Changing Audiences for Changing Media: A Social Psychological Perspective

Abstract

As this book conjoins psychology and media studies, it seems an appropriate place in which to consider the specific contribution of social psychology to the study of the mass media audience1. In Livingstone (1990), I traced the parallel and often overlapping histories of social psychology and audience theory during the past seven or eight decades, arguing that while audience theory has often depended upon social psychological theory (for example, in its studies of media effects, or in its current interest in social cognition), its concurrent interfaces with other disciplines such as those concerned with production, institution, culture and text have enriched audience theory in ways which social psychology would do well to follow. The enriching effect of such interdisciplinarity has been particularly successful recently in the emergence of a critical/cultural theory of audiences (Morley, 1992; Radway, 1985; Silverstone, 1994) which has reframed the theory and methods of audience research in productive and provocative new ways. Thus, critical audience research is developing a complex analysis of the interpretation of programmes, conceived as texts rather than messages, where these interpretations are located in the cultural contexts of reception.