Page 48 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

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Audiences

Stewart M. Hoover

Media change and religious change
Religious authority and media authority
The religious “marketplace”
“Religious” and “secular” media
The culturalist turn in media studies
Audiences in context
Religion, spirituality, and the “common culture”

Audiences are essential to the media. The entire notion of mass communi-
cation depends on the existence, or cultivation, of a large number of people
interested in attending to a given medium. There is, further, a relationship
between generally accepted conceptions of the various media and the
audiences that are attracted to them. For example, newspapers such as the
New York Times or the Washington Post enjoy the devoted readership of the
intelligentsia and managerial elites, whereas Web logs (or “blogs”) command
far greater attention among youth. Thus, media influence varies according
to audience.
Our received ideas about mass communication, and thus media audiences,
are the products of particular times and particular media structures. The term
mass communication best describes a few particular media and particular
conditions of audience practice. It applies to broadcast television over large
networks particularly well but also fits large-circulation newspapers, film,
and the popular music industry. “Mass communication” does not work
so well with other aggregations of media audiences that nonetheless share
commonalities with these examples, such as music performance venues,
specialized videos or DVDs, limited-circulation newspapers and magazines,
and print literature.
A process of rethinking mass communication and media audiences has been
underway for at least three decades. This rethinking has coincided with—
and to some extent has also been encouraged by—the reconceptualizing
of a particular mode of audience practice: the consumption of mediated
communication in relation to religion and spirituality. Seeing audiences anew