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Five Traditions in Search of the Audience 61

when regarded in the light of the other. One basic reason for this state of affairs
is that there are major differences not only in the extent to which our five tradi-
tions specify three constituents of communication processes fundamental to all
audience research (message, audience and social context), but also in the mode in
which this is being done.
Social science-oriented audience research has succeeded in differentiating, to
varying degrees, the conception of the macro-social system, the media-institutional
environment and the audience as social-psychological entities. It is on this
foundation that social science successfully performs replicable studies of repre-
sentative samples from well defined populations of audiences. Conversely,
humanistically oriented audience studies have offered elaborate theories of mean-
ing and representation to account for the sense which audiences attribute to
media content and which may serve to explain cognitive and behavioural effects
of media use. Recent reception studies have also successfully examined empiri-
cal recipients as social and psychological entities who think, feel and act in ways
similar to those of characters represented in textual discourse.
This situation raises a number of issues regarding the compatibility of the tradi-
tions within the framework of a (hypothetically emerging) comprehensive theory
of media reception and impact. An analysis of methodological similarities and dif-
ferences in audience studies may help to clarify further these and related issues.

Methodologies and Modes of Analysis

Just as one may find two main types of theories in the area of audience research,
one may distinguish between two forms of methodologies and modes of analy-
sis. Social–scientific work puts great weight on establishing explicitly opera-
tionalized categories of analysis, and on keeping – in principle at least – the
phases of theory and hypothesis formation, observation, analysis, interpretation
and presentation of results separate from each other. Moreover, the assumption
is that the researcher’s role in the act of data collection and analysis can and
should be minimized. The humanistic tradition, in contrast, assumes that in
principle, no distinction can be made between the collection, analysis and inter-
pretation of ‘data’. The best a researcher can offer is said to be a reflexive account-
ing of the contexts, purposes and participant roles through which a piece of
research is constituted (Lindlof and Anderson, 1988). Like other forms of science,
however, humanistic scholarship generally is required to abide by the systematic
procedures and explicit levels of enquiry which facilitate meaningful intersub-
jective agreement and/or disagreement.
These two mainstreams of general methodology are often referred to in terms
of the distinction between quantitative and qualitative approaches. While much
of the discussion that is premised on this distinction has obscured rather than
clarified the similarities, dissimilarities and interconnections between the
approaches, for want of a better terminology we use it occasionally.
Effects and U&G research – in parallel with their theoretical orientations – rely
primarily on the social science type of methodologies. Literary criticism and