Audience Understandings of Media Messages

about Child Sexual Abuse

An exploration of audience reception and media influence

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Jenny Kitzinger
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1999
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Audience Understandings of Media Messages
about Child Sexual Abuse:
An exploration of audience reception and media influence

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Jenny Kitzinger
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Thesis submitted for Doctorate of Philosophy

at the University of Glasgow
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1999

Department of Sociology
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8LF
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GLASGOW
UNIVERSITY
UBRARY

|( 50 l (tOflvA 0
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 Audience Understandings of Media Messages
about Child Sexual Abuse:
an exploration of audience reception and media influence

Abstract
This thesis examines media power and audience reception processes
through a detailed study of media reporting and public understandings of
child sexual abuse. It is based on 79 focus group discussions in which
people were invited to write their own scripts (using pictures taken from
the TV coverage) or comment on some anti-abuse advertisements (taken
from the Zero Tolerance campaign). Public understandings are
systematically compared to the content of media reporting and campaign
materials. In particular I explore people’s memories of two cases,
‘Cleveland’ and ‘Orkney’, and their views around specific themes (images
of abusers, notions about stranger-danger, and ideas around sites of

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safety and danger). The thesis explores the diversity of audience
reactions and the different ways in which people may identify with the
characters represented in the media or in advertisements. However, I also
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draw attention to the themes which recurred across all the focus groups
and argue that there is strong evidence of media effects. The thesis
highlights factors in media coverage which are particularly influential. It
demonstrates how ‘story branding’ and the social and geographical
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placing of an event may influence audience responses and examines how
media representations may 'organise the imagination’ through structuring
patterns of empathy. I also highlight the impact of ‘media templates': the
powerful and routine association of one case with another whereby
condensed versions of the past are used to interpret and frame the
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present.

In addition to looking at the media, attention is drawn to readers’ and

viewers’ everyday interactions and experiences. I demonstrate how
audience responses are influenced by embedded knowledge, structural
factors and the social currency of different types of information. The final
part of the thesis discusses the way in which the experience of abuse is
itself mediated by the media environment, and draws on interviews
conducted from the early 1980s to examine how the ‘cultural vacuum’ for
abuse survivors has been transformed. The thesis concludes by
challenging some taken-for-granted media studies terminology and points
to the practical, theoretical and methodological implications of my work. I
argue for a media studies agenda which reconnects questions about
audience reception with questions about media production and content as
well as the structuring of wider relations within society. It is through re­
establishing such connections that media studies researchers can
contribute to contemporary debates about power, control and social
change.
 Contents
Foreword 7
Acknowledgements 12
Author’s declaration 13

Chapter 1 : A brief history of audience theory 14

Consuming the media 22
Appropriating pleasure 28
Audience diversity and deviant readings 35
Outstanding problems and opportunities 41

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Chapter 2: Research design and methods 47
Phase 1 IE 48
Phase 2 67
Transcription and analysis 70
Presentation of data 70
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Ethical issues 72
Media production and content analysis 74
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Chapter 3: Media templates in the (re)construction of meaning 78

The media reporting of ‘Cleveland’ 80
Public recollections of ‘Cleveland’ 84
An alternative media account 94
Identifying and defining templates 100
Thinking with templates 103
Challenging templates 105
Reflections on framing 108
Conclusion 114

Chapter 4: Introducing the Orkney crisis: a key event 119

Orkney in the news - an outline of the case 119
People’s memories of Orkney: introducing the audience data 125
 J. Kitzinger Contents

Chapter 5: Story branding; ‘the dawn raids case’ 135

Media coverage of the ‘dawn raids’ 135
Memories of the dawn raids and script reconstructions 138
Audience impressions and beliefs 147
The branding of Orkney as ‘that dawn raids case’ 158
Conclusion 166

Chapter 6: Story placing: representations of place and community 169

Media accounts: locating the story in place and community 169
Memories of place and script reconstructions 174
Audience impressions and beliefs 178

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Conclusion 198

Chapter 7: Embedded knowledge and the importance of ‘social

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currency’
The discovery of abuse and incest: media coverage and public recognition 207
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Media constructions of ‘the danger that prowls our streets' 210
Media constructions of the ‘paedophile’ 212
Public attitudes and beliefs 215
Social currency: ‘public’ and ‘private’ knowledge 228
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Conclusion 232

Chapter 8: Challenging embedded knowledge 236

The Zero Tolerance Campaign 236
Researching audience responses 240
Common readings 241
Different identification and positioning 246
Text-reading disjunctures 250
Re-negotiating the statistics 251
Ideological opposition 253
Conclusion 256
 J. Kitzinger Contents

Chapter 9: Diversity, resistance and the role of personal 259

encounters
Diverse media consumption 262
Cynicism about the media 263
Demographic variables, identities and political orientation 267
Alternative sources of information 270
Encountering abuse 275
Negotiating abuse: cultural explanations, definitions and labels 276

Chapter 10: Cultural vacuums and the mediation of experience 282

Experiencing abuse in a shifting media landscape 283

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Layers of silence and the absence of models 284
Landmarks and maps: navigating abuse 286
Engaging with the media: representation and communication
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Chapter 11: Conclusion 299

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Effects and Influences 300
New effects research 309
The reception of effects: reflections on power 312
Futility and utility in audience studies: the future of media research 317
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implications for media production practice 319

Implications for content analysis 321

Appendices 326
Appendix 1: Guidelines for discussion of script-writing exercise 326
Appendix 2: The first questionnaire 327
Appendix 3: The second questionnaire 329
Appendix 4: The NUDIST codes used for group transcripts 331
Appendix 5: Example of letter of invitation 333
Appendix 6: Example of information forgotten by the audience 334

References 336
 List of Figures

Page

Fig. 1 The pictures used in the script-writing exercise 54

Fig. 2 Broad structure of the research sessions 61

Fig. 3 Groups conducted for Phase 1 65

Fig. 4 Groups conducted for Phase 2 68

Fig. 5 Examples of TV news bulletins March/April 1991 122

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Fig. 6 Examples of newspaper headlines March/April 1991 123

Fig. 7

Fig. 8
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Examples of news scripts written by audience groups

Comparing audience generated scripts and actual news

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145
reporting
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Fig. 9 Two contrasting TV images of the Orkney landscape 181

Fig. 10 The Zero Tolerance advertisement: ‘By the time they reach 238
eighteen...’
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Fig. 11 The Zero Tolerance advertisement: 'From three to ninety 239

three../
 J, Kitzinger Foreword

Foreword

This thesis draws together two long-standing interests for me; a

concern about sexual violence and an interest in media power.
Bringing these two areas together seemed important, especially as
there have been dramatic changes in the media coverage of sexual
violence during the last twenty years and the media have been a key
arena within which battles over definition, recognition and policy have
been fought.

In the early 1980s I was part of a small feminist group in Cambridge

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which set up a refuge and telephone support line for girls being
sexually abused at home. We had been alerted to the need for such
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provision by the girls and young women coming fonA/ard through the
Rape Crisis lines and Women's Aid refuges established during the
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1970s. We obtained seedcorn funding, an office, a telephone line, and
a council house. Our success in obtaining backing at that time was
partly due to the support of the local Social Services Department which
was increasingly confronting this problem. It was also partly due to the
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view that incest was a particular problem ‘in the Fens'. (This image of
incest as a ‘localised’ problem was explicitly raised in the debate
concerning whether or not we should be allocated a council house).

Around the same time, similar initiatives were being developed by

feminists across the UK (a refuge called 'TABOO' had already opened
in Manchester) and a trickle of books had begun to address this issue:
‘Kiss Daddv Goodnight’ (Armstrong, 1978); The Best Kept Secret
(Rush, 1980); Incest: fact and myth (Nelson, 1982); and, then, Father-
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Daughter Rape (Ward. 1984).

However, it was not until the mid 1980s that the mass media seemed,
finally, to address the problem. I recall the excitement in 1986 as some
 J. Kitzinger Foreword g

o f US from the incest survivors' refuge, gathered around the TV set to

watch ‘Childwatch’, a special Esther Rantzen exposé of sexual abuse.
After that our office received dozens of calls from journalists. Few were
interested in the work we did, or our analysis. They wanted access to
‘victims’ to tell their stories. A year later, we watched with mounting
unease as the Cleveland case made headlines. In Cleveland, the story
was, social workers and paediatricians had assumed sexual abuse
where there was none. Families had been split up, and only reunited
after national outrage.

Since the Cleveland case a series of shifting issues have engaged

media attention: assaults by priests, sexual exploitation in children’s

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homes, abuse by women, and, increasing, recognition of the
victimisation of boys. There has also been on-going concern about
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intervention, including in cases such as Rochdale and Orkney. At the
same time an extensive ‘incest industry’ has become established
(Armstrong, 1994). In the 1990s bookshops have whole sections
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devoted to it, therapists specialise in it and child sexual abuse is
addressed in talk shows, documentaries and soaps as well as, of
course, research projects. From cultural vacuum we have moved to
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multiple representation, from obvious silence and taboo to an apparent

plethora of competing versions of reality.

The research reported here is informed by my own and other activists’

practical experiences of working to combat sexual abuse, and the
questions thrown up by the changes we have observed during the last
two decades. It is also informed by my research experience both within
media studies and more broadly around the issue of sexual violence.

The first research 1conducted in the area of sexual abuse involved

interviews with incest survivors and the mothers of sexually abused
children (Kitzinger, 1988). These interviews, exploring how women
survived and coped with such experiences, were conducted from the
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.., ■„
 J, Kitzinger Foreword

early 1980s onwards. During that time I had very little knowledge of
media studies. My degree had been in social anthropology and, at that
time, my paid work was in the field of medical sociology (examining the
impact of different NHS staffing structures).

In 1989 I moved to Scotland to join the Glasgow University Media

Research Unit to work on a project examining media representations
of AIDS. Later I took on work with the Medical Research Council. It
was not until 1993 that I returned to the topic of sexual violence
through a focus group study exploring media representations and
public understandings of sexual abuse. The core of this thesis draws
on these 49 focus group discussions, which were designed to explore

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how people’s views around child sexual abuse were formed; how they
shifted and consolidated, and how media messages might, or might
not play a role in this.
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Chapter 1 reviews the media studies literature and places my own
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work in the context of existing debates. It gives particular attention to
the developments in media studies during the last twenty years: the
domestic technology approach, theories about audience pleasure and
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research into diverse audience interpretations. Chapter 2 introduces

my main research methods, describing my sample and introducing my
specific data collection techniques. The central section of this thesis,
Chapters 3 to 6, presents a detailed examination of media reporting
and public understandings of two highly publicised and highly
contentious cases: ‘the Orkney case’ of 1991 and the associated
‘Cleveland case’ of 1987. In these chapters I highlight how certain
cases are ‘keynoted’ in public debate and how one cause célèbre
(Cleveland) may become a ‘template’ for understanding later events. I
show how a case may be ‘branded’ (‘Orkney - the dawn raids case’),
and explore the way in which the social and geographical placing of a
story may influence audience interpretations.
 J. Kitzinger Foreword q

This is followed by stepping back from case-specifics and examining

embedded knowledge and the ‘social currency’ of different information
and anecdotes (Chapter 7). I explore people’s understandings about
who is a source of danger to children and where children are at risk. I
demonstrate how public understandings and media representations
reproduce stereotypes about child abusers and emphasise stranger-
danger. 1trace how people’s assumptions and image of abusers are
constructed, not only from the media, but also from the patterns of
social exchange and patterns of silence.

Chapter 8 draws on a different data set: focusing on reactions to the

Zero Tolerance campaign. This was a feminist-inspired campaign,

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taken on by District and Regional Councils throughout Scotland during
the mid 1990s. The campaign was designed to challenge many of the
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embedded assumptions discussed in the previous chapter. I
conducted 30 focus groups to examine how people defined sexual
violence, responded to the campaign posters, identified with the
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images and misinterpreted, re-negotiated or opposed some of the
messages. This chapter examines how people ‘read’ any individual,
‘alternative’, message in the context of their existing perceptions and

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dominant mass media representations.

Chapter 9 reflects on all 79 focus groups in order to address some

common media theory terminology and to explore the operation of
audience diversity. Reviewing my evidence both for and against the
power of the media I locate the processes by which people incorporate
and resist mass media constructions and identify the complex but
structured ways in which public understandings of a social problem are
built up and maintained. This chapter also highlights the interaction
between cultural resources (the available repertoire of explanations,
vocabulary and accounts) and the way in which people may construct
their own personal experience.
 GLASGOW UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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 J, Kitzinger Foreword 'j

The penultimate chapter, Chapter 10, focuses on the views and

experiences of sexual abuse survivors. Here the focus group data is
complemented by revisiting the interviews I conducted during the
1980s. I investigate questions such as: How did research participants
frame the experience of abuse? How did they relate their abuse to
what they saw on the television or in the press? How do mass media
messages mediate survivors’ understandings of what happened to
them? I highlight the importance of cultural representation in helping to
support or undermine different ways of relating to one’s own
experience.

The final chapter, Chapter 11, challenges taken-for-granted media

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terms such as ‘polysemy’, ‘audience activity’ and ‘reading’. I highlight
the key themes which can be demonstrated to influence audience
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understandings. I conclude by emphasising the need to continue
developing methodological and theoretical innovations which take into
account the social and political context of media messages. We need,
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I suggest, to develop audience research strategies which address
theoretical and practical dilemmas and which are firmly linked into the
important sociological and political debates of the day (and of the
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future).
 12

Acknowledgements

1would like to thank my supervisor, John Eldridge. for his enthusiastic

support and critical comment and also other colleagues from the Glasgow
Media Group: Paula Skidmore, Jacquie Reilly, David Miller, Greg Philo
and especially Joanne Yuill, Rick Holliman, Dawn Rowley and Lesley
Henderson. Acknowledgement is due to the ESRC as the work builds on
data I collected as part of an ESRC funded project (Grant no.

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R000233675). I am particularly grateful to all the research participants
who gave up their time to contribute to this study and some of whom
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spoke very openly about a very painful subject. Finally, love and thanks to
Sheila, Uwe and Diana - without whom this thesis might never have seen
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the light of day.
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 13

Author’s Declaration

Chapter 1 of this thesis is based on the section on audience reception

research which I wrote for the jointly authored book; The Mass Media and
Power in Modern Britain (Eldridge, Kitzinger and Williams, 1997). Aspects
of the findings presented in Chapters 4-8 were presented in two previously
published papers: Kitzinger 1994c and Kitzinger 1996. An article based on

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Chapter 3 is currently in press with Media. Culture and Society. The
interviews and the focus group work reported in this thesis was my
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individual responsibility. Some groups were conducted within broader
studies, alongside questionnaire surveys or interviews with journalists. The
40 interviews with abuse survivors and the 79 focus groups were
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conducted by myself apart from 21 group conducted, under my
supervision, by Lesley Henderson, Rick Holliman, Dawn Rowley, Hannah
Brad by and Eddie Donaghy. In addition, parts of this thesis draw on a data
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base of media coverage set up with the help of Paula Skidmore. Thanks
are due to all these colleagues Where I draw on the work of colleagues
with whom I collaborated on broader projects, this is clearly indicated in
the text.
 J.Kitzinger Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 1

A brief history of audience theory

Theorising about audiences has a long history which pre-dates the mass
media. Before the invention of television, radio or even the printing press,
political and military leaders, preachers and playwrights theorised about

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the effect of different types of communication. They were concerned to
move their audiences to obedience or revolutionary fervour, anger or joy,
critical thought or strong emotion. The Ancient Greeks, for example,
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developed highly sophisticated theories about how to impress one’s
audience through the power of the spoken word. Aristotle’s Treatise on
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Rhetoric’ (fourth century BC) was concerned with theorising the art of
speaking and examined ‘the recesses and windings’ of the human heart,
in order to discover how to ‘to excite, to ruffle, to amuse, to gratify or to
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offend it’ (Copleston, 1810 cited in Cooper, 1932).

The origins of modern media studies, however, is usually located in 1930s

Germany with the work of scholars such as Adorno, Marcuse and
Horkheimer. It is these writers who coined the term ‘mass culture’ - a
concept originally suggested by the Nazi Propaganda machine but then
applied to the American capitalist media. Their theories of mass culture
were developed in response to Germany’s descent in to fascism and the
apparent failure of the revolutionary social change predicted by Marx. This
work, collectively known as 'The Frankfurt School’, theorised that the
breakdown of society into a collection of atomised individuals left people
vulnerable to propaganda. It promoted a ‘hypodermic model’ of media
effects whereby media messages were directly absorbed into the hearts
and minds of the people.
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J. Kitzinger Chapter 1; introduction 15

This thesis was chalienged by work carried out by American researchers

in the 1940s and 50s, who were concerned with the role of personal
influence. These writers highlight the role of social networks In mediating
public responses to media messages. Merton’s work on ‘Mass
Persuasion’ (1946) focuses on the importance of reference groups in
influencing the messages which people accepted from political
campaigns. Katz and Lazersfeld’s research on ‘Personal Influence’ (1955)
posits a two-step model of media effects whereby media messages are
mediated by ‘opinion leaders’ who influence how ideas were taken up by
members of their communities.

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The Frankfurt School was also challenged by another strand of work; the
Uses and Gratifications approach. Uses and Gratifications theory is
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diametrically opposed to the ‘hypodermic’ model. In fact, it turns traditional
ways of thinking about media effects on their head. It replaces the
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question ‘what do the media do to people?’ with the question 'what do
people do with media?' Rather than thinking of a media message as a
powerful substance injected into the public mind, Uses and Gratifications
scholars explore how people actively process media materials in
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accordance with their own needs. These theorists argue that individuals
make a conscious selection between the various items of media content -
choosing what they will watch and for what purposes. The degree and
kind of media ‘effect’ will therefore depend on the need of the audience
member concerned and is more likely to reinforce rather than change
beliefs.

The Uses and Gratifications approach, is closely associated, in Britain,

with the Television Research Centre at Leeds University and academics
such as McQuail, Blumler and Trenaman (Blumler and McQuail, 1968;
Trenaman and McQuail, 1961). However, an early example of such theory
is evident in Herzog’s pioneering work in the 1940s on women’s
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consumption of radio serials. Her research is based on interviews with 100

 J. Kitzinger Chapter 1; Introduction 16

women from a variety of age and income groups and provides a

fascinating portrait of women’s lives at that time. She demonstrates how
listeners could use and interpret the same radio serial quite differently
according to their own needs and identifies three main types of
‘gratification’ obtained from these programmes. Firstly, she suggests that
the serials provided an outlet for pent-up anxieties in giving the listener a
chance to cry. Secondly, she states that they permitted a wishful escape
from isolation and drudgery. Thirdly, Herzog argues that the radio serials
provided what she calls ‘recipes for adjustment’. These early soap operas;

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explain things by providing labels for them. Happenings in a
marriage, in a family, in a community are verbalised in the
programs and the listeners are made to feel that they understand
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better what is going on around them. Listening provides them with
an ideology to be applied in the appraisal of the world which is
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actually confronting them. (Herzog, 1941: 69)

This perspective was explicitly articulated by her interviewees, although

some people might interpret their statements as evidence of the
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ideological power of soap opera, rather than evidence to support Uses

and Gratifications theory. For example, one woman who spoke to Herzog
commented:

I like family stories best. If I get married I want to get an idea of how
a wife should be to a husband. Some of the stories show how a
wife butts into everybody’s business, and the husband gets mad
and they start quarrelling. The stories make you see things.
(Herzog, 1941: 90)

Such empirical investigation of radio and television audiences is in striking

contrast to the dominant research paradigm emerging out of film theory in
Britain during the 1970s and ‘80s. The most influential film theory can be
 J. Kitzinger Chapter 1: introduction 17

found in the journal Screen. The contributors to Screen rarely spoke to

real-life viewers. Instead they approach the audience through a detailed
examination of the structure of the text and an examination of how that
text positions the reader. Writers such as Stephen Heath, Laura Mulvey
and Colin MacCabe draw on French film theory and Lacanian
psychoanalysis which emphasises the ‘de-centred’ nature of subjectivity.
Subjectivity, they argue, does not simply exist as a static and unified entity
but is created through language and culture. They use these Lacanian
insights about the nature of subjectivity in analysing films. In particular,
they are interested in how the cinematic text confers subjectivity upon

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readers, sewing or ‘suturing’ them into the film’s narrative through the
production of subject positions (see Mulvey, 1975 and Heath, 1977/8).
Many of these writers argue that reform of film content may be less
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important than the abandonment of structures which smoothly absorb the
viewer. They criticise the realism of film-making Holtywood-style which
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erases the constructed nature of the text (making the editing, framing and
selecting process invisible). Instead, they praise productions which
foreground the machinery of representation (such as the avant-garde
practices of film-maker Jean-Luc Godard (MacCabe, 1980).
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The four schools of thought outlined above represent different ways of

thinking about media power. This brief historical summary is by no means
comprehensive. However, it does point to some of the key variables in the
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history of theories considering media influence (whether in the form of

film, television, newspapers, or radio). Screen Theory presents the
traditional Hollywood film as extremely powerful, forcing the hapless
viewer to take on the identity and ideology pre-ordained by the text. The
Frankfurt school, from a different point of view, adopts a similarly
pessimistic position, whereby the masses are manipulated by the powerful
forces of propaganda. A quite different perspective is presented by the
researchers who highlight the importance of social networks, reference
groups and ‘opinion leaders’ in mediating media effect. An even more
 J. Kitzinger Chapter 1; Introduction 18

fundamental challenge cornes from the Uses and Gratification theorists

who see power lying in the hands (or eyes and ears) of the audience
rather than the media. However, the most interesting challenge of all
occurred during the 1970s with the Encoding/Decoding approach
developed at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.

The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies [BCCCS], led

by Stuart Hall and, later, David Morley, explicitly opposed the assumptions
of Screen Theory. Hall, Morley and colleagues argued that Screen Theory
fails to explore the relationship between texts and actual audiences and

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neglects to examine whether people actually accept the subject position
offered to them and, if they do, whether that necessitates accepting the
ideological content of the film (Morley 1980; 153). Screen Theory, critics
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argue, gives little acknowledgement to diversity between viewers in how
they may ‘read’ the media. The encounter between text and reader is
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viewed in isolation from all social and historical structures and without
regard to audiences’ actual diverse experiences. It fails to recognise that
readers come to texts already constituted as subjects, with their own
preferences, identities and opinions.
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The foundations for developing an alternative approach were laid by

Stuart Hall’s influential paper: ‘Encoding and Decoding in the Television
Discourse’ (1973). This stressed the need to take the communicative
process as a whole - with the moment of programme making at one end
and the moment of audience perception at the other. Hall argued that
texts are ‘polysémie’, being open to more than one reading, and that there
is no necessary correspondence between the message encoded by the
film or programme maker and that decoded by audiences. Hall proposed
three hypothetical positions from which decodings of a televisual
discourse might be constructed: the dominant, the negotiated and the
oppositional (terms derived from Parkin, 1971). The dominant-hegemonic
position was where the viewer ‘takes the connoted meaning from, say, a
 J, Kitzinger Chapter 1; Introduction 19

television newscast or current affairs programme full and straight, and

decodes the message in terms of the reference code in which it has been
encoded, we might say that the viewer is operating inside the dominant
code* (Hall, 1973: 101 emphasis in original). The negotiated position,
involves accepting the legitimacy of the dominant framework in abstract,
but negotiating its application to ‘local conditions’. For example, a worker
may accept a news broadcast’s hegemonic definition of the economic
necessity of freezing wages in 'the national interest’ in order to avoid
inflation but still be willing to oppose such measures at the level of the
shop-floor. The oppositional position, by contrast, challenges the broader
hegemonic framing of the problem - questioning whether wage freezes do

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indeed serve the ‘national interest’ or only the interest of the dominant
class. IE
Hall’s distinction between ‘encoding’ and ’decoding’ highlights the
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possibility that ‘meaning’ does not lie in the text alone. Researchers
cannot accurately predict how audiences will relate to and interpret a
particular cultural product simply by analysing headlines and photographs,
camera angles, lighting, soundtrack and scripts. Paying attention to the
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process of decoding also opens questions of audience diversity and

allows that ‘other discourses are always in play besides those of the
particular text in focus - discourses...brought into play though "the
subject’s" placing in other practices - cultural, educational, institutional’
(Morley, 1980: 163). In other words, people are not blank slates who
approach a film without any pre-existing identity, experience or resources.
They come to the cinema (or TV set) with sets of prior opinions, views and
ideas of themselves. In order to understand the role of the media it is
therefore, Hall argues, imperative to discover how different groups
respond to and interpret any particular programme, to explore the
resources they bring to bear on their interpretation and the discourses to
which they have access.
 J. Kitzinger Chapter 1: Introduction 20

On the surface, this approach might seem to converge with the Uses and
Gratifications perspective. Both approaches acknowledge that texts can
have multiple meanings and that the text/reader relationship takes the
form of a negotiation. Both think about audiences as ‘active’ and watching
television as a social process. Certainly, some of the work inspired by Hall
is reminiscent of earlier work. Herzog’s 1941 study (of women from a
variety of age and income brackets) certainly showed that women took
different messages from the same radio serial. However, there are some
crucial differences between the theories developed at BCCCS and the
Uses and Gratifications research paradigm as it has become established
over time. Whatever the implications of individual pieces of work (and

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Herzog's study is worth re-reading in this respect) the Uses and
Gratifications tradition has focused on how individuals use the media to
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satisfy their needs and achieve their goals. It tends to exaggerate
audience ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’ and rely on a psychological conception of
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human personality which focuses on the media’ s function for the
individual. The work at the BCCCS, by contrast, relies on a social theory
of subjectivity and meaning construction. Hall’s argument is that the range
of ‘different interpretations’ are not free-floating or individual readings but
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are influenced by the social context. Rather than thinking about perception
as personal or private, Hall argues that audience research should be in
the business of locating ‘significant clusters’ of meaning and linking these
to the social and discursive positioning of readers. He is interested in
‘inking in the boundaries of various interpretative communities’, drawing
up a ‘cultural map' of the audience and relating these to social and
political processes.

It was this understanding which laid the ground for a flowering of

sociologically informed and in-depth empirical work with actually
audiences during the 1980s and ‘90s. One of the first, and most influential
of these studies was David Morley’s work on people’s responses to the
popular current affairs programme Nationwide. He showed video