Traditions of audience research

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Traditions of audience research

• Module One Course
• Session 5

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Four influential approaches

• (Effects research)
• -----
• Uses and gratifications research
• Audience ethnography
• Reception research

• What do the media do
• to people?
• What do people do with the media?

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4 approaches 2 paradigms

• Effects, UG Media ethn., Recept.
• Theory Transmission Sense-making, ritual
• Method Quantitative Qualitative
• Example Res.Aud. ch. 11 1. Lull, "Social
  (Australian Every- uses"
• day Cultures) 2. Res.Aud. ch. 7
• (Corporate adv.)

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Effects research an outline

• Popular with the general public/media strong
  effects!
• Divided response from communication scholars
  dubious methods?
• The power of media the market and politics
• Media impact on children the violence debate

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Academic reservations about effects research

• Experimental methods extrapolating from lab
  behavior to real-life behavior.
• Halloran's rejoinder violent behavior is
  socially conditioned.
• Large-scale surveys what campaign effects are
  measurable?
• McGuire the effects hierarchy matrix exposure
  comprehension attitudes behavior.

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Reservations (cont.)

• Which effects are measurable?
• (up to stage 4)
• Is the progression logic valid?
• Shift of perspective
• Away from the hypodermic model

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Shift of perspective

• Lazarsfeld et al. 1944 Katz Lazarsfeld 1955,
  Personal Influence.
• Decision processes of consumers/citizens
• 2-step-flow

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Uses and Gratifications Research programmatic
statement

• We must explore
• The social and psychological origins of
• Needs, which generate
• Expectations of
• The mass media or other sources, leading to
• Differential patterns of media exposure,
  resulting in
• Need gratification and
• Other consequences.

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UG in the dominant quantitative paradigm

• Why is there a struggle for domination
• External political reasons administrative versus
  critical research.
• Internal scientific reasons epistemology, the
  best insights.
• Dominance shows in 'obviousness'.
• UG redefined the theoretical lens, retained the
  quant. methodology.

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Qualitative paradigm bias against quantification

• Quantification as 'bourgeois empiricism'.
• Critical studies
• prescription of qualitative textual analysis for
  excavating the capitalist ideology of the media
  text (entertainment as "chewing gum for the
  mind", "mind candy").
• ban on fieldwork as such illegitimate to explore
  how people make sense of tv entertainment.

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Towards methodological pluralism

• Cross-fertilization of quant. and qual. Methods.
• 'triangulation'
• The prerequisite of pluralism insight into how
  different paradigms have been practiced
• Look at 3 case studies

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Critical review of audience research case studies

• Motivation and objectives of the study?
• Theories and methods of the study (empirical
  design)?
• Findings (results)?
• Critical evaluation credibility, relevance,
  strengths, weaknesses?

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Reception researchdefining characteristics

• General characteristics
• The empirical study of the production of meaning
• "How do people actually make sense of media
  messages?"
• Interdisciplinarity the humanities (theory) and
  the social sciences (method)
• Exploring meaning through empirical fieldwork

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Reception research (cont.)

• Specific characteristics
• Active audiences encounter media meanings
• Meaning as a joint product of text and reader -
  meaning cannot be taken for granted
• Texts are polysemous
• Texts are meaning potentials to be realized
  by readers
• Readers decode through 'communicative
  repertoires'

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Reception research (cont.)

• The significance of the situational context
  (family, peer group)
• The significance of the social context
• Interpretive communities readers' social
  identities (gender, education, age, ethnicity)
• Media agendas the priming and framing of
  actualized meanings
• Methodological approach qualitative fieldwork
  interviews (continuing into observation)