Don't touch that dial

• The fan focuses on celebrities from Britney Spears to Tom Brokaw. Stars are by consensus already popular, so the fan chooses a conservative approach, focusing on people famous by consensus. The fan's world is emotional, visceral, tied to the fame of the celebrities. Fans are not interested in carving out lives of their own; they can live vicariously instead.

• The content critic is the mirror image of the fan. As Gitlin explains, "Where the fan works by affirmation, the content critic works by aversion." Fans gravitate toward what they admire. Content critics stay away from what they find distasteful. A white supremacist, for instance, might stay away from television programs featuring African-Americans.

• The paranoid believes that "they" are subtly programming the masses to follow as sheep. So the paranoid tries to screen out all media images thought to contribute to control.

• The exhibitionist glories in media exposure by, say, setting up a website with suggestive photographs, calling in every day to a radio talk show, or waving at every camera in view. As Gitlin says, "Commanding the attention of spectators, the exhibitionist achieves some exemption from the anonymity of the [media] torrent, some power apparently without risk."

• The ironist "surfs with ease and without commitment, amused, and amused to be amused. He or she can enjoy the spectacle on two levels at once, or alternate between them – as a faux-naïf fan (who always liked the smile of that faded star) and as a knowing insider (who knows that the faded star started touring again because she was broke)."

• The jammer wants to show that an individual can stand up to the media, can alter images and thus, in some way, redistribute power. Jammers try to interrupt business as usual, unfurling a banner with a contrary political message in the midst of a campaign rally or hacking into a bank's security system.

• The secessionist turns away, refusing to watch TV, buy a cellphone, or use e-mail.

• The abolitionist wants to rid society of mass media, asserting that the tranquilizing effect is wrecking the human spirit and introducing ennui into a democratic system of governance.

Gitlin isn't interested in ranking these approaches, though he clearly regards some as more responsible than others. What he wants is to inspire a fundamentally different assessment of the way we live.

"I propose that we stop – and imagine the whole phenomenon freshly, taking the media seriously as more than a cornucopia of wondrous gadgets or a collection of social problems, but as a central condition of an entire way of life. Perhaps if we step away and stare at the whole, we will know what we want to do about it besides change channels."

• Steve Weinberg is a freelance writer in Columbia, Mo., and serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.

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