Doing it by numbers

Abstract

Cultural studies: Eclecticism and orthodoxy QUALITATIVE AUDIENCE research in media studies reflects eclecticism deriving from its connections with British Cultural Studies, which in turn resists disciplinary status (Hall, 1986). If cultural studies is defined at all, it is as an open field of inquiry where anyone interested in any aspect of culture can come on down. Resistant to theoretical or methodological dogma, Cultural Studies fancies itself as the hip-hop of academia, `poaching' ideas from wherever it pleases. Echoing this catholicism, critical audience research prefers to focus on theory over method, refusing to be bracketed by orthodoxy. So it is difficult to draw up a definitive list of authors whose work is central to critical audience research. Having said this, few would consider the inclusion of George Gerbner. John Lent's review of five major figures in mass communication (1995) acknowledges the difficulty of positioning Gerbner vis-a-vis critical research. Interviewed for Lent's collection, James Halloran displays an equivocal stance toward cultivation analysis, which he sees as being both connected to but also different from a flawed North American mass communication tradition. His confusion is understandable, given that aspects of Gerbner's work seem shadowed by effects. The centrality of content analysis directed at enumerating levels of TV violence to the Cultural Indicators Project, combined with the conclusion that the medium creates common social attitudes, regardless of the differences between members of the audience, makes Gerbner sound like everything which cultural studies distances itself from. TV violence throws down a red flag, connecting Gerbner's work with the maligned effects tradition (Lewis, 1991). Additionally the focus on the production of attitudinal uniformity among socially diverse audiences seems incompatible with the recognition of polysemy and active interpretation that nowadays is the starting point for cultural studies audience research. The fact that Gerbner's first `Violence Profiles' were funded by the US Surgeon General's office does not help, connecting his work to a project of social engineering often articulated with the religious right. Cultivation Analysis thus appears as both empiricist, in the pejorative sense described by Lewis (1997), and administrative: Empiricist is used, in this context, to denote a lack of theoretical and methodological reflexivity producing an oversimplified view of the communicative process. Worse still, cultivation analysis produces knowledge, which is primarily useful to those in power. In fairness, Gerbner has contributed toward this viewpoint in a refusal to explicitly engage with developments in critical theory and audience research. His belief that formal qualities of specific texts are irrelevant to the reception of messages effectively dismisses textual analysis and focus group work. Indeed, a general refusal to acknowledge the importance of micro processes creates difficulties in arguing for a compatibility with the critical project. Perhaps these blind spots represent objects for further analysis rather than insurmountable obstacles, especially in light of the problems of delimiting the text in an increasingly inter-textual world (Gerbner's thesis being that different texts contain consistent meanings). But other barriers might be easier to overcome. Gerbner's work also suffers from a cosmetic problem: The use of numbers. Justin Lewis (1997) has recently suggested that quantitative research might be of use in certain critical areas, and Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction (1984) provides an example of how numbers can be used imaginatively, but it is still fair to say that statistical research is not generally accepted within the corpus of critical media audience research. Some of the reasons for this are political and theoretical, based on critiques made by Blumer (see Hammersley, 1989) and Bourdieu (1990) on the limitations of survey research. …