Investigating AudiencesPicking up on some of the themes developed in his critically acclaimed book Understanding Audiences (SAGE, 2000), this new book on audience research focuses on qualitative methods and will draw upon students′ own media experience. The book is divided into chapters that deal with audience research in terms of concepts and topics. Regarding concepts, Investigating Audiences is firmly grounded within interpretive approaches to studying viewers, readers and listeners. Further to this, the book looks at the different ways in which media influence can be accessed and the attendant methodological consequences. These issues are then applied to a survey of recent scholarship on a variety of topics such as violence, pornography, video gaming, and children and advertising. Investigating Audiences will be very useful for undergraduates in media studies/mass communications courses containing qualitative research components and dealing with cultural studies themes and approaches to audience studies. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 9 | |
2 News and Public Information | 30 |
The Meaning of the Meaningless | 54 |
4 Fans Power and Communication | 78 |
Sex Violence and Audiences | 99 |
6 Reality Media and Celebrity | 121 |
7 Young People Technology and Cultural Citizenship | 142 |
| 167 | |
| 183 | |
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abuse accept actions activities agenda analysis appear argue argument asked attention audience research become behaviour celebrity claims communication concerns conclusion connections consider course create critical cultural defined developed discussions effects evidence example exists experience explain explored express fact feel fire force framing given groups happens idea images important individual influence interest interpretation issues learning less live look mass matter means messages methods narrative nature notes object offer person play pleasure political porn pornography position possible practice present problem production question reading reality reasons reflect relations role scholars sense setting sexual social society sorts space speak story structures studies suggest survey television texts theory things turn understand viewers violence watching women young
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Page 3 - ... can only be relatively small. But just as an average temperature shift of a few degrees can lead to an ice age or the outcomes of elections can be determined by slight margins, so too can a relatively small but pervasive influence make a crucial difference. The "size" of an "effect" is far less critical than the direction of its steady contribution.
Page 2 - Gerbncr argues that any message is a socially and historically determined expression of concrete physical and social relationships. Messages imply propositions, assumptions, and points of view that are understandable only in terms of the social relationships and contexts in which they are produced. Yet they also reconstitute those relationships and contexts. They thus function recursively, sustaining and giving meaning to the structures and practices that produce them. Communication to Gerbncr is...
Page 12 - ... predicts that people will tend to overestimate the influence that mass communications have on the attitudes and behavior of others. More specifically, individuals who are members of an audience that is exposed to a persuasive communication (whether or not this communication is intended to be persuasive) will expect the communication to have a greater effect on others than on themselves.
Page 167 - SA (2001). Do you see what I see? Third-person effects on public communication through self-esteem, social stigma, and product use.