Understanding Media Users From Theory to Practice [Hardcover]

Understanding Media Users: From Theory to Practice focuses on the blurred concept of the “active audience” at the core of media studies.

• examines the relationship between media and audiences by one of the world’s leading media scholars
• provides a history of media effects’ and an overview of the current analytical approaches that constitute media reception theory
• charts some of the most important interfaces of media reception and interaction - TV, film, the Internet, advertising, journalism, and tourism studies
• concludes with additional insights into the future of media reception in a global age

Acknowledgments vi

Introduction 1

1 A Passive Audience? Structuralist and Effects Studies 7

2 The Active Audience: Speaking Subjects 29

3 Perceiving is Believing: From Phenomenology to Media User Theory 46

4 Meanings Are Ours: Reader Response and Audience Studies 59

5 The Projecting Audience: From Cinema to Cellphone 74

6 A Phenomenology of Phone Use: Pervasive Play and the Ludification of Culture 94

7 Selling on Screen: From Media Hermeneutics to Marketing Communication 112

8 Buying Brandscapes: A Phenomenology of Perception and Purchase 130

9 Consumer-Citizens: Crossing Cultures in Cyberspace 146

Conclusion: Media User Theory: Going Beyond Accumulation of Audiences 173

References 176

Index 204

“I admire Wilson's synthetic approach to audience study and the attention he gives to the burgeoning field of cell phones, computer screens, and video games since in the past most audience study material has been focused on film and l31