Television, audiences, and cultural studies

Presenting a multi-faceted exploration of audience research, this book draws on a body of empirical work to examine the emergence, development and future of television audience research. In addition to providing an introductory overview of the development of audience research from a cultural studies perspective, the author questions how class and cultural differences can affect how we interpret television, the significance of gender in the dynamics of domestic media consumption, how the media construct the "national family", and how small-scale ethnographic studies can help us to understand the global-local dynamics of postmodern media systems. This book reconceptualizes the study of "ideology" within the broader context of domestic communications, illuminating the role of the media in articulating public and private spheres of experience and in the social organization of space, time and community. The collection contributes both to current methodological debates - for instance, the possible uses of "ethnographic" methods in media/cultural studies - and to new debates surrounding substantive issues.