Consuming Audiences

This text explores the intersection between research in political economy and reception analysis - the interaction between media production and audience reception/consumption. Questions asked include: what role does textual analysis play in the study of production contexts and audiences' reception?

Consuming Television is a textbook designed to introduce students to the role of television in contemporary society and to encourage an understanding of what contemporary audiences are all about. Written clearly and simply, and devoid of jargon Covers both the empirical and theoretical ground in a lively manner Unlike most books on the television audience, this volume looks at the programmes themselves, as well as the production process (including policies which affect television production)

The book investigates the new forms of empowered agency possessed by national audiences with reference to two particular television texts: Game of Thrones and Mad Men. The two popular American TV shows are highly successful products of the convergence era, characterized by trans-media storytelling as a strategy and the interconnection of audiences’ multiple practices of reception and fruition. The book argues how the analysis of audience engagement with trans-media texts will disclose important information about the various ways people organize their lives around media and how these activities help them to make sense of the world they live in.

"To be continued..." Whether these words fall at the end of The Empire Strikes Back or a TV commercial flirtation between coffee-loving neighbors, true fans find them impossible to resist. Ever since the 1830s, when Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers enticed a mass market for fiction, the serial has been a popular means of snaring avid audiences. In Consuming Pleasures jennifer Hayward establishes serial fiction as a distinct genre-one defined by the activities of its audience rather than by the formal qualities of the text. Ranging from installment novels, mysteries, and detective fiction of the 1800s to the television and movie series, comics, and advertisements of the twentieth century, serials are loosely linked by what may be called, after Wittgenstein, "family resemblances." These traits include intertwined subplots, diverse casts of characters, dramatic plot reversals, suspense, and such narrative devices as long-lost family members and evil twins. Hayward chooses four texts—Dickens's novel Our Mutual Friend (1864-65), Milton Caniff's comic strip Terry and the Pirates (1934-46), and the soap operas All My Children (1970-) and One Life to Live (1968-)—to represent the evolution of serial fiction as a genre, and to analyze the peculiar draw serials have upon their audiences. Although the serial has enjoyed great marketplace success, traditional literary and social critics have denounced its ties to mass culture, claiming it preys upon passive fans. But Hayward argues that active serial audiences have developed identifiable strategies of consumption, such as collaborative reading and attempts to shape the production process.

Ever since the exposure of the Kitten Killer of Hangshou captured the imagination of online communities world-wide, vigilantism and digilantism has come to the fore as an emerging and poignant issue. In their book Introducing Vigilant Audiences Daniel Trottier and colleagues (and contributors) have produced an excellent and throughtful ‘must read’ for all who are studying vigilantism, or just interested in it. Prof. David Wall, University of Leeds This is a collection of cutting edge and thoughtful case studies of global digital vigilantism that advances this emerging and increasingly important field in useful and intriguing ways. Prof. Michael Pfeifer, City University of New York This ground-breaking collection of essays examines the scope and consequences of digital vigilantism – a phenomenon emerging on a global scale, which sees digital audiences using social platforms to shape social and political life. Longstanding forms of moral scrutiny and justice seeking are disseminated through our contemporary media landscape, and researchers are increasingly recognising the significance of societal impacts effected by digital media. The authors engage with a range of cross-disciplinary perspectives in order to explore the actions of a vigilant digital audience – denunciation, shaming, doxing – and to consider the role of the press and other public figures in supporting or contesting these activities. In turn, the volume illuminates several tensions underlying these justice seeking activities – from their capacity to reproduce categorical forms of discrimination, to the diverse motivations of the wider audiences who participate in vigilant denunciations. This timely volume presents thoughtful case studies drawn both from high-profile Anglo-American contexts, and from developments in regions that have received less coverage in English-language scholarship. It is distinctive in its focus on the contested boundary between policing and entertainment, and on the various contexts in which the desire to seek retribution converges with the desire to consume entertainment. Introducing Vigilant Audiences will be of great value to researchers and students of sociology, politics, criminology, critical security studies, and media and communication. It will be of further interest to those who wish to understand recent cases of citizen-led justice seeking in their global context.

Living Room Wars brings together Ien Ang's recent writings on television audiences, and , in response to recent criticisms of cultural studies, argues that it is possible to study audience pleasures and popular television in a way that is not naively populist. Ang examines how the makers and marketers of television attempt to mould their audience and looks at the often unexpected ways in which the viewers actively engage with the programmes they watch. Living Room Wars highlights the inherent contradictions of a `politics of pleasure' of television consumption: Ang moves beyond the trditional forcus on textual meanings to explore the structural and historical representations fo television audiences as an integral part of modern culture. Her wide-ranging and illuminating discussion takes in the battle between television and its audiences; the politics of empirical audience research; new technologies and the tactics of television consumption; ethnography and radical contextualism in audience studies; television fiction and women's fantasy; feminist desire and female pleasure in media consumption, and the transnational media system.

This accessible text will be an invaluable introduction to recent work on audiences for students of media, communication and cultural studies, and a helpful analytical overview for media teachers and researchers.

Consuming Television is a textbook designed to introduce students to the role of television in contemporary society and to encourage an understanding of what contemporary audiences are all about. Written clearly and simply, and devoid of jargon Covers both the empirical and theoretical ground in a lively manner Unlike most books on the television audience, this volume looks at the programmes themselves, as well as the production process (including policies which affect television production)

The history of audience research tells us that the relationship between the media and viewers, readers and listeners is complex and requires multiple methods of analysis. In Understanding Audiences, Andy Ruddock introduces students to the range of quantitative and qualitative methods and invites his readers to consider the merits of both. Understanding Audiences: demonstrates how - practically - to investigate media power; places audience research - from early mass communication models to cultural studies approaches - in their historical and epistemological context; explores the relationship between theory and method; concludes with a consideration of the long-running debate on media effects; includes exercises which invite readers to engage with the practical difficulties of conducting social research.

The first edition of a seminal work on fans and communities We are all fans. Whether we log on to Web sites to scrutinize the latest plot turns in Lost, “stalk” our favorite celebrities on Gawker, attend gaming conventions, or simply wait with bated breath for the newest Harry Potter novel—each of us is a fan. Fandom extends beyond television and film to literature, opera, sports, and pop music, and encompasses both high and low culture. Fandom brings together leading scholars to examine fans, their practices, and their favorite texts. This unparalleled selection of original essays examines instances across the spectrum of modern cultural consumption from Karl Marx to Paris Hilton, Buffy the Vampire Slayer to backyard wrestling, Bach fugues to Bollywood cinema ̧ and nineteenth-century concert halls to computer gaming. Contributors examine fans of high cultural texts and genres, the spaces of fandom, fandom around the globe, the impact of new technologies on fandom, and the legal and historical contexts of fan activity. Fandom is key to understanding modern life in our increasingly mediated and globalized world.