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there is a political dimension involved in the process of interpretation of audience responses to
texts, through which, by advancing an interpretation one can introduce an alternative to existing
power relations. This means the researcher's job changes where she produces historically and
culturally specific knowledges as a result of the ethnographic encounter. The interpretations can
not claim to be definitive, and are also incomplete. Material obtained by ethnographic fieldwork
or depth interviews are not just 'data' where the statements made by the audience require
understanding of how and why varieties in experience occur. The data requires a sensitive
discernment that these responses are informed by power, contradiction and struggle, so that
interpretations can create new areas of constraints but also the opportunity for restructuring
social relationships, identities and desires. Television not only transmits certain messages but
is a cultural form where certain constraints are negotiated by the audience. In the process of
using an ethnographic method it is essential, therefore, to maintain an awareness of concrete
specificities and an ongoing critical engagement with the ways audiences constitute themselves
through media consumption (Ang, 1989).
Snowball sampling
The conceptual focus of the project was to identify a group of women with certain
characteristics to provide a focus group with attributes in common. To achieve this goal, a
variety of procedures was employed to establish these focus groups including replicating the
'snowball' method used by Mary Ellen Brown when she was researching women's responses to
soap opera (Brown, 1994). 'Snowball sampling' uses an informant as a source for locating other
persons from whom data can be generated and these informants refer the researcher to other
persons and so on with an accumulative result over a period. It is an efficient method of finding
subjects with attributes central to the research problem and the researcher is able to build a focus
group representing an active social network in a community. There is a bias reflected in the
focus group, but this can be avoided by obtaining additional lists of persons in the community
to be interviewed so the researcher can then select the most frequently nominated persons
(Lindlof, 1995 : 127).
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