MOMENTS OF INTERPRETATION
One focus of qualitative audience studies has been the context of use,
particularly in the household. Whereas predecessors included, for instance, the
British mass observation studies (Richards and Sheridan 1987) and innovative
techniques for videotaping television viewers (Bechtel et al. 1972), the seminal
recent study was by Lull (1980). Referring to the social-scientific undercurrents of
symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and other ‘microsociology,’ and
relying on prolonged observation of television viewing in American households,
the study developed a typology of the ‘social’ uses of television. On the one hand,
it went beyond the individual focus of uses and gratifications research; on the
other, it restricted the definition of ‘social’ uses to the private family setting, and
did not address the uses of media for political, economic, or cultural purposes in
the public domain. The typology noted, first, the ‘structural’ uses of television in
generating an environment or atmosphere, and in regulating, for instance,
bedtime. Second, the study documented several ‘relational’ or interactional uses
of television, for example, for facilitating or avoiding contact between parents and
children, or between spouses.
A number of later studies have examined how media are integrated with and,
to a degree, modify other everyday activities (for overviews see Alasuutari 1999;
Moores 1993). Despite research considering media use in public places (Lemish
1982), in quasi-public settings such as a prison (Lindlof 1987), or in peer groups
(Buckingham 1993), the focus has remained on households and the dynamics of
family life, with some reference to other social contexts (e.g., Gauntlett and Hill
1999). This is explained, in part, by the simultaneous focus of reception studies
on the television medium, which has lent itself as a convenient reference point in
exploring the family as a natural social and cultural unit.
Radio, while generally under-researched (presumably in part because its
heyday came before the institutionalization of media research, which coincided
with the rise of television), has received less attention, but has been studied, for
instance, in a historical perspective (e.g., Moores 1988; Scannell 1988). Similarly,
print media, from newspapers and magazines to books, which are eminently
transportable and adaptable to different social circumstances, apparently have
rarely been studied on site. Although this may be due to the seemingly solitary
experience of reading, print media have a range of social uses, from seeking to
ward off contact, and for individual readers to establish a separate social sphere
in which they can be ‘absent’ though present (see Radway 1984). The film
medium, again, has been studied more as an artform than as a social practice,
although recent work has begun to cover the decoding of films as well as the
social acts of going to movies, and sharing the experience with others (e.g., Barker
and Brooks 1998; Gomery 1992; Stacey 1994; Stokes and Maltby 1999a,b). The
reception literature also includes studies of how several media enter into the
everyday lives of individuals and families (e.g., Barnhurst and Wartella 1998;
Jordan 1992).
As with work by Lull (1988b, 1991), some studies have employed
participating observation to produce a fine-grained analysis of media in a
particular locale (e.g., Gillespie 1995). However, in a number of cases, the main
method of data collection has, in fact, been qualitative interviewing, whether
individually or in groups (e.g., Gray 1992; Hobson 1980; Morley 1986). While
relevant, interview methodologies depend on the respondents’ introspection,
retrospection, and verbal recollection of their actions, which necessarily
reproduce events from a current perspective. Particularly in research on the
concrete contexts of media use, a weighing of the strengths of observation and
interviewing, depending on the purpose of study, is thus of the essence.
Observational studies, in their turn, have rarely been able to capture
audience members’ response to particular narratives and other content elements.
Indeed, Lull (1980) did not explicitly relate the different social uses of television,
and their relative prominence, to different genres. One tendency of reception
studies so far, then, has been for observational studies to detail the everyday lives
of people around media, and for interview studies to probe their interpretations of
specific media discourses.
It should be added that computer media pose new challenges as well as
opportunities for research on the contexts of media use. Over and above the
various physical locales in which new media are used – households, cybercafés,
peer settings – the computer tends to blur the distinction between medium and
context (Jensen 2000a). Compared to, for instance, television, where social
interaction occurs around, and with reference to, the medium as a distinct
technological and cultural artefact, social interaction is itself constitutive of many
genres of computer media, from chat to online gaming. If the interaction ends, the
medium simply becomes inoperative. In this regard, interactivity is not merely an
offer, but a requirement and a condition of computer-mediated communication.
This condition entails a different conceptualization and operationalization of
‘media’ and ‘contexts,’ and may lead research to explore, in more concrete terms,
the performative aspects of media use.
