Audience Reception

About this Course

About the Course

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.

About the Lecturer

Dr Catherine Happer is the Director of the Glasgow University Media Group. She primarily works as a Sociologist at the University of Glasgow, with a focus on examining the role of the media in the construction of public understanding and belief. Before working in academia, she previously worked as an Audience Researcher and later Factual programme-maker at the BBC. In 2015, Catherine launched a new Masters in Media, Communications and International Journalism at Glasgow University.