Page 26 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

AUDIENCES

The term peppers the writings of analysts who are not only Marxist
but who are also connected with the Birmingham Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies in Britain. Elsewhere it has been used
to account for certain problems in cultural anthropology, especially the
specific forms of, say, Asian or pre-conquest American modes of
production within a Marxist (i.e. Eurocentric and modernist)
framework of analysis.
See also: Ideological state apparatuses, Interpellation

AUDIENCES

The term audience is used to describe a large number of unidentifiable
people, usually united by their participation in media use. Given the
varying demographics of this group, not to mention variations
between nations, the concept itself is a means by which such an
unknowable group can be imagined. Naming an audience usually also
involves homogenising it, ascribing to it certain characteristics, needs,
desires and concerns. The audience is a construction motivated by the
paradigm in which it is imagined. This construction serves the
interests primarily of three ‘producer’ groups:
. media institutions
. media researchers (including critics)
. regulatory (governmental) bodies.

Audiences enable media organisations to sell advertising or to fulfil
their public and statutory obligations, whether for television, radio,
magazines or the press. It is important to knowthe size, quality
(demographic composition) and characteristics of audiences for this
purpose – these data relate directly to revenue. This accounts for the
continual measurement of viewers, listeners and readers. For media
institutions, the concept of audience allows the exchange of
information and entertainment to become commodified.
For media researchers, audiences may be studied as a ‘whole’ if the
purpose is to generate general sociological data, as for example in the
work of Pierre Bourdieu on taste distinctions in French culture. But
very large-scale statistical techniques nowadays are beyond the reach of
most academic researchers, and are found only among commercial
audience research and polling organisations (see Morrison, 1998). In
media and cultural studies, researchers have turned to the study of

11