2 - Studying Audiences

Summary

This chapter discusses a number of broad and influential perspectives to studying audiences, explains differences and similarities in background as well as explores their main possibilities in understanding the flow of management ideas. In particular, we consider: (1) research in the field of conversation analysis which is concerned with understanding the way lectures and speeches may influence and transform audiences and in turn, how audience responses may affect speakers’ oratorical performances; (2) the ‘uses and gratification’ approach to studying media audiences which focuses primarily on the reasons and motivations for selecting specific media options and the way various audience activities relate to the nature of audience orientations; (3) more critical traditions of media research focusing on how audience members’ interpretations of media messages relate to their social backgrounds and (4) literature on fans and fandom which provides an important lens to advance understanding of how and to what extent audience members take the ideas beyond a mass communication setting and may even become producers themselves.