MEDIA DISCOURSES AS RECEIVED
A recurring issue—in ‘ethnographic’ studies, in reception analysis, but also in
quantitative research traditions—has been the status of the text in audience
studies. A specific aim of qualitative audience research has been to develop a
conceptual understanding of the media– audience nexus that would not privilege
one or the other side. From the outset, reception analysis was motivated by a
concern that, in humanistic textual studies, the media text was being reified, or at
least privileged as a source of evidence. In response, some researchers have
worried that reception studies would themselves lose sight altogether of the texts
which are, in fact, received and interpreted (e.g., Brunsdon 1989). In this regard,
reception studies might repeat the mistakes of some quantitative audience
research that has neglected the specific cultural forms in which ‘content’ is
communicated. Such worries were reinforced by influential theoretical
contributions which asserted that (media) texts are ‘empty,’ waiting only to be
filled with meaning by audiences acting as ‘interpretive communities’ (Fish 1979).
Other interventions seemed to overemphasize, in semiotic terms, the ‘polysemy’
of media texts – the variability and indeterminacy of the meanings which
audiences might attribute to them (Fiske 1987). Eco (1976: 150) even suggested
the possibility of ‘semiotic guerilla warfare,’ as performed by media audiences as
well as analysts.
The challenge for reception analysis has been, and remains, to perform
audience-cumcontent analysis – comparative studies of media discourses and
their interpretation and uses by specific audiences. This section presents some of
the key concepts which have been developed for this purpose, before describing
the several types of ‘texts’ which are relevant for empirical reception studies.
An important legacy of literary theory for empirical reception analysis has
been the notion of the reader, or ‘audience in the text.’ While resembling earlier
notions of ‘point of view’ in literary genres, the argument is that texts literally
anticipate and ‘inscribe’ readers into their structures. The idea was developed into
analytical tools within several research traditions – by 1960s structuralism and
semiotics on how texts ‘enunciate’ their message to readers, and perhaps most
influentially by German reception aesthetics. Jauss (1982) advanced the concept
of a ‘horizon of expectations’ within which a reader encounters a text; Iser (1976)
identified the structural ‘blanks’ of a text as an invitation for the reader to complete
it, and later outlined a more inclusive ‘literary anthropology’ (Iser 1989). Eco
(1987), further, contributed a distinction between texts which, respectively, are
‘open’ or ‘closed’ in terms of their range of potential decodings. Eco also
distinguished between ‘interpreting’ a text along the lines suggested by its
structural attributes, and ‘using’ a text for the reader’s more or less idiosyncratic
purposes – perhaps reading it against the grain
Whereas literary reception studies have remained largely preoccupied with
the texts themselves, a number of its concepts have thus proven applicable to the
study of media audiences. Here, the concept of ‘interpretive communities’ has
been particularly influential. A helpful redevelopment for empirical purposes has
been Potter and Wetherell’s (1987) more operational notion of ‘interpretive
repertoires.’ Rather than assuming that individuals ‘belong’ to delimited
communities, the latter notion suggests that they rely on a range of repertoires,
depending on their own background, the text at hand, as well as the particular
context of media use. Accordingly, data analysis can trace the semantic relations,
metaphors, and other interpretive procedures that different respondents employ
(e.g., Jensen 1990). As such, ‘interpretive repertoires’ avoid the implication either
that ‘interpretive communities’ are monolithic formations, or that they are
constituted entirely ad hoc, for each text and reading, or by analogy to fan groups.
One promising perspective for audience research, and for media studies
generally, is that such interpretive categories may be mapped onto
sociodemographic categories, thus enabling research to explore both discursively
and socially specific aspects of mediated communication.
