The Communication Review, 16:9–20, 2013
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1071-4421 print/1547-7487 online
DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2013.757170
The Media Audience: A Brief Biography—Stages
of Growth or Paradigm Change?
DENIS McQUAIL
Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The concept of audience was widely adapted from its earlier origins
in public spectacles and performance to apply to the new circumstances of mass media reception in the early 20th century, and
especially to the public for film and broadcasting. It could even
be applied more generally to include print media. The then novel
usage of the term was a component in the larger paradigm of mass
communications that in turn rested on certain preconceptions
about its ‘mass’ character. These preconceptions have been challenged by subsequent research and theory. More recently, however,
the ongoing transformation of the means of communication may
have rendered the whole mass communication paradigm itself
obsolescent, and with it the concept of a mass audience. In this
article it is argued that paradigmatic change in ideas about the
audience may be less due to a shift in technology than to the more
fundamental theoretical changes of the intervening period.
EARLY BEGINNINGS
The audience concept has had an eventful career over the past 50 or more
years, at the center of the changes brought about by communication technology innovation and also often the subject of disputes of a theoretical and
methodological kind that have divided the field of communication research.
The idea of audience (as distinct from the physical reality of spectators)
has, from the start, a product of the perception of senders or of communication researchers keen to study effects on receivers. The earliest model
of communication research, whether in its applied form (as an aid to more
effective communication) or in its social problem-oriented guise (to measure
Address correspondence to Denis McQuail at denis290@btinternet.com
9
10
D. McQuail
unintended individual or general harm caused by mass media and support
measures of reform and control), the media audience was conceived (by
senders and observers) as a largely passive entity at the receiving end of a
linear process of public communication.
This model was later characterized as a “transportation” model (Carey,
1975), thought to be typical of the new mass media that could reach very
many dispersed individuals at the same time with the same content or message and were able to produce a uniform effect. In its minimum expression,
the mass media audience was no more than the aggregate of individuals
actually or potentially exposed to what the main channels of communication
had to offer. The recognized limitation of such a model of communication
was that the transfer of messages (and presumably embedded meaning) was
a one-way delivery system, with very imprecise guidance, little account taken
of the destination and little opportunity for feedback, except as provided by
industry research.
Fifty years ago, three main branches of audience research were recognized: (a) research into actual receivers (how many? what sort? how much
time?); (b) inquiry into the reception process (reasons, quality, selection); and
(c) as an essential adjunct in the study of media effects, based primarily on
measurement of reactions to and changes, following exposure. Each of the
three purposes were of service to media industry and its clients, commercial
or public.
A FIRST VERSION OF DOMINANT PARADIGM
However, in the first dominant paradigm in the field of communication
research, a more developed theory of audience emerged. The audience was
conceptualized as an essentially new form of collectivity, nearly unknown
historically before the age of film, radio, mass newspapers. The main elements of novelty were the great size that could be attained; the mutual
anonymity of the many members of an audience and the lack of any structure
or social organization; its temporary and fleeting character; its susceptibility to impulses from distant sources. These are features not typical of
groups, communities, crowds (Blumer, 1946), or the archetypal audience for
spectators that gathered for drama, sports, and other public performances.
This dominant model sooner or later became the target for revisionist
ideas about the reality of the evolving forms of audience, based on evidence,
alternative values and other disciplines of study, plus adaptation to changing conditions of transmission and reception in developing communication
systems. There is little doubt that the old paradigm, as sketched, has long
gone, and some doubt whether it even long survived its baptism. Initial theories of powerful effects were soon modified to take account of the social
structure of audiences and the mediating role played by personal and group
The Media Audience
11
influences. Equally early was the recognition that uses (i.e., exposure to)
media for their audiences were varied and self-determined, with influential
filters of effect.
THE TECHNOLOGICAL PATHWAY OF CHANGE
The question of a replacement for the first paradigm can best be pursued
over the career of the concept by looking separately at those aspects of the
case where we can discern a trajectory of change. To start with the most
obvious: the consequences of changing technology for the object of study
(media audience). The phase of massive media exposure began to peak
in the 1960s, depending on where in the world one was, with television
in the developed world becoming the primary medium in terms of reach,
surpassing newspapers, radio and film and seeming to fulfil the expectation
present in the early concept of mass communication.
The next stage of change (from late 1960s onwards) was a consequence
of success, expansion, and growing diversity. There were more and more
channels, improvements in quality, more choice, even greater reach with less
central uniformity. The medium of television gradually began to be globalized, at least in respect of an enhanced dominance by Western content,
especially U.S. entertainment and flows of television news (Tunstall, 1977).
New technology was almost imperceptibly working another fundamental shift, also away from the dominant paradigm, as new means of
individual and, later, more general, distribution were introduced from the
1960s onwards: transistor radios, cassettes for sound and video recording and
playing, mobile and portable reception apparatus, cable systems for multichannel delivery of signals. The culmination came in the late 1970s with
the opening up of the ether to satellite delivered channels with very large
footprints, ignoring frontiers. The vastly extended range of output, within
and between nations, worked to erode old frontiers of cultural and political
hegemony. This phase was soon rapidly moved on in the same direction
by early online forms of media delivery (early Internet known as videotex),
plus teletext. All the innovations mentioned contributed to a steady diffusion of the media experience across the globe and a so-called new age of
“media abundance,” typically seen as a favourable turn away from “mass”
conditions.
A final as-yet-unfinished advance came in the 1990s with the invention
of the World Wide Web and the many successive applications and expansions of take-up by audiences or users. The latter term gained currency
because it reflected several new features, including the indivuation of choice
and behavior, the widening range of purpose (often instrumental and not
primarily content-oriented). The aggregate term audience no longer serves
to signal the reality. As a result of proliferation and overlap of media, it is
12
D. McQuail
also no longer possible to give any simple or full answer to the question of
what media we are we talking about when we speak of an audience. It is
hard, consequently, to be firm about any unitary notion of audience, or any
single paradigm.
An obvious conclusion from even this briefest excursion into issues of
changes in the means of distribution and reception is that the forms taken
by audience were bound to multiply and diversify, straining at any single
version of the audience experience or the way it might be construed. The
original canonical audience of pre-mass media days, comprising sets of attentive listeners/spectators was (and is) no longer a useful benchmark. Also
largely new were views of the audience as, variously, a market of consumers
of a certain product or brand of content; a consumer market for other goods
that could be recruited for advertising purposes by way of known tastes
and habits of media use; a market for the technology which makes a media
audience possible; a particular manner of passing time for varying purpose;
a social or cultural group also strongly profiled by media tastes and habits.
New media technology did not arrive on its own as a change agent with
predetermined consequences, but as part of a new institutional complex.
NEW PATTERNS AND RELATIONSHIPS OF COMMUNICATION:
BASIS FOR A NEW PARADIGM?
It was not just a question of more abundance and variety. There was a
pattern, a distinct trajectory to the changing nature of audiences linked to
technology and the development of media systems. The most economical
key to this is still provided by a scheme of the alternative communicative relationships that emerged and gradually took on new relative significance. This
was the typology of communication traffic proposed by Bordewijk and van
Kaam (1986) to show the potential of new, computerized, communication
networks for different types of traffic delivered via telecommunications.
The starting point for the typology can be seen as a version of the original idea of mass communication: a center-peripheral distribution of content
from a fixed point to many scattered individuals at times decided by the
source. This so-called allocution, also broadcast, pattern was supplemented
by a second major possibility, one of consultation, with peripheral individuals choosing at will, at their own convenience from a central store of content
(information). This has been greatly facilitated by new online media, but in
principle possible before (as in library use). A third major possibility in the
typology was that of conversation (exchange), with peripheral individuals
linked in a network able to connect with each without mediation by a central
point. The resulting flows of communication could be one to one or to any
number, many to many, balanced and interactive or not. The final pattern of
communication made possible by computerized telecommuniation networks,
was one of registration, with a central node having a complete overview and
The Media Audience
13
record of communication transactions, without any actual mediation or intervention. In effect, this typology sketched a new reality of potential audience
types, without seeking to do so.
The pattern of allocution is familiar as broadcasting, the others already
in existence in human communication, but without being accounted as
audiences: consultation—attention by individuals as a result of planned
search, with the results ranging widely from the completely unique to a
shared experience; conversation—another range of possibilities, but with
no fixed message or content; registration—an identification as users of
network facilities, with complete knowledge at center of all sources, content, and receivers. This aggregate is continuously monitored for purposes
that do not serve the interests of participants in any direct way. The new
types of audience are encouraged to grow rapidly in significance as the
Internet has expanded. These various changes have extended the always
latent bifurcation of audiencehood into receivers and users, but without
really distinguishing between them in any fundamental way. The actual communication (transmission or sharing) of meaning is, or becomes, secondary
to the concept of audience.
There are already enough changes and also the necessary conceptual
components in all this for proposing a new paradigm to contrast with, if
not replace, the original one. Its most distinctive features, in terms of the
comparison would be nonlinearity, interactivity, undetermination, flexibility, individuation, and freedom from direction but not from surveillance.
However, there are more elements to consider in what has been going on
in the way of audience theory and research. One set of changes relates
to questions of purpose in research and, entailed in this, radically different
perspectives on audiences.
FROM MEDIA-CENTERED TO AUDIENCE-CENTERED PERSPECTIVES
As noted at the outset, certain motives predominated in research, being
essentially either media-centered or audience-centered. The former reflect
either the needs of media industry or of those who seek to use media
for applied communicative purposes (persuasion, information or control).
Industry needs are primarily for expansion or management (product development, planning, quality control, and so forth). They also include a search
for evidence of actual effects as a guide to practice and a demonstration of
power.
Audience-centered purposes in the early days of media research were
mainly related to measuring audience size, preferences and appreciation
for particular items of content. But research, motivated by the wish to
protect citizens and society from unplanned or unwanted negative effects,
also involved a study of the audience. Most of the motives indicated, from
whichever perspective, still involved a top-down view of audience and a
14
D. McQuail
broad assumption of a passive and receptive audience in thrall to the media
and open to manipulation.
One consequence of the difficulties encountered in actually measuring
any significant effects of whatever kind was to direct more attention toward
the reception phase of the process, thus to the audience view of itself. The
relative lack of success of media-centered effect research seemed traceable
to an oversimplified view of the audience and a failure to take account
of the audience perspective. The most obvious neglect was of the factor
of selective attention, with large variations in the simple fact of attention
per se, a necessary condition of effect. This was compounded by selectivity
of perception and interpretation of whatever message was intended. When
other factors such as ability to understand, motivation, attitude and interest
are added in, it is clear that the simple mass communication model is a very
poor guide to an estimation of audience reaction or effect.
Awareness of these limitations was built into research practice well
before 1960, along with another basic consideration relating to the nature
of many audiences. Almost as obvious as selectivity was the fact that actual
mass media audiences did not typically consist of vast aggregates of isolated individuals, even if it was convenient for providers to see things in
this way. The reality of audiences is of media attention behaviour occurring in and structured by social experience, background and context, in
circles of friends, families, communities, localities, and so forth, with much
shared in common by any audience for a given message. This commonality
extended to tastes, interests, lifestyle, educational, economic, and cultural
background. All this too was known by the end of the first phase of serious
communication research, largely American, accomplished before 1960.
Beyond this point in time, especially with the gradual revival of postwar research activity in Europe, several new impulses were injected into
the enterprise of audience research. All are essentially audience-centered
in intention and spirit. Three strands can be singled out: one of critical
theory; another revised line of empirical inquiry emphasizing the activity
and motivation of the individual audience member as a participant in any
communication process; thirdly, a culturalist approach, including a distinct
linguistic or semiological variant oriented to questions of meaning and understanding. Each of these had its own complexities and divisions of theory and
practice. Each on its own might have produced an alternative paradigm for
conceiving audience, although that was never claimed.
THE CRITICAL VIEW
The sources of critical theory lie primarily in the work of the Frankfurt School
and other Marxist-inspired critiques of society and culture, which flourished
from the early 1960s and encouraged an interpretation of the typical media
The Media Audience
15
audience as an object of ideological manipulation and subversion, drawn
into an enjoyment of the pleasures of ‘mass culture’ and effectively blinded
to the denial or concealment of true (class) interests. The critical view came,
however, to embrace related issues of race and gender, with similar results
for a perception of the audience. The original core idea was that much if
not most of commercial (or even state) mass media have as their unstated
goal or consequence the creation and maintenance of a false consciousness
that sustains the dominant position of propertied classes and inhibits any
active opposition (Hall, 1977). In this view, the latent or default orientation of a typical mass audience member is, or should be, one of resistance
or simply alternative reading of ostensible meanings offered in news and
entertainment.
In Europe at least, the critical tradition of audience study is often linked
to the work of Stuart Hall (1973/1980), whose proposal for a decoding/
encoding model posited a dominant coding of content as inscribed, but a
differential encoding by differently located social groups in the audience,
ranging from acceptance through reinterpretation to an oppositional reading
in line with class position. The idea of dominant coding has its origin in the
work of (mainly French) structuralists and semiologists, who credited texts
with fixed embedded meanings, anchored both by rules of language and by
culture (Barthes, 1967). In later, more developed, versions of critical theory,
the media audience is seen as engaged (exploitatively) in work on behalf
of media, by giving time and attention that can be sold on to advertisers
or sponsors (Smythe, 1977). Explanations are also offered of how put-upon
audiences manage to reconcile themselves to their dependent situation.
AN EMPIRICAL TRADITION OF AUDIENCE USES
AND GRATIFICATIONS
The basic idea that audiences shape their own communication experiences
has a long history, but achieves a new status, in seeming to help explain
some of the failures and relative successes of attempts to influence or attract
audiences. It is at least reasonable and more democratic to presume that
people are able to determine for themselves what they need, want, like or
dislike and choose, and equally what meaning to perceive or take. Given this
premise, rather contrary also to the mass audience paradigm, ways of differentiating audience selections, reactions and effects according to expressed
motives or post facto explanations seemed a promising path to follow. This
kind of research was extensively adopted during the 1970s and into the 1980s
under the heading of “Uses and Gratifications,” with results that at least made
sense of patterns and trends of use and indicated boundaries and patterns in
audience formation (Blumler & Katz, 1974; McQuail, 1984). The results were
mainly descriptive, but also useful in charting connections between different
16
D. McQuail
types of motive and different explanatory factors, of a social, psychological,
or cultural kind. One benefit was to expose the wide range of uses attributed
to audience experience, making clear that many such uses were not primarily to do with content and effect at all, but with the activity of media use in
itself for social or other purposes.
The general perspective of the uses-and-gratifications tradition helped
to further to fragment or redefine the meaning of audience in its original,
canonical version. It has provided something of a bridge to handling new
issues posed by new media, by explicitly accepting the social-behavioural
aspects of audience activity along with its once-exclusive definition in terms
of content and communication.
A CULTURALIST VIEW
The third strand of theoretical change is open to labeling as a culturalist approach and also with diverse strands. In general, there is a broad
acceptance of the critical analysis of society and also of the relative autonomy
of audiences in the mass media age, despite appearances and the rigors
of true Marxist ideas. With the assumption of a cultural autonomy, popular tastes and preferences can be reinterpreted for validity and truth value,
whether they are in the form of folk art and its successors, or the new popular culture. This basic position at least makes it possible to understand more
of the nature and appeal of the popular, without moral or aesthetic systems
of judgment being introduced, as in the early critique of mass culture.
The semiological or linguistic turn already mentioned is only partially
applied in the study of audience, especially in perceiving the ways in which
symbolic content might be understood by its audience. The more fundamental position is that meaning is encoded at the outset and resistant to
audience perceptions and imaginings. It does not, however, take us far in
the understanding of audiences. Nevertheless, we are at least made aware of
an important issue facing audience analysis. How far is an audience (however defined) constrained by the objective meaning of texts, if it makes sense
to speak of such a thing?
Theory and research into audiences did not go far down the route
opened by questions of this kind posed in this way, however congenial
to the early tradition of effect research. The linguistic and discourse school
of media studies exerted a different kind of influence, since it opened a
door on the practical reality of audience experience, that was constituted
by a particular form and universe of discourse appropriate to the particular
audience, context, and content. Probably the most fruitful and lasting new
development of theory and research on audiences can be treated under the
heading of a reception approach, which incorporates some elements from
each of the three traditions briefly outlined.
The Media Audience
17
The notion of reception is a broad label for bringing together several
associated trends (Alasuutari, 1999; Nightingale, 2003). The central idea of
reception turns on the assumption that in many circumstances of public
communication (open content, public channels) the experience is shared
with others who are linked in various ways—by circumstances, outlook,
motives, culture, location, and so forth. There is an attribution of meaning
that is in some respects collective. The notion of an interpretative community was coined to capture an important aspect of audiences. The bonds of
community were forged by a shared understanding of a given work or genre,
even if not a very firm or lasting basis.
Audiences become open to an ethnographic method of enquiry, in
which features of life outlook and experience are linked to media choices
and to meanings attributed or motives acknowledged. This fitted well in
particular with feminist theory and with the cultural studies approach and
studies of the domestic and family context of television (and other technology adoption) use. Some early examples of empirical research gained special
attention (Ang, 1985; Hermes, 1995; Livingstone, 1988; Radway, 1984). Such
work revalidated everyday media culture in the private and domestic sphere.
It escaped the strictures attaching to the scientistic methods and formulas of
some versions of the ‘uses and gratifications’ approach, although there are
shared roots (e.g., Herzog, 1944).
Audiences so identified are microentities, with particular attributes, thus
far removed from the reality and idea of the original mass audience, or even
from the canonical audience of assembled spectators/listeners for a public
performance in a place designated for the purpose. Thus, fragmentation,
differentiation and flux would be normal features of an audience so conceived, without any reference to the technological and market processes that
have been driving trends of fragmentation and diversity in the conventional
accounting schemes of audience research.
In the context of study of audiences that developed during the 1990s,
in the early days of the Internet, attention seemed to shift from the characteristics of the audience group or its situation, values and outlook and
back toward content, insofar as numerous groupings of fans of diverse kinds
were identified with a view to making sense of the underlying driving forces
phenomena of audiencehood that are both deeply rooted in general and
constantly moving on in detail. The knowledge acquired by way of studies
of fan cultures can have more than theoretical or curiosity value. At some
point, the culturalist approach parts company with the empirical-sociological
spirit and also, some would argue, with critical theory of the traditional kind.
At this time, too, the abundance and diversity of provision arising from
new means and channels of distribution were being interpreted as signaling
the empowerment if not end of the audience as traditionally conceived (the
old paradigm again), an escape from close control and monitoring by the
media powers controlling the main systems of public supply and maybe also
the cold embrace of hegemonic theory of false consciousness. In retrospect,
18
D. McQuail
this liberation looks more virtual than real and, moreover, rather temporary,
as the media industry grip on online media use begins to tighten.
PUZZLES OF THE NEW
The emergence and flourishing of an entirely new media form based on
interactions and interrelations between participants and between content and
receiver or sender seems to have moved the story along and had a big
impact on ways of seeing audiences, in line with trends already under way
(Livingstone, 2004).
The now old puzzle over whether to count use of media of communication such as the Internet or other new devices for access as equally an
aspect of audience behavior as the actual choice and attention that follows
is not really puzzling if one makes certain definitions. In some respects it is
not a new issue, given that it was posed in the early days of mass media
research in relation to uses of media that were largely unrelated to specific content choices (e.g., uses of a ritual, habitual, social kind). However,
the kind of uses made possible by the Internet, involving consultation or
exchange are not easy to reconcile with the traditional meanings of an
audience.
The still developing phenomenon of social media use is particularly difficult to fit within the frame of audience unless we consider the way in which
it is already being monetized by major operators for what is almost the equivalent of subliminal advertising. Certainly the users of Facebook and its like
are envisaged as potential markets for other goods, services, and messages
as they pass through the gates and rooms of the social media village. Equally
or even more problematic for theory are the consequences of interchangeablility of roles of sender and receiver, something that goes far beyond the
question of active response or not. The fairly limited range of uses made of
consumer inputs into conventional formats, whether news or entertainment,
on the other hand, seems assimilable to earlier models of audience participation. There is interesting territory to explore and no need or place for any
dogmatic ruling on the significance or not of the prosumer phenomenon. The
notion of an audience as seen in earlier times also seems largely redundant
when applied to individual intercommunication, although it might stand up
with reference to the expression of personal opinion following blogs, news,
or other communications.
CONCLUSIONS IN RESPECT OF PARADIGM SHIFT
The subtext of this biography was an inquiry into an apparent paradigm shift
from the founding notion of mass audience of 60 and more years ago. One
The Media Audience
19
answer can be given simply, in that the old paradigm is no longer dominant
or alone and largely a straw man, although a useful one. An alternative new
view of audience might be sketched although it would not add up to any
coherent ‘paradigm’, nor be uncontested. This comment may simply recognize the limitations of thinking in models and ideal types. However, the
main elements of an alternative new paradigm would focus on the replacement of a linear model of communication by one of circular and network
connections. The composition and structure of audiences can no longer be
accounted for in broad demographic categories. Communication is not to be
conceived as a sender–receiver transfer of a packet of information. Meanings
circulate in numerous ways that are not open to capture, with various kinds
of intermediation and driven by varied motives and choices. There are no
discrete categories of senders and receivers (the audience), no discrete media
with their own loyal users. Processes of transmission, diffusion and influence
are largely untrackable and unaccountable. It is not theoretically justifiable to
look for links between membership of a particular audience and any knowable effect (a cornerstone of the first paradigm, although the practice will
continue, as much as ever).
An implication, even if not a firm conclusion, of this exploration
is that the initial paradigm was too much dependent on technological
determinism and inadequate theorizing about communication. The fundamental revision of ideas sketched may also seem explicable in terms of
a series of media-technological changes, but much more weight should
be given to the theoretical advances brought about by applying critical
and cultural perspectives and by following through the successes of some
lines of empirical inquiry. The original paradigm has undergone a multiple fragmentation, according to various schools of theory and research
as much as in the media reality that shows the immediate effect of technology. Paradigm change is more a product of thought than material
contingency. No single paradigm can serve all purposes, even if it is convenient to have available a hypothetical counterparadigm for purposes of
argument.
In the circumstances as described it does not make much sense to speak
either of the empowerment of the audience, or of its demise, when we
cannot identify the audience in question. The audience was never as open to
control and manipulation as the original paradigm mistakenly presumed. But
the old way of perceiving an audience has not gone away because it suits the
purposes of many participants in the larger system in which modern media
re-embedded. The story of commercial exploitation or political manipulation
has not been ended by new thinking, multimediality and the coming of the
Internet, although it has become much more complicated. A final thought:
Despite the many changes in the specifics of communication and in societies,
there are still many issues relating to audience that remain in the sphere of
the normative, even if the particular norms undergo change.
20
D. McQuail
REFERENCES
Alasuutari, P. (Ed.). (1999). Rethinking the media audience. London, England: Sage.
Ang, I. (1985). Watching ‘Dallas’: Soap opera and the melodramatic imagination.
London, England: Methuen.
Barthes, R. (1967). Image, music, text: Essays. London, England: Fontana.
Blumer, H. (1946). The mass, the public and public opinion. In A. Lee (Ed.), New
outline of the principles of sociology (pp. 167–222). New York, NY: Barnes &
Noble.
Blumler, J. G., & Katz, E. (Eds.). (1974). The uses of mass communication. Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage.
Bordewijk, J. L., & van Kaam, B. (1986). Towards a new classification of teleinformation services. Intermedia, 14, 16–21. (Original work published 1982)
Carey, J. (1975). A cultural appeoach to communication. Communication, 2, 1–22.
Hall, S. (1977). Culture, the media and the ideological effect. In J. Curran,
M. Gurevitch, & J. Wollacott (Eds.), Mass communication and society (pp.
315–348). London, England: Edward Arnold.
Hall, S. (1980). Coding and encoding in the television discourse. In S. Hall, D.
Hobson, & P. Lowe (Eds.), Culture, media, language (pp. 197–208). London,
England: Hutchinson.
Hermes, J. (1995). Reading women’s magazines. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Herzog, H. (1944). What do we really know about day-time serial listeners? In P. F.
Lazarsfeld & F. Stanton (Eds.), Radio research 1942–3 (pp. 3–23). New York,
NY: Duell, Sloan and Pearce.
Livingstone, S. M. (1988). Why people watch soap operas. An analysis of the reasons
of British viewers. European Journal of Communication, 3, 55–80.
Livingstone, S. M. (2004). The challenge of changing audiences. Or, what is the
audience researcher to do in an age of the Internet? European Journal of
Communication, 19, 75–86.
McQuail, D. (1984) With the benefit of hindsight: reflections on uses and
gratifications research. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 1, 177–193.
Nightingale, V. (2003). The cultural revolution in audience research. In A. Valdivia
(Ed.), The Blackwell companion to media research (pp. 360–381). Oxford,
England: Blackwell.
Radway, J. (1984). Reading the romance. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press.
Tunstall, J. (1977). The media are American. London, England: Constable.