Page 165 - Living Room WarsDesprately Seeking the Audience Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World

Notes 153
5 It is interesting to note that Espe and Seiwert (1986) did not find it necessary to paint an
equally detailed image of what they call ‘information viewers’. In this case, they limit
themselves to stating that for this viewer type ‘the medium represents a source of political
and cultural information, further education, intellectual stimulation and debate’ (1986:321).
Why not add to this, for example, the image of the snobbish, hypocritical or elitist television-
hater? Is it perhaps because the researchers themselves identify with this ‘high quality’
viewer type?
6 Thus, although a lot of concern over ‘heavy viewing’ was related to the presumed harmful
effects of watching too much violence on television and so overtly instigated by anti-
institutional motives, generally the researchers, certainly in the American context
‘were…unwittingly co-opted into various economic and political agendas’ (Gans 1980:79).
According to Gans, the researchers were not only being used to support the politicians and
interest groups seeking to alter network programming, but were also indirectly involved in
the networks’ attempt to maintain the status quo. See also Rowland (1983).
7 According to Frissen (1988), this lack of explicit theorization is due to the failure of the
researchers concerned to take a critical and conscious stance toward the common sense
discourse of public concern about the harmful effects of watching ‘too much’ television.
They have therefore unwarrantedly adopted the terms of that discourse without reflecting on
their conceptual validity. Gans (1980:78) also criticizes the lack of reflection on what he
calls ‘the metaphysical assumptions of effects research’, with its automatic emphasis on
‘bad’ effects of the media.
8 This is not the place to discuss extensively the methodological implications of this change of
perspective. In general, my critique implies a profound questioning of the large-scale,
quantitative survey research methods that have been preferred in mainstream communication
research, based as it is precisely on the aggregation of data and condensed
operationalizations of variables. However, ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ research
procedures can—and will—for the time being exist parallel to each other in the social
sciences. It is important to develop more careful and theoretically sound conceptions of the
relative applicability and limitations of both types of research methods and the kind of data
they engender. Bourdieu’s (1984) work is an excellent example of the sophisticated use of a
combination of survey and ethnographic data. His work also points to the importance of
extensive, non-empiricist, theoretically-informed interpretation-and thus, story telling—if
one wants to make sense of any kind of data, something which tends to be denied by
supporters of positivism. In general, ‘quantitative’ methods can be seen as relevant for
charting general, structural patterns (although, as we have seen, in insensitive hands the
patterns found risk to be reified), while ‘qualitative’ methods are indispensible for
understanding forms of cultural meaning and practical consciousness that are hidden behind
large-scale patterns. See, for comprehensive treatments of this subject, grounded in explicit
theoretical or epistemological considerations, Giddens (1984:281–347); Sayer (1984);
Anderson (1987).
9 See, for a related, poststructuralist critique of psychology’s conception of the individual as an
integrated subject with a unified identity, Henriques et al. (1984).
10 See, for an explication of the importance of ‘vagueness’ in daily patterns of social
interaction, Lindlof and Meyer (1987:25).
11 Other situation-transcending factors include the traces of cultural positionings and
identifications that people ‘bring into’ and actualize within concrete situations, such as those
along the lines of gender, class, ethnicity, generation, and so on, as well as cultural
ideologies as to the meaning of television as a social and aesthetic phenomenon. See e.g. my
discussion of ‘the ideology of mass culture’ in Ang (1985a).
12 The limited predictability that sometimes does occur in measured viewing behaviour,
allowing for the statistical construction of ‘viewing habits’, can be explained by the fact that
many people, due to the routines in which they have to organize their everyday lives, tend to