The Audience Studies Reader

Has political propaganda ever been effective? To what extent do African-American families interpret their favorite TV show differently from their white neighbors? Are romance novels and teenage magazines reactionary fantasies or do they provide women with an important space of their own?

The Audience Studies Reader brings together key writings exploring questions of reception and interpretation, reprinting forgotten pieces and combining key essays with new research. Beginning with a general introduction to the Reader, each extract is placed in its historical context with specially written section prefaces and suggestions for further reading.

Organized chronologically and thematically, sections address: the paradigm shift--from "effects" to "uses and gratifications"; moral panic and censorship; the active audience and reading as resistance; shifts in screen theory --the spectator and the audience; the fan and the audience; gendering the audience; internet audiences, convergence andincreased levels of interactivity; and nation and ethnicity. The conclusion discusses the effects of Internet "overflow" and the increased level of interactivity it seems to offer.

The Audience Studies Reader provides a guide to historical approaches and suggests new ways of looking at the relationship between media texts and those who receive, consume and interpret them.