In Push the Button, Elizabeth Rodwell follows a battle over what interactivity will mean for Japanese television, as major media conglomerates took on independent media professionals developing interactive forms from new media. Rodwell argues that at the dawn of a potentially transformative moment in television history, content conservatism has triumphed over technological innovation. Despite the ambition and idealism of Japanese TV professionals and independent journalists, corporate media worked to squelch interactive broadcast projects such as smartphone-playable television and live-streamed and open press conferences before they caught on. Instead, interactive programming in the hands of major TV networks retained the structure and qualities of most other television and maintained conventional barriers between audiences and the actual space of broadcast. Despite their lack of success, the innovators behind these experiments nonetheless sought to expand the possibilities for mass media, national identity, and open journalism.

"“Across a polymorphous array of new media engagements, Elizabeth Rodwell questions how and with what affects/effects television is being recrafted in Japan following the ‘crisis’ of news dissemination during 3.11. Attentively ethnographic and analytically astute, Push the Button explores the implications—political, social, and technological—of inviting viewers to interact so intimately with their televisual machines.”" - Being Dead Otherwise

"“Based on solid fieldwork with excellent theoretical analysis, Push the Button provides a fascinating ethnographic overview of interactive television in Japan and offers striking new insights into media in the early twenty-first century. This wonderful book speaks to experts and newcomers alike—a real gem!”" - The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story