S. Elizabeth Bird

S. Elizabeth Bird is Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. She is author of For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids and editor of Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture.

The Audience in Everyday Life argues that a media audience cannot be studied in front of the television alone--their interaction with media does not simply end when the set is turned off. Instead, we must study the daily lives of audiences to find the undercurrents of media influence in everyday life. Applying new developments in cultural anthropology and folklore to media studies, S. Elizabeth Bird offers a series of empirically based audience studies of phenomena that include media scandals, fan culture, representations of race and ethnicity, tabloid journalism, and runaway media hoaxes. Bird provides a host of useful tools and methods for scholars and students interested in the ways media is consumed in everyday life.