Uses and Gratifications, Poststructuralism, and Feminism

Audience Reception

In this course, Dr Catherine Happer explores the field of audience reception studies, using a series of contemporary examples to structure her discussion. In the first module, Dr Happer explores the roots and intellectual background of audience reception theory, including the works of Katz, Blumler, and others. In the second module, Dr Happer turns to Stuart Hall’s “encoding and decoding” model, before in the third and fourth modules turning to look at class and gender-based approaches to understanding audience, reception, and representation. In the fifth module, Dr Happer explores the politics and cultural production of fandom, focusing in particular on (fellow MASSOLIT contributor) Professor Henry Jenkins’s work on science-fiction fan communities and the concepts of textual poaching and cultural capital. Finally, in the sixth module, Dr Happer explores the question of whether it is still useful to speak about ‘audiences’, and the increasingly blurred boundaries between producers and consumers of media texts.

Uses and Gratifications, Poststructuralism, and Feminism

In this module we explore the roots and intellectual background of audience reception theory, focusing in particular on: (i) Uses and Gratifications theory and the work of Katz and Blumler; (ii) poststructuralism and academic emphasis on the importance of language in shaping experience; (iii) feminist studies.