Media & Society: 05

Audience and Reception Theories

Society pre-exists the individual

This session looks at approaches to ‘Audiences’ and media ’consumption’by audiences. How do we define an audience? Does everyone involved think of audiences in the same way? How have attitudes towards the ’mass audience’ changed over time?

We also look at the idea of ‘media effects’, that is, the idea that ‘the media’ has an effect on ‘the audience’.

Tasks

Prepare by reading McQuail chapter 15, download pdf below.

Slides

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Reading

Ch15 “Audience Theory and Research Traditions”, McQuail, D. (2010) Mass Communication Theory. SAGE, London.

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Extra Material

If you’re interested in a shorter summary of some of the important ideas connected to audience research, this paper might be useful!

Hirzalla, F. and van Zoonen, L. (2017). Media effects: Methods of critical audience studies. In Rössler, P., Hoffner, C. A., and van Zoonen, L., editors, The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects. Wiley.

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