Page 58 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Aud ence Power to Res st |

that limited advertising in children’s television programming; Christian groups
have boycotted films or television programs into financial death; and Bill Ma-
her’s Politically Incorrect was forced off the air in 2002 after his controversial
comments concerning the 9/11 terrorist attacks led to a threatened boycott of his
show’s advertisers. On one hand, media producers have often proven remark-
ably indifferent to their everyday consumers’ requests, but on the other hand,
many media corporations live in constant fear of offending highly mobilized
consumer groups (as with the Christian Right through such groups as Focus on
the Family), and thus self-censor in order to avoid audience rebellion.
To some, the most obvious and effective form of audience rebellion would en-
tail turning off the television, radio, CD player, and so forth. However, avoiding
the media proves increasingly hard in a mediated world, and with all the infor-
mation and entertainment that we receive from the media, to mix metaphors, a
“cold turkey” approach risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Moreover,
going cold turkey still leaves the messages there for other consumers. As such,
the continuing challenge for consumers will be to navigate through the media
in ways that expose them to their better messages, yet with viewing strategies,
awareness, and media literacy to avoid and/or see through the detrimental ones.
In the meantime, any discussion of media effects must remember that media
consumption never happens in a blank setting: rather, we approach any act of
consumption in a certain place, with a certain mindset, perhaps with a certain
group, and all of these variables change the nature of our interaction with the
media. Media effects are never just about messages and about the media: they
are also about the complex history of the audience, and all study of media effects
therefore requires close study of the audience.
see also Celebrity Worship and Fandom; Children and Effects; Communica-
tion Rights in a Global Context; Cultural Appropriation; Cultural Imperial-
ism and Hybridity; Media Literacy; Media Reform; User-Created Content and
Audience Participation; Violence and Media; Women’s Magazines; Youth and
Media Use.
Further reading: Bird, S. Elizabeth. The Audience in Everyday Life: Living in a Media World.
New York: Routledge, 2003; Brooker, Will, and Deborah Jermyn, eds. The Audience Stud-
ies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2002; Condit, Celeste. “The Rhetorical Limits of Poly-
semy.” In Television: The Critical View, 5th ed., ed. Horace Newcomb. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994; Fiske, John. Television Culture. New York: Routledge, 1987; Fiske,
John. Understanding Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 1989; Gillespie, Marie. Media
Audiences. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 2006; Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poach-
ers: Television Fans and Participating Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992; Katz, Elihu, and
Tamar Liebes. The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas. Cambridge:
Polity, 1994; Morley, David. Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. New York: Rout-
ledge, 1992; Ross, Karen, and Virginia Nightingale. Media and Audiences: New Perspec-
tives. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 2003.
Jonathan Gray