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Media Reception Studies
A broad survey on how audiences make meaning out of mass media
Media Reception Studies broadly surveys the past century of scholarship on the ways in which audiences make meaning out of mass media. It synthesizes in plain language social scientific, linguistic, and cultural studies approaches to film and television as communication media.
Janet Staiger traverses a broad terrain, covering the Chicago School, early psychological approaches, Soviet theory, the Frankfurt School, mass communication research and critical theory, linguistics and semiotic theory, social-psychoanalytical research, cognitive psychology, and cultural studies. She offers these theories as a set of tools for understanding the complex relationships between films and their audiences, TV shows and their viewers. She explains such questions as the behavior of fans; the implications of gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity with regard to the media; the effect of violence, horror, and sexually explicit images on viewers; and the place of memory in spectatorship.
Providing an organized and lucid introduction to a staggering amount of work, Media Reception Studies is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in understanding the effects of mass media.
Media Reception Studies broadly surveys the past century of scholarship on the ways in which audiences make meaning out of mass media. It synthesizes in plain language social scientific, linguistic, and cultural studies approaches to film and television as communication media.
Janet Staiger traverses a broad terrain, covering the Chicago School, early psychological approaches, Soviet theory, the Frankfurt School, mass communication research and critical theory, linguistics and semiotic theory, social-psychoanalytical research, cognitive psychology, and cultural studies. She offers these theories as a set of tools for understanding the complex relationships between films and their audiences, TV shows and their viewers. She explains such questions as the behavior of fans; the implications of gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity with regard to the media; the effect of violence, horror, and sexually explicit images on viewers; and the place of memory in spectatorship.
Providing an organized and lucid introduction to a staggering amount of work, Media Reception Studies is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in understanding the effects of mass media.
- GenresNonfiction
262 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2005
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May 31, 2009
The sheer amount of information covered in this extremely comprehensive literature review is astonishing. In less than 200 pages, Staiger manages to provide an overview of ways that scholars have studied media viewing, including psychological, sociological, textual, and cultural studies approaches; in addition, she offers in-depth accounts of scholarship on fan behavior; feminist, queer, and critical race approaches to reception; and controversies surrounding horror, violence, and sexuality in the media.
Displaying 1 of 1 review