Contends that Martin Allor ("Relocating the Site of the Audience," same issue) ignores, misunderstands, or misrepresents the "dominant" social science tradition in audience studies. Focuses on the contributions of critical approaches to the study of media audiences. (MS)

Responds to Martin Allor's "Relocating the Site of the Audience" (same issue). Suggests that the audience precedes the text. (MS)

Points out that Martin Allor ("Relocating the Site of the Audience," same issue) sets aside three relevant interdisciplinary matters: (1) the historical development of certain of the areas of theoretical work examined; (2) the choice of theoretical terms; and (3) the ongoing discursive/nondiscursive debate with respect to the material…

Examines the discursive construction of audience identity at a public radio station in New Mexico by investigating listener letters printed in the radio station's newsletter. Shows how the letters frame the audience in particular ways. Discusses listener letters as an ongoing text, and spatial discourse as metacommunication. (SR)

Replies to Martin Allor's article, "Relocating the Site of the Audience" (same issue). Discerns in it a struggle between textualism and realism. (MS)

Replies to responses (same issue) to the author's "Relocating the Site of the Audience." (MS)

Argues that, in terms of demography of attention, broadcast economics, the excitation of wide public commentary, and First and Third World media dependency issues, American Olympic television is a worthwhile object of scrutiny for mass communication researchers. Appraises two studies by Thomas Farrell and Eric Rothenbuhler (same issue). (SR)

Reformulates the audience autonomy debate in epistemological terms. Outlines a model of the audience member as a lay theorist who develops a hierarchically structured theory system that is based on and tested against everyday experience, including experience supplied by the mass media. (PRA)

Analyzes the status of the audience as a theoretical construct. Argues against the usefulness of a unified conception of audience effects. Develops an epistemological framework for reconstructive theorizations of the concrete structures and practices studied as audience issues. (MS)

Addresses trends in ethnographic studies of media audiences. Asserts that, although rethinking of ethnography is necessary, it has the potential to paralyze research and continue building an abstract theoretical narcissism. States that the future of cultural audience studies lies with attempts to improve ethnographic practice. Argues that feminist…

Identifies the significance of the long-running debate among religious broadcasting professionals and religion practitioners regarding the size of the audience for religious television. (MS)

Suggests that conflicts in early Soviet literature over reader's identity and function presages many issues in critical understanding of audiences, especially as reflected in the antithetical Frankfurt and Birmingham School positions. Argues that how the mass reader was invoked, defined, and appropriated for institutional needs in the Soviet…

Critically reviews several intellectual developments that have legitimized the study of popular culture in American universities in recent years, including (1) a sociological perspective that minimizes the differences between high and popular culture, (2) a broadening of what can be studied as a "text", and (3) increasing attention to the…

Presents a fantasy theme analysis of the nuclear war issue derived from a comparison of personal statements and the film "The Day After" and its resulting complex rhetorical vision. Notes the vision's irony and discusses its implications for the nuclear war issue. (JD)

Claims that most television research ignores the connections between its symbolic and economic influences. Argues for an integrated approach that views television as both a commodity and an artifact. Describes five analytical categories that researchers could use to provide information illuminating these relations to the public. (JD)