Global Constructions of ‘Korupsi’ in a Local Public Sphere: A Cross-Cultural Malaysian Reception Study
Audience responses to television are at the heart of sense-making in the public sphere. Research on viewers' readings of economic, political and social events in news programs, invariably constructed around the activities of ‘significant’ individuals, is of particular consequence for understanding the functioning of a democracy. This paper is a cross-cultural reception study of how audiences come to interpret the program genre of television news. In a process of comprehension characterised by fusing/feuding horizons of understanding the world, viewers playfully accommodate the meaning of programs in their everyday lives. Analysis of television's reception should be tested against audience activity. Theory must be corroborated. Drawing from a significant literature discussing the phenomenology of ludic experience, the article theorises trans-cultural reception of Western (British) television by Asian (Malaysian) viewers as seriously ‘playful’. Academic assertions are assessed as illuminating audience response.