Investigating Audiences
- Andy Ruddock - Monash University, Australia
The book is divided into chapters that deal with audience research in terms of concepts and topics. Regarding concepts, Investigating Audiences is firmly grounded within interpretive approaches to studying viewers, readers and listeners.
Further to this, the book looks at the different ways in which media influence can be accessed and the attendant methodological consequences. These issues are then applied to a survey of recent scholarship on a variety of topics such as violence, pornography, video gaming, and children and advertising.
Investigating Audiences will be very useful for undergraduates in media studies/mass communications courses containing qualitative research components and dealing with cultural studies themes and approaches to audience studies.
An essential read for mass media postgraduate students studying audiences in my class and for undergraduates seeking to venture into this area.
This is an excellent textbook and will be used as essential reading on the core, optional and postgraduate modules which I currently teach.