MILESTONES REVISITED
One way of encapsulating the field of study has been through systematics
and models, such as Figure 9.1, which identified some main stages of the
communicative process and the traditions of audience research associated with
each. Another means of taking stock has been to identify historical ‘milestone’
studies which, arguably, defined appropriate ways of conceptualizing and
examining the various stages of communication empirically. By way of
introduction, and of joining qualitative and quantitative traditions, this chapter
revisits some of the milestones of audience studies, as received – and sometimes
overlooked – in later research.
Milestones of media and communications research
This figure lays out fourteen milestones, as defined by Lowery and DeFleur
(1995) through three editions of their widely circulated textbook, and adds a
number of candidates from outside the dominant paradigm (Webster and Phalen
1997). While any such listing is essentially contestable, the aim is to consider a
broader range of defining contributions to the field in order to explain, and
promote, the process of convergence between research traditions.
In the case of the established ‘Milestones I,’ it may be especially apparent
that several contributions were shaped by their historical and social context –
from war to political or public demand for evidence on media effects. At the same
time, it is appropriate to note also that the primarily European, qualitative, and
critical perspectives under ‘Milestones II’ bear witness to the impact both of war
and of the cultural revolution of the 1960s on scientific ideas and practice. In both
cases, these circumstances do not disqualify either findings or approaches, but
serve as a necessary context for assessing the specific explanatory value of the
entries and for considering their commensurability in future theory development.
To begin a review of the milestones, a few caveats are in order. First, the
listing considers only publications post-1900. As indicated in Chapter 2, before
the earliest origins of ‘media’ research, most thinking on communication and its
effects had been conducted in rhetorical and aesthetic traditions of inquiry, from
Aristotle’s rhetoric, via Kantian aesthetics and nineteenth-century hermeneutics,
to semiotics – all of which continue to inform contemporary communication
theory. Second, the revised set of milestones remains limited by the fact that so
much of the field’s activities – as currently institutionalized internationally through
journals, conferences, and translation – originates in either the U.S.A. or Europe.
Third, a particular difficulty in selecting additional candidates for ‘milestones’ is
that much previous research, while bearing on reception and effects, has not
always examined audiences empirically. The difficult dividing line between ‘text’
and ‘audience’ is a product both of the rudimentary theorization of content that
has characterized quantitative research traditions, and of the quite recent turn to
empirical audience studies among humanistic scholars.
The two groups of ‘milestone’ studies are noted here for the record, and as a
point of departure for theory development and empirical collaboration. Having
largely developed in separate spheres of research, much of their potential for
convergence simply remains to be assessed. In addition to the affinities between
the Payne Fund and Mass Observation research programs, the diffusion of
innovations, for example, and medium theory, as anticipated by Walter Benjamin,
would seem to share a number of research questions regarding the social
consequences of new technological resources for communication. Further,
agendasetting studies overlap conceptually with much qualitative research on the
socially and culturally specific frames of decoding media texts (e.g., Gamson
1992; Liebes and Katz 1990). Cantril et al.’s (1940) contribution, employing a
liberal mix of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, was an early indication
of what may be gained if research programs as well as individual scholars
reconsider their theoretical and methodological predilections.
The rest of this chapter reviews the contribution of qualitative research
traditions. While being late starters in terms of empirical studies, these traditions
have produced new insight into at least three different moments of the process of
mediated communication. Reviewed in the following section, the three foci of
reception studies so far have been the everyday contexts of media use; the
decodings or textual interpretations of media content; and audience uses of this
content as a resource in other social contexts. The following section discusses
recent proposals for a more inclusive research position of ‘media ethnography.’
Finally, the chapter returns to the importance of ‘texts’ or ‘discourses’ for the study
of reception, and of mediated communication as such, and describes the
relevance of various discourses and other types of evidence for future reception
studies.
