Contesting media spectacle: Shanzhai Spring Festival Gala as media intervention

This collection of essays explicates the concept of “media interventions,” which are herein defined as activities and projects that secure, exercise, challenge, or acquire media power for tactical and strategic action. Drawing on insights from media, communication, and cultural studies, the contributors offer penetrating analyses of media interventions in a variety of social, political, and cultural settings from culture jamming and DIY media to public relations campaigns and reality television shows. In doing so, the volume develops an analytical framework for examining the complex and contradictory operation of media power in contemporary society. Providing a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the uneven, fluid, and heterogeneous operation of media power, this book breaks new ground in its discussion of the theory and practice of media interventions and also contributes to and stimulates the development of a productive line of inquiry into the study of media interventions.