of belonging. Gossip has certain rules; it regulates behavior; and it maintains an equality of sorts, in that everyone is subject to the same standards. This is compatible with the ethos of democracy.34

Levin et al see the tabloid as an agent of social control through its use of gossip. They conclude that tabloids "may play at least a part of the role formerly performed by neighbors and kin in small-scale societies."35 The tabloids also, they say, impart an important positive message: "Overall, they strongly suggest that happiness may be just around the corner, if not already present.... Miracles can and do happen to [ordinary people]. Everyday life is worthwhile and exciting, even for the 'little' people of the world. And the world of celerities is not so great after all."36

Other functions tabloids might serve could include providing pleasure, leisure or escapism, or informing people. More broadly, it could be said that tabloids provide a type of learning about cultural norms. But the functionalist perspective assumes that these needs are automatically met by use. It also ignores the ideological aspect we have discussed: Do readers absorb the values implicit in the tabloids? Even Head's focus on "information-seeking behavior" avoids these issues.

I have said that readers form subjective meanings. In the case of tabloids, readings can be "serious" or "parodic". The latter reader would not take the content seriously, viewing the tabloid from a more "postmodern" stance. Also, as with Dallas, there are readers who claim to hate tabloids but cannot help reading them. In any case, readers must actively choose to read tabloids, more so than with TV since the tabloid must be bought, (though it can be read in a checkout line).

What pleasure comes from reading a tabloid? Bourdieu suggests that popular pleasure involves immediate involvement with the text: a reader identifies with it personally in some way. In the tabloids, readers may identify with ordinary people like them, who have had some extraordinary experience; or with celebrities, who, in their domestic and romantic exploits, are made to seem ordinary. While the ordinary people may show that life is worth living because miracles happen all the time, as Levin et al conclude, the fascination with celebrities is more intriguing. Writing in the early 1960s, Daniel Boorstin described celebrities as "ourselves in a magnifying mirror." They are famous simply for their fame, and it is commonplaces, not exploits, he says, that make celebrities.37 Adding Gluckman's interpretations, we may say that the gossip about celebrities makes readers feel like part of their "in-group," or in Poster's view, like "informed individuals".

The pleasure from reading any text comes from the interaction of the reader and the text, situated in social and historic context. This relates back to the dominant ideology: we have come full circle. Theorists of the Frankfurt School claim that this pleasure is false, a form of manipulation of the masses in the name of exploitation and/or oppression. But Ang notes that such theorists have stubbornly refused to study pleasure at all. What many critical theorists need to do, in my opinion, is practice a form of self-critique, examining their own assumptions instead of justifying them with political diatribes. A constant critique can lead to a rejection of everything, and Gitlin's suggestion to look at a phenomenon from many perspectives is worth heeding.

A careful ethnographic study of tabloid audience readings should be done in the place where reading normally takes place. It should consider secondary readership, and how people relate the stories they have read to others. It should also measure stories that are actually "read": I suspect that not many tabloid readers get far beyond the headlines and photos. This data should be correlated with surveys measuring readers' identification with celebrities and their responses to certain issues. These should be combined with detailed demographic research. Focus groups are also a good option, provided that open-ended questions are used, since they minimize the influence of the researcher; that is, until it comes time for interpretation. Interpreting responses in such research is not easy, requiring a type of psychoanalysis in which the researcher must simultaneously read surface meanings and detect what Foucault calls "arch¾ological" meanings -- the signifieds behind the signifiers. Finally, this data should be compared to the content analysis to see how the values in the text and in the audience match up. Obviously, the same analytical assumptions should underlie both aspects of the research. Ideally, the study should be diachronic, to measure not only what the respective values of the text and audience are, but how they change over time.

The strategy I have outlined is broad and somewhat complex. But I hope it could serve as a framework for what is clearly a rich source of cultural information. I suspect that the findings of such a study might confirm the conclusion reached by both Bird and Whetmore, that tabloids reaffirm readers' values. But we have seen that readers, in turn, affect the content, as do other external factors, not least of which is a paper's market share. Tabloids also appear to define moral and social boundaries, but differently than the mainstream press, as Peterson states. They serve as vessels of voyeurism and exhibitionism, and act as socialization agents in our electronically-mediated "mode of information," helping people identify with and understand the faces they see on the ubiquitous TV screens. As I write this, an amateur video [of Rodney King] that has been broadcast around the world repeatedly is causing direct and powerful effects, mostly in poor communities in America. This only underscores the need to understand the mass-mediated "hyperreality" in which we live, to determine if the "dominant ideology" we share is keeping us together or tearing us apart.

References

1. Head, Alison. "A Survey of Supermarket Tabloid Readership," p.4. Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley School of Library and Information Studies, 1990.

2. Hinkle, G. and Elliott, W.R. "Science Coverage in 3 Newspapers and 3 Tabloids," Journalism Quarterly 66: 353-358 (1989); Mazur, A. "Biomedical Science in Supermarket Tabloids," Knowledge in Society, v.2, n.3 (Fall 1989); Peterson (op. cit.)

3. Bird, S. Elizabeth "Media and Folklore as Intertextual Communications Processes: John F. Kennedy and the Supermarket Tabloids," Communications Yearbook 10: 758-772. (New York: Sage Publishers, 1987)

4. Ferguson, Adam. An Essay on the History of Civil Society, p.187. (London, 1767). For an extended discussion, see Hayek, Friedrich. Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, chapter 6. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967)

5. Fiske, John. "British Cultural Studies and Television," p.261. Allen, Robert, ed. Channels of Discourse, pp.254-288. (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 1987)

6. Gans, Herbert. Deciding What's News, pp.41-52. (N.Y: Random House, 1979). See also Gans's Popular Culture and High Culture (N.Y.: Basic Books, 1974)

7. MacDonald, Dwight. "Masscult & Midcult," Against the American Grain.

8. Tomlinson, John. Cultural Imperialism, p.60. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1991)

9. Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man, pp.19-20. (London: Abacus, 1972)

10. Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place, p.18. (N.Y.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986)

11. Leiss, William, Stephen Kline and Sut Jhally. Social Communication in Advertising, p.96. (N.Y.: Routledge, 1990)

12. Poster, Mark. The Mode of Information. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990)

13. Baudrillard, Jean. "The Ecstasy of Communication," Postmodern Culture, H. Foster, ed. (London: Pluto Press, 1985). See also Kellner, D. Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989). The present discussion is taken mostly from Tomlinson, 1991 p.59-60.

14. de Toqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, p.237.

15. To my knowledge, only one such study was done, and it was very unscientific. See Corkery, P.J. "Exclusive: Inside the National Enquirer," Rolling Stone, June 11, 1981, pp.18-21.

16. Head, 1990, p.4.

17. Head, 1990, p.2.

18. Fiske, 1987, p.272.

19. Ibid.

20. See Tomlinson, 1991, pp.9-11.

21. See Poster, p.102.

22. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Arch¾ology of the Human Sciences, p.28. tr. Alan Sheridan-Smith. (N.Y.: Random House, 1970)

23. Peterson, Mark Allen. "Aliens, ape men and whacky savages: The anthropologist in the tabloids," p.4. Anthropology Today, v.7, n.5 (October, 1991)

24. Ibid., pp.4-5.

25. Levin, Jack, Amita Mody-Desbareau and Arnold Arluke. "The Gossip Tabloid as Agent of Social Control," Journalism Quarterly, v.65, n.2 (1988), pp.514-517.

26. Hallin, Daniel. The "Uncensored War": The Media and Vietnam, p. 131. (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1986)

27. Whetmore, E.J. Mediamerica: Form, Content, and Consequences of Mass Communication, 1st ed. pp.61-62. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1982)

28. Levin et al, 1988, p.516.

29. Bird, 1987, p.766.

30. Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. tr. Della Couling (N.Y.: Methuen, 1985)

31. MacDonald, Deborah. "The Derived Image of the Supermarket Tabloid." Ohio State Univ. PhD Dissertation. Ann Arbor, MN: Univ. Microfilms Int'l, 1984. See also Lehnert, Eileen and Mary Perpich. "An Attitude Segmentation Study of Supermarket Tabloid Readers," Journalism Quarterly, v.59, n.1 (1982), pp.104-111.

32. Head, 1990, p.4.

33. Fiske, 1987, p.285.

34. Gluckman, Max. "Gossip and Scandal," Current Anthropology, v.4, n.3 (June 1963).

35. Levin et al, 1988, p.514.

36. Ibid, p.517.

37. Boorstin, Daniel J. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, p.61. (N.Y.: Athenium, 1961)