Audience Reception Studies Research Articles

Audiences for crime media 1946–91: A historical approach to reception studies

The present paper argues that audience reception studies have tended to be ahistorical, neglecting consideration of the ways in which audiences’ orientation to media may have changed over the decades. The paper explores the potential of combining oral history methods with reception studies, and addresses some of the difficulties which arise. An apparently simple way to introduce a historical perspective is attempted by including audience age as a central part of an empirical research design. By analysing a series of focus group discussions in which people respond to crime media from different points over the postwar period, the concept of age is unpacked in terms of generation and life course factors, and these are shown to influence reception of crime media from both the present and the past. Generation and life course, together with gender, also affect people's positioning in society in relation to real‐world crime, and this too affects the reception of crime media. The paper concludes by suggesting three ways in which audiences may have changed over the postwar period in terms of their interpretive frames for making sense of crime media, namely the frames of personal relevance, realism and moral relativism.

Audience Responses to the Discourses of Medical Genetics: Evidence Against the Critique of Medicalization

Critiques of the social consequences of the medicalization of hereditary thought have been extensive and have focused on its supposed tendency to increase deterministic thought, perfectionist expectations about one's children, and negative judgments of persons with genetic diseases and disabilities. This audience reception study, how- ever, indicated that affluent, college-educated persons approaching their childbearing years constitute one audience group that perceives the earlier discourse about heredity as more judgmental, more determinist, and more perfectionist than medicalized genetics discourse (p < .001). In addition, exposure to voluntary hereditarianist discourse produced more negatively judgmental attitudes toward persons with genetic diseases and disabilities (p < .001) than did exposure to the discourse of medical genetics.

Rethinking the Focus Group in Media and Communications Research

The focus group is a frequently used method in the social sciences. It is particularly useful when researchers seek to discover participants' meanings and ways of understanding. In this paper we relate the history of the focus group as a research tool, from its original uses by Lazarsfeld and Merton in early communications research to its decline as social science research became more strongly quantitative and experimental. We also explore the recent revival of the focus group in audience reception studies. Contemporary uses of focus groups conducted within the critical tradition are also discussed, leading to a reappraisal of the method and its appropriateness for media and communications research. It is argued that the focus group discussion should be regarded as a socially-situated communication, and the various relations this may bear towards different approaches to mass communication are discussed, together with their implications for research practice.

Mass Media Representations of Mental Health/Illness. (i) A study of media content; (ii) audience reception study.

Mass Media Representations of Mental Health/Illness. (i) A study of media content; (ii) audience reception study.