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Regarding consumption as communication highlights the interpretive aspects of
shopping. In the reverse direction, viewing communication as consumption highlights
how capitalist markets structure media use, in particular how interactions between
people and texts are mediated by the purchase and use of artefacts in commodity form.
Here, the two are combined in a cultural study of media use that investigates the inter-
play between culture and economy, thereby crossing the conceptual gap between
consumption research and studies of media use. This puts a double perspective on
media – as products for consumption and as means of symbolic communication. The
chapter proceeds in four steps. (1) We start by discussing consumption as a process
that begins with the phases of selection and purchase, whose real purpose is only real-
ized at the phase of use, and ends when the product is disposed of, by being destroyed,
given away, exchanged or sold. (2) In the next section, we investigate ways in which
media have been defined and divided, by posing the obvious but surprisingly difficult
question: ‘What is a medium?’ (3) The specific characteristics of media use are
discussed in the third section of this chapter. It turns out that media use is a simulta-
neously situated and situating practice that places texts in contexts, and cannot be
reduced to a linear transmission model built on a strict division of production and
consumption. (4) This leads to an investigation of the multiple power dimensions of
media use, which are crucial to a critical cultural studies perspective. We argue for a
polydimensional conception of power, combining theoretical strands that are
commonly kept apart. The interplay between communicative power and resistance,
and more generally of structure and agency, is scrutinized, emphasizing their mutual
dynamics and internal differentiation, against any effort to construct fixed
dichotomies. This paves the way for the more specific investigation of practices of
media consumption that follows in the subsequent chapters.

WHAT IS CONSUMPTION?
Research on consumption and on media use have developed with remarkably little
mutual contact, based as they are in sharply contrasting concepts of consumption. In
most recent research on shopping and consumption – whether marketing/economic
or anthropological/cultural studies – consumption is understood mainly as the choice
and acquisition of commodities or services, involving a transfer of money. However,
in research on media use – whether in political economy or cultural studies kinds of
reception research – consumption is understood instead as the use of these goods. In
the first case, the focus would be on the act of buying or renting a video, whereas in
the second, the act of consumption would be defined as watching the video.
Consumption research has mainly focused on the phases of selection and purchase,
but it has less often specifically studied media products and even less frequently their
use. Most reception scholars on the other hand have dealt with the ensuing media
use, but they have focused solely on reception, thereby isolating media from other
articles used in daily life.
A striking example of this division is Daniel Miller’s anthology Acknowledging
Consumption, which presents studies in a wide range of disciplines, without ever

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