• What changes have taken place to the ways in which the audience is perceived?
• How have audiences become fragmented in the search for ratings?
• What next for audience research in the 21st century?

Critical Readings: Media and Audiences brings together some of the important developments in the history of audience and media studies and the significant research which has shaped the field until now.

This collection of original research provides students and lecturers in media, film and cultural studies with a better understanding of the rationale, findings and forms of analysis undertaken at different points in the field's research-based career.

Essays by
John Banks, Nancy Baym, S. Elizabeth Bird, Jay G. Blumler, Philip Elliott, Marie Gillespie, Michael Gurevitch, Stuart Hall, James D. Halloran, Henry Jenkins, Elihu Katz, Gerald Kosicki, Paul Lavrakas, Paul Lazarsfeld, L.W. Lichty, Annette N. Markham, Eileen Meehan, Graham Murdock, Virginia Nightingale, Karen Ross, J.G. Webster.

Virginia Nightingale is Associate Professor in the School of Communication, Design and Media at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on audience theory and research practice. She is the author of Studying Audiences: The Shock of the Real (1996).

Karen Ross is Reader in Mass Communications at Coventry University, UK. She has published extensively in the broad area of audience identities. Her recent books include Mapping the Margins (2003), Women, Politics, Media (2002) and Black and White Media (1996).