Appendix C: Journalism: A Guide to Recent Literature - Section 9. Audiences

A. General Surveys

Generally, this is a very large literature that can only be hinted at here—the emphasis below being on studies at least including journalism, though a good deal of research centers on entertainment audiences.

A-1: Media Audiences

These studies range over a variety of media (specific media are covered further below) and methods.

Anderson, James A., and Timothy P. Meyer. Mediated Communications: A Social Action Perspective. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1988. An integrated treatment of the massive theoretical and empirical research literature from the previous two decades—what we know, how we know it, and what we still need to know. An organizing theory ties it all together.

Ang, Ien. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. New York: Routledge, 1996. Gathers ten of the Australian researcher's edited and updated writings over the previous decade, arranged into three sections on audiences in general, gendered audiences, and audiences and global culture. She argues that people's time is increasingly being “colonized” by the growing variety of media.

Becker, Lee B., and Klaus Schoenbach, eds. Audience Response to Media Diversification. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989. Research papers exploring the impact of more channel choice and how it has affected audiences in several countries.

Dervin, Brenda, et al., eds. Rethinking Communications. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989 (2 vols.). Some 60 papers growing out of an International Communications Association reassessment of where research in the field stands as to theory development, application of research methods, research findings, and what is still not definitively known.

Gaunt, Philip, ed. Beyond Agendas: New Directions in Communication Research. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993. Assessment of where things stand in media audience research as well as the work still needed in most major research topics.

Giles, David. Media Psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003. Seventeen chapters survey [Page 2292]the field, presuming no prior subject background. Includes discussion of media theory, research methods, such major issues as violence and pornography, key audiences, major content types (including news), and the impact of changing technology. The discussion of research modes is balanced and useful.

Harindranath, Ramaswami. Audience-Citizens: The Media, Public Knowledge, and Interpretive Practice. New Delhi: Sage, 2009. Examines media and politics in contemporary India and in the developing world, exploring how sociological and cultural factors affect interpretations of mediated knowledge. Examines the notion that understanding is irretrievably linked to the interpreter's sociocultural position and explains the influence of sociocultural factors on the capacity for understanding. On a micro level, the author focuses on the evaluation and interpretation of nonfiction programs by different audience groups in India. He explores the socio-cultural positioning of audiences and inequality of access to symbolic resources and cultural capital.

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