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’.
Prepare by reading McQuail chapter 15, download pdf below.
Ch15 “Audience Theory and Research Traditions”, McQuail, D. (2010) Mass Communication Theory. SAGE, London.
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.
JABC - Japan Audit Bureau of Circulations
BARB - British TV and Radio ratings
According to this (mildly terrifying) study of the pre-election US media audience by by Pew Research:
Republicans are now nearly as likely to trust the information that comes from social media sites as they are to trust information from national news organizations […] The same pattern appears among young adults.