Listening to Audiences: A Brief Rationale and History of Audience Research in Popular Media Studies

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Schiappa ◽  
Emanuelle Wessels
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Audience Research ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals Audiences in an Age of Datafication: Critical Questions for Media Research

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Livingstone
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Audience Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Culture Model ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Power ◽  
Opening Up

This article critically examines how fears of audience gullibility, ignorance, and exploitation impede media studies’ response to the pressing challenges posed by the growing power of social media platforms and their innovative datafication practices. I revisit the history of audience research to show how empirical findings contested the pejorative conception of the audience problematically yet persistently imagined by theorists of media power during the twentieth century. As media studies joins other disciplines in responding to the growing datafication of society, I propose that the circuit of culture model can help theorize media (including platform and algorithmic) power by opening up the hermeneutic and action space between production and consumption. In this way, critical scholarship might more effectively analyze such metaprocesses as mediatization and datafication precisely by recognizing rather than erasing audiences’ relation to both the everyday lifeworld and the public world of citizen action, regulatory intervention, and the wider society.

scholarly journals Determinism in the mountains: The ongoing belief in the bellicosity of 'mountain people'

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Pickering
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Mountainous Regions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conflict Research ◽  
Positive Light

It has long been argued that mountains have an effect on wars. While some research understands this chiefly in physical terms, other research looks at the effect that mountains have on human nature. This article looks at the two thousand year history of the term 'mountain people.' It explores how the belief has emerged that living in mountainous regions changes people to the degree that it makes them more likely to engage in conflict. It also explores how mountain people can be seen in a more positive light, but this perspective is often ignored by both popular media and conflict research. It makes the case that the foundations upon which perceptions of 'mountain people' are based are rather shaky and somewhat misleading for empirical conflict research.

Broadway Goes to War

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. McLaughlin ◽  
Sally E. Parry
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
American Theater ◽  
History Of ◽  
Battle Fatigue ◽  
The Rich ◽  
American Society

The American theater was not ignorant of the developments brought on by World War II, and actively addressed and debated timely, controversial topics for the duration of the war, including neutrality and isolationism, racism and genocide, and heroism and battle fatigue. Productions such as Watch on the Rhine (1941), The Moon is Down (1942), Tomorrow the World (1943), and A Bell for Adano (1944) encouraged public discussion of the war's impact on daily life and raised critical questions about the conflict well before other forms of popular media. American drama of the 1940s is frequently overlooked, but the plays performed during this eventful decade provide a picture of the rich and complex experience of living in the United States during the war years. McLaughlin and Parry's work fills a significant gap in the history of theater and popular culture, showing that American society was more divided and less idealistic than the received histories of the WWII home front and the entertainment industry recognize.

Vietnamese Canadian Refugee Aesthetics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinh Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Innocent Bystander ◽  
The Gift ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The One

Vietnamese Canadian refugee aesthetics are the diverse expressions of how hundreds of thousands of refugees and their descendants experienced the Vietnam War and its aftermath. They are shaped on the one hand by a history of war in, and forced migration from, Vietnam and on the other by resettlement in multicultural Canada. Significantly, Vietnamese Canadian refugee aesthetics are produced within a distinct context of Canadian “forgetting of complicity” in the Vietnam War. A major shaping force of this aesthetics is the idea that Canada was an innocent bystander or facilitator of peace during the war years, instead of a complicit participant providing arms and supporting a Western bloc victory. This allows, then, for a discourse of Canadian humanitarianism to emerge as Canada resettled refugees in the war’s wake. Vietnamese Canadian refugee aesthetics are produced and received in relation to the enduring narrative of Canadian benevolence. In this way, they celebrate the nation-state and its peoples through gratitude for the gift of refuge. More importantly, however, they illuminate life during and in the wake of war; the personal, political, and historical reasons for migration; the struggles and triumphs of resettlement; and the complexities of diasporic existence. Refugee aesthetics are driven by memory and the desire to commemorate, communicate, and make sense of difficult pasts and the embodied present. They often take the form of literary works such as memoirs, novels, and poetry, but they are also found in community politics and activism, such as commemoration events and protests, and other popular media like public service videos. Produced by refugees as well as the state, these aesthetic “texts” index themes and problematics such as the formation of voice; the interplay between memory, history, and identity; the role of autobiography; and the modes of representing war, violence, and refuge-seeking.

Buddhism and Shinto

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Rambelli
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes ◽  
Strong Capacity

Buddhism in Japan has long coexisted with native cults and beliefs, commonly known as Shinto. According to received understanding, Shinto (literally, in modern Japanese interpretation, “the way of the [Japanese] gods”) is the autochthonous religious tradition of Japan, whose origins date back to the beginning of the Japanese civilization. Its main features are an animistic belief in the sanctity of nature, shamanic practices, ancestor cults, respect for authority and communal value, and a strong capacity to integrate and homogenize foreign elements. This received understanding sees the history of Japanese Buddhism as a gradual process of “Japanization,” that is, of integration within Shinto beliefs and attitudes. This understanding, however, still broadly circulating in Japan and abroad in textbooks and popular media, has been questioned radically by scholarship in the past few decades. In fact, until approximately 150 years ago, Shinto (and local cults in general) was deeply connected to Japanese Buddhism: Buddhist authors were the first to write doctrines and tales about the Japanese local gods or Kami, and most shrines dedicated to the Kami used to belong to Buddhist temples or were in fact Buddhist temples themselves dedicated to the kami. Kami were normally understood as avatars (Japanese, gongen) of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other Buddhist divinities; some very popular kami even today, include Hachiman, who was evoked or discovered (if not created) by Buddhist monks, and Daikokuten and Benzaiten, two Buddhist deities from India (their Sanskrit names are, respectively, Mahākāla, the male counterpart of the goddess Kālī, and Sarasvatī, a water goddess). This situation of symbiosis, in which the Buddhist component was always at the top of the religious institutions’ hierarchy, also generated a number of conflicts that erupted in 1868, when the government decided to “separate” Shinto from Buddhism (shinbutsu bunri), an operation that resulted in the destruction of thousands of Buddhist temples and countless texts, images, and other artifacts, and, ultimately, in the creation of two separate religions. Any historical study of Shinto must therefore attempt to reconstruct this premodern situation of symbiosis and conflict.

Televisual epistemologies and beyond

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-249
Author(s):  
Lisa Parks
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Silicon Valley ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Environmental Media ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

In this interview, Lisa Parks shares her reflections on a range of questions that remain central to her research, including what television is at the present moment and might become in the future; how satellites could be treated as part of an integrated history of media; the compartmentalizations of academia; research on surveillance, and the relationship between surveillance and capitalism; the invisibility and materiality of infrastructure, and the significance of field-based research practices; the entanglement of scholarship and social engagement; the emerging Silicon Valley satellite industry, vertical mediation and political resistance; and the urgency of environmental media studies.

Channel 4 and the Red Triangle: A Case Study in Film Curation and Censorship on Television

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-498
Author(s):  
Justin Smith
Keyword(s):  
Audience Research ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Home Video ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Autumn And Winter

This article charts the history of an experiment, conducted during the autumn and winter of 1986–7, in which Channel 4 trialled an on-screen visual warning symbol to accompany screenings of a series of international art-house films. The so-called ‘red triangle’ experiment, though short-lived, will be considered as a case study for exploring a number of related themes. Firstly, it demonstrates Channel 4's commitment during the 1980s to fulfilling its remit to experiment and innovate in programme form and content, in respect of its acquired feature film provision. Channel 4's acquisitions significantly enlarged the range of international classic and art-house cinema broadcast on British television. Secondly, it reflects contemporary tensions between the new broadcaster, its regulator the IBA, campaigners for stricter censorship of television and policy-makers. The mid-1980s was a period when progressive developments in UK film and television culture (from the rise of home video to the advent of Channel 4 itself) polarised opinions about freedom and regulation, which were greatly exacerbated by the press. Thirdly, it aims to shed light on the paradox that, while over thirty years of audience research has consistently revealed the desire on the part of television viewers for an on-screen ratings system, the UK is not among some forty countries that currently employ such devices on any systematic basis. In this way the history of a specific advisory experiment may be seen to have a bearing on current policy trends.

The Malleability Narrative in Entertainment and Social Media: Explaining Pathways to Happiness in Media Content

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Vandenbosch ◽  
Steven Eggermont
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Audience Research ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Analytical Research

Abstract Media effects research has documented the prevalence of different ideals in media content, and their effects on media users. We developed a framework for the representation of such ideals, and that may increase our understanding of the effects media have on users' well-being. Drawing on cultural sociology, communication theory, and psychological literature, we introduce the malleability narrative of mediated ideals, described as “a collection of media representations of a variety of ideals that tend to be portrayed as within reach for anyone who is committed to pursuing his/her own self-interest.” The aim of the framework is to foster content analytical research on the occurrence of the malleability narrative in popular media and to stimulate audience research on interactions between media users and the malleability narrative in media, while taking account of different explanatory routes and the heterogeneity of the audience.

The Authority of Greek Mythic Narratives in the Magical Papyri

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
Sarah Iles Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Greek Myth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Greek Myths ◽  
Strong Relationships

Abstract I begin by summarizing work that has been done concerning a persistent question in the study of ancient magic: how did practitioners balance empirical reality against their own imaginations? I go on to suggest that my recent work on Greek myths, which uses ideas developed in media studies and social psychology, can help. This work suggests that myths’ authority rested in large part on their effectiveness as lively, cognitively-engaging narrations, which in turn enabled audience members to build strong relationships with the myths’ characters, who were the gods and heroes worshipped in cult. For purposes of the present article, the most important point to emerge from my work is that each name of a mythic character instantly evokes for the audience a large, vivid history of that character and of his or her interactions with other characters. I then go on to examine what amounts to ‘Greek myth’ in many magical papyri of later antiquity-not stories per se, but the listing of characters’ names. Extending my earlier observations, I suggest that the vivid story-world that these names created for each person who spoke, read or heard the spells, gave those spells enormous authority by evoking larger narratives or complexes of narratives. To illustrate this, I examine PGM IV.1390 -1495, a spell that lists a large number of Underworld divinities. I offer variations of my approach by examining PGM IV.3209-54, a ‘Saucer Divination of Aphrodite,’ and PGM IV.2891-2942, a ‘Love Spell of Attraction.’

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