Reception studies - Morley

Morley's studies and reception analysis

It may be argued that Morley's Family Television study is not really a reception study, since it is not greatly concerned with the meanings generated by the audience members for the media texts they receive. Rather it is concerned with the use of TV in the household. Some commentators situate Morley's observations within what they call research into 'everyday life'.

It seems to me that it's not a very helpful or necessary distinction, though it is true that, generally speaking, those researchers who see themselves as working within the 'New Audience Research' are more concerned with the resistive pleasures which audience members derive from generating counterhegemonic meanings, as suggested by de Certeau and Fiske.

What is particularly interesting about Morley's research is that it challenges the neat separation of the categories of 'interpersonal communication' and 'mass media communication'. Switching on the TV at high volume may have nothing to do with the programme that's on, intense reading of the daily paper may have nothing to do with the articles' content. Such actions may signal 'I don't want to talk to you' and are thus more appropriately seen as in the domain of interpersonal communication rather than the mass media.

It's worth considering, in the light of Morley's research just how valid such conventional categorization is. It's also worth considering whether, as some researchers would be prepared to claim, that his kind of research marks a new beginning, a radical break with previous research 'traditions'. Fiske and de Certeau proclaim a previously undiscovered 'semiotic democracy' in mass communication consumption. Indeed, in their view, the term 'consumption' would be totally inappropriate, since audience members are not in any sense consuming meanings, but actively making them. Morley's research tends to support that view, since he shows us audience members making meanings which are appropriate to their social class, their political allegiances, their power or subservience. This, then, raises the question of how predictable communication can ever be and emphasizes, as Berlo put it, that 'meanings are not in the message; they are in the message users'.

Related articles:

de Certeau's views

Fiske's views

Ang on Dallas

Brown on soap operas

Fiske on Madonna

Hermes on women's magazines

Radway: Reading the Romance

Criticisms of reception studies

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