• What changes have taken place to the ways in which the audience is perceived?
• How have audiences become fragmented in the search for ratings?
• What next for audience research in the 21st century?

The study of 'audience' is a central concept in both media and cultural studies. Although it has become an academic fashion to turn away from the idea that groups of people can share common purpose or interests, there are still enough reasons for wanting to explore the way in which audiences behave, understand and interact with media in all their various forms. One of these reasons is the vast sums of money persistently expended by advertisers and broadcasters who are trying to give 'the audience' what 'it' wants.

Critical Readings: Media and Audiences brings together some of the important developments in the history of audience and media studies and the significant research which has shaped the field until now.

This collection of original research provides students and lecturers in media, film and cultural studies with a better understanding of the rationale, findings and forms of analysis undertaken at different points in the field's research-based career.

Essays by

John Banks, Nancy Baym, S. Elizabeth Bird, Jay G. Blumler, Philip Elliott, Marie Gillespie, Michael Gurevitch, Stuart Hall, James D. Halloran, Henry Jenkins, Elihu Katz, Gerald Kosicki, Paul Lavrakas, Paul Lazarsfeld, L.W. Lichty, Annette N. Markham, Eileen Meehan, Graham Murdock, Virginia Nightingale, Karen Ross, J.G. Webster.

Virginia Nightingale is Associate Professor in the School of Communication, Design and Media at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on audience theory and research practice. She is the author of Studying Audiences: The Shock of the Real (1996). Karen Ross is Reader in Mass Communications at Coventry University, UK. She has published extensively in the broad area of audience identities. Her recent books include Mapping the Margins (2003), Women, Politics, Media (2002) and Black and White Media (1996).

Notes on contributors

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part 1: The study of active audiences

Movie leaders

Viewer's reactions

utilization of mass communication by the individual

Encoding/decoding >br>News we can use: An audience perspective on the tabloidisation of news in the United States

The opinion polls: Still biased to Blair

Part 2: Audience communities, segments and commodities

Good and bad practice in focus group research

All ears: Radio, reception and discourses of disability

Transnational communications and Diaspora communities

Children and television: A critical overview of the research

Ratings analysis in advertising

Heads of household and ladies of the house: Gender, genre and broadcast ratings 1929-1990

Part 3: Interactive audiences: Fans, cultural production and new media

Improvising Elvis, Marilyn and Mickey Mouse

Tune in tomorrow

Stories of places and ways of being

Gamers as co-creators: Enlisting the virtual audience - A report from the netface

Interactive audiences?

Index.

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