In recent years cultural studies perspectives have proliferated through a range of traditional academic disciplines and have been a fertile source of new ideas beyond the sphere of the academy; at the same time, cultural studies has been subject to critical scrutiny. Cultural Studies in Question is a major new text that offers a critical reappraisal of the contemporary practice of cultural studies. Focusing on the contribution of cultural studies to understanding media, communication, and popular cultures in contemporary societies, the authors offer a major reassessment of the domain of cultural studies. Elements examined include: + different strands of cultural studies, their sources, and whether there is a coherent project in cultural studies today + tensions and debates within cultural studies, and between cultural studies and alternative or related approaches to contemporary media and society + the movement by cultural studies revisionists toward more empirical and sociological modes of analysis Drawing on an outstanding group of internationally acclaimed scholars representing a broad cross-section of perspectives in media theory and communication studies, Cultural Studies in Question will provide a benchmark for substantive reflection on the state of the field of media and cultural analysis for academics and researchers and will stimulate reflection, understanding, and insight among students of media, communications, journalism, popular culture, and cultural studies.

Imagining the Audience: Losses and Gains in Cultural Studies

Imagining the Audience: Losses and Gains in Cultural Studies

Imagining the audience: Losses and gains in cultural studies
JoliJensen and JohnJ.Pauly

Every theory of the media invokes an image of the audience. For the researcher the audience may appear as a market of consumers, a jaded mob, a nascent public, a lumpen proletariat, textual poachers, situated spectators, ‘the people'. With each image come assumptions about who the researcher is in relation to the audience – who are ‘we’ in relation to ‘them'?

This question is particularly acute for cultural studies because it hopes to speak in terms other than those offered by the marketplace or traditional social science. Those of us who do cultural studies see the social science tradition of audience research as complicit in a longer ...

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