mass-communication-theory

to questions about the role of media. They offer
ways of addressing problems posed by media—of
taking greater control over them. Proponents of
media literacy, as we’ll see in Chapter 11, offer
ways to help us all become more skilled consumers
and readers of media and their content.
What media literacy proponents emphasize is
that it’s not enough for audiences simply to be
active. Audience activity must be grounded on
informed critical reflection. If we are going to
rely on media to make sense of our social world,
then we need to take more control over how we
do this.
A second reason that audience theories leave
many observers unsatisfied is the difficulty these
theories have in explaining media effects. Several
authors we’ve cited have argued that usesand-gratifications
theory developed as a “counter”
to the effects research dominant at the time. Blumler,
for example, wrote that it developed “at a time
of widespread disappointment with the fruits of
attempts to measure the short-term [media] effects
on people” (Blumler, 1979, p. 10). Palmgreen,
Wenner, and Rosengren (1985) wrote: “The dominance
of the ‘effects’ focus in pre– and post–
World War II communication research tended
to overshadow … concern with individual differences”
(p. 12). In a sense, proponents of audience
theory could not allow themselves the luxury of
demonstrating or even postulating effects because
that would have been heresy to the then-dominant
limited-effects perspective.
Critical cultural theorists like Stuart Hall
had another reason for disregarding media effects.
Hall was convinced that effects research was useless
because it largely served the status quo. He
regarded the American focus on postpositivist effects
research with great suspicion, believing that
it primarily served the interests of the media industries.
When researchers found effects, as with
advertising, their findings were exploited to manipulate
audiences. When they demonstrated no
effects or the effects they did find were “limited,”
their work was used to fend off the regulation of
media industries. Hall thought this was nonsense.
He believed that the dominant readings embedded
Chapter 9 Audience Theories: Uses, Reception, and Effects 275
in most media content were obviously propping
up a status quo in which most people were
exploited. But how could he demonstrate this in
a way that would be convincing to someone other
than a neo-Marxist? His answer was reception
analysis—a qualitative research strategy permitting
in-depth exploration of how groups “read”
popular media content from television sitcoms to
punk rock videos. But political economists criticize
reception analysis as providing a different
kind of apology for the media industries because
most reception analysis suggests that people cope
quite nicely with problematic media content.
Individualsnegotiatemeaningortheyengagein
oppositional decoding. Is this so different from the
limited-effects findings produced by postpositivist
effects researchers?
Finally, these audience theories might not
seem as “clean” or straightforward as some of
the other ideas we’ve studied because they are
best regarded not as highly coherent, systematic
conceptual frameworks (true theories) but rather
as loosely structured perspectives through which
a number of ideas and theories about media
choice, consumption, sense-making, and even
impact can be viewed. As Blumler himself said,
There is no such thing as a or the uses and gratification
theory, although there are plenty of theories
about uses and gratification phenomena, which
may well differ with each other over many issues.
Together, they will share a common field of concern,
an elementary set of concepts indispensable
for intelligibly carving up that terrain, and an identification
of certain wider features of the mass
communication process with which such core phenomena
are presumed to be connected. (1979,
pp. 11–12)
Similarly, there is no one theory of reception
analysis, entertainment, ELM, or information
processing. All are quite open-ended. Although
all three began as microscopic theories with a
focus on how and why people make sense of
and learn from specific media content, all have
recently moved somewhat beyond this narrow
focus. All are capable of being applied in innovative
ways to the study of newer forms of media,
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