Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture

Clay Calvert

Basic Books, Apr 21, 2009 - Political Science - 288 pages

From 24-hour-a-day "girl cam" sites on the World Wide Web to trash-talk television shows like "Jerry Springer" and reality television programs like "Cops," we've become a world of voyeurs. We like to watch others as their intimate moments, private facts, secrets, and dirty laundry are revealed. Voyeur Nation traces the evolution and forces driving what the author calls the 'voyeurism value.' Calvert argues that although spectatorship and sensationalism are far from new phenomena, today a confluence of factors-legal, social, political, and technological-pushes voyeurism to the forefront of our image-based world.The First Amendment increasingly is called on to safeguard our right, via new technologies and recording devices, to peer into the innermost details of others' lives without fear of legal repercussion. But Calvert argues that the voyeurism value contradicts the value of discourse in democracy and First Amendment theory, since voyeurism by its very nature involves merely watching without interacting or participating. It privileges watching and viewing media images over participating and interacting in democracy.

What people are saying

Review: Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, And Peering In Modern Culture

User Review  - Michael - Goodreads

Good overview of "mediated voyeurism" — thorough and quick read for popular audiences.

Review: Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, And Peering In Modern Culture

User Review  - Lisa Kruse - Goodreads

I thought it was a little too much infotainment written to restate the same main points in a way that anyone could grasp the point of the book. More of a teaching text for undergraduates than a book to advanced scholarly understanding of media studies and voyeurism.

About the author

Clay Calvert is an assistant professor of communications and law and co-director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at Pennsylvania State University. He has published over twenty law journal articles in the past four years on First Amendment issues affecting the media, journalism, and advertising. He has a Juris Doctor from the University of the Pacific and a Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture
• Author: Clay Calvert
• Publisher: Basic Books, 2009
• ISBN: 0786747757, 9780786747757
• Length: 288 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / American Government / National; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies