Meanings of Audiences: Comparative Discourses

220 Pages·2013·1.598 MB·English

by  Richard Butsch, Sonia Livingstone

MEANINGS OF AUDIENCES
In today’s thoroughly mediated societies people spend many hours in the role of
audiences, while powerful organizations, including governments, corporations and
schools, reach people via the media. Consequently, how people think about, and
organizations treat, audiences has considerable significance.
This ground-breaking collection offers original, empirical studies of discourses
about audiences by bringing together a genuinely international range of work.
With essays on audiences in ancient Greece, early modern Germany, Soviet and
post-Soviet Russia, Zimbabwe, contemporary Egypt, Bengali India, China,
Taiwan, and immigrant diaspora in Belgium, each chapter examines the ways in
whichaudiencesareembeddedindiscoursesofpower,representation,andregulation
in different yet overlapping ways according to specific socio-historical contexts.
Suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, this book is a valuable
andoriginalcontributiontomediaandcommunicationstudies.Itwillbeparticularly
useful to those studying audiences and international media.
Richard Butsch is Professor of Sociology and Film and Media Studies at Rider
University, New Jersey, USA. He is author of The Making of American Audiences
from Stage to Television, 1750 to 1990 (2000) and The Citizen Audience: Crowds,
Publics, and Individuals (2008), and editor of For Fun and Profit: The Transformation of
Leisure into Consumption (1990) and Media and Public Spheres (2007). He is currently
writing a book tentatively titled Screen Culture: A Global History.
SoniaLivingstoneisProfessorattheDepartmentofMediaandCommunications,
London School of Economics, UK. Her research examines children, young
people, and the internet; media and digital literacies; the mediated public sphere;
audience reception;andthepublicunderstandingofcommunicationsregulation.Her
16authoredor edited books include Making Sense of Television (1998), Audiences and
Publics (2005), The Handbook of New Media (2006), Media Consumption and Public
Engagement (2010), and Media Regulation (2012).
“An original and well organised book, mostly written by young academics, that
draws on comparative and historical insights to make new sense of a key topic:
how audiences are constituted, defined, condescended to, deferred to, anath-
ematised, ‘civilised’, seduced, interact, and are recreated. After reading this book,
you will think about audiences, and discourses about them, in a different way.”
James Curran, Professor of Communications,
Goldsmiths, University of London
“Pooling their considerable expertise, Butsch and Livingstone here demonstrate
that the branding of media audiences as mass, public, citizens, consumers, etc. – in
different times andplaces–isrevealing ofunderlyingpatternsofsocialstratification
and social control. There is a hint here that the study of ‘collective behaviour’ may
have found a new home in media research.”
Elihu Katz, Distinguished Trustee Professor of Communication,
University of Pennsylvania
MEANINGS OF
AUDIENCES
Comparative discourses
Edited by
Richard Butsch and
Sonia Livingstone
Firstpublished2014
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pagescm
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Massmedia--Audiences.2.Massmediaandculture.3.Massmedia--Social
aspects.I.Butsch,Richard,1943-editorofcompilation.II.Livingstone,
SoniaM.editorofcompilation.
P96.A83M3952013
302.23--dc23
2013006475
ISBN:978-0-415-83729-3(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-415-83730-9(pbk)
ISBN:978-0-203-38001-7(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
In memory of Jerome and Margaret.
– Richard
For my parents, who taught me the importance
of translation.
– Sonia
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Notes on contributors ix
Acknowledgments xii
1 Introduction: “translating” audiences, provincializing Europe 1
Richard Butsch and Sonia Livingstone
2 Publics and audiences in ancient Greece 20
David Kawalko Roselli
3 When curiosity met printing: audiences and new media in early
modern history 37
Christian Oggolder
4 Shoppers, dupes and other types: the television audience in
post-Soviet Russian discourses 50
Sudha Rajagopalan
5 Between unruliness and sociality: discourses on diasporic cinema
audiences for Turkish and Indian films 64
Kevin Smets, Iris Vandevelde, Philippe Meers, Roel Vande Winkel,
and Sofie Van Bauwel
6 Producing loyal citizens and entertaining volatile subjects:
imagining audience agency in colonial Rhodesia and
post-colonial Zimbabwe 80
Wendy Willems
viii Contents
7 A consuming public: movie audiences in the Bengali cultural
imaginary 97
Manishita Dass
8 “The mass wants this!”: how politics, religion, and media
industries shape discourses about audiences in the Arab world 111
Joe F. Khalil
9 Egyptian audiences of musalsalat in the eye of the beholder 123
Aliaa Dawoud
10 Senior audiences and the revolutionary subject in the People’s
Republic of China 135
Stephanie Hemelryk Donald
11 The articulation of audience in Chinese communication research 151
Guiquan Xu
12 From qunzhong to guanzhong: the evolving conceptualization of
audience in mainland China 170
Jingsi Christina Wu
13 Active citizenship: the politics of imagining internet audiences
in Taiwan 187
Fang-chih Irene Yang and Ping Shaw
Index 203
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Richard Butsch is Professor of Sociology and Film and Media Studies at Rider
UniversityNewJersey,USA.HeisauthorofTheMakingofAmericanAudiencesfrom
Stage to Television, 1750 to 1990 (2000) and The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics,
and Individuals (2008), and editor of For Fun and Profit: The Transformation of Leisure
intoConsumption(1990) andMediaandPublicSpheres (2007). Heiscurrentlywriting
a book tentatively titled Screen Culture: A Global History.
Manishita Dass is Lecturer in World Cinema at Royal Holloway, University of
London, and has previously taught at the University of Michigan and Swarthmore
College.ShehaspublishedessaysinCinemaJournal,GlobalArtCinema(2010),andThe
OxfordHandbookofGlobalModernisms(2012)andiscurrentlycompletingabooktitled
OutsidetheLetteredCity:Cinema,Modernity,andtheMassPublicinLateColonialIndia.
Aliaa Dawoud has a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Westminster.
Her Ph.D. dissertation was entitled “Utilizing Mass Media in the Political
Empowerment of Egyptian Women.” Her M.A., from the American University in
Cairo, included a thesis entitled “Towards Developing an Arab Public Diplomacy
Strategy:ProspectsandConcerns.”SheistheauthorofthebookHowthePromotion
of Women’s Rights is Backfiring: The Case of Egypt (2011).
Stephanie Hemelryk Donald is Professor of Comparative Film and Culture, and
ARCprofessorial Future Fellow at the University of New South Wales. Her recent
articles have appeared in New Formations, The Chinese Journal of Communications and
Theory,CultureandSociety.Hercurrentprojectsarepresentedatwww.stephaniedonald.
info and https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/professor-stephanie-hemelryk-donald
Joe F. Khalil, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in residence at Northwestern Uni-
versity and a leading expert on Arab television. He is author of a monograph on
Arab satellite entertainment television and co-author of Arab Television Industries