Investigating Audiences

Picking up on some of the themes developed in his critically acclaimed book Understanding Audiences (SAGE, 2000), this new book on audience research focuses on qualitative methods and will draw upon students' own media experience. The book is divided into chapters that deal with audience research in terms of concepts and topics. Regarding concepts, Investigating Audiences is firmly grounded within interpretive approaches to studying viewers, readers and listeners. Further to this, the book looks at the different ways in which media influence can be accessed and the attendant methodological consequences. These issues are then applied to a survey of recent scholarship on a variety of topics such as violence, pornography, video gaming, and children and advertising. Investigating Audiences will be very useful for undergraduates in media studies/mass communications courses containing qualitative research components and dealing with cultural studies themes and approaches to audience studies.