Zapping

Zapping - typically postmodern?

Zapping is something everybody in the 21st century knows, and something (almost) everybody does. As Stuart Sim states, "[t]he technique of rapidly cutting between television channels [...] can lay claim to being one of the most characteristically postmodern acts" (Sim 2006, 328).

But what has 'zapping' to do with postmodernism? First of all, for being able to 'zap' between channels, you need some different channels - something we take for granted today, but not the case only a few decades ago. The development of TV and mass media therefore has made a contribution to the 'birth of zapping' but that's not all. The audience has changed too: Before, people where consumers only, taking and therefore also just watching what they could get. Nowadays, however, people first of all have the choice, there is not one or two but one or two thousand channels available, 24 hours a day, and - what's even more important - people's attitude has changed. Also due to the development and constant growth of the internet, people changed from being consumers only to having the chance of changing and contributing something themselves. This shift from consumer to 'prosumer' can -to a certain extend -be seen in 'zapping' as well. According to Sim, TV channels can be seen as "some kind of continuous narratives which can be connected together in any order at all" (ibid.) according to one's own liking, i.e. the individual viewer, and 'zapping' now authorizes the viewer "to break up the flow of linear narrative" and with that he or she gets some kind of "control over the sequencing, if not the content" of their viewing (ibid.). Though the viewers and therefore 'consumers' of TV have not the same possibilities to influence the objects of their consume users of the internet have, 'zapping' has some impact as well: it "[challenges] the grand narratives [see also master narratives] of the programme makers, which demand passive viewers who consume what is given to them in a relatively uncritical manner" (ibid.).

Whereas 'zapping' in Sim's definition means changing TV programmes in general, in changing the channels people sometimes differentiate according to the cause of taking the remote control: then 'zapping' is defined as changing the channels to avoid advertisement, a change of channel in general is called 'switching', and 'flipping' enables the viewer to get a quick programme overview (cf.medialine.de). When 'grazing', viewers switch channels to 'graze the programme' in search for something interesting, though changing channels again sooner or later (cf. ibid.). 'Channel hopping' eventually makes it possible to watch two or more programmes at one time (cf. ibid.).

References:

medialine.de: http://www.medialine.de/deutsch/wissen/medialexikon.php?snr=6281

Sim (2006): Sim, Stuart (ed.) 2006. The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. 2nd ed. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, London.