Through such effects
as the telescoping of news into audio-video bytes, through the tension
between the public spaces of cinema and the more exclusive spaces of
video watching, through the immediacy of their absorption into public
discourse, and through their tendency to be associated with glamour, cosmopolitanism,
and the new, electronic media (whether associated with the
news, politics, family life, or spectacular entertainment) tend to interrogate,
subvert, and transform other contextual Iiteracies. In the chapters
that follow, I track some ways in which electronic mediation transforms
preexisting worlds of communication and conduct.