IAMCR - International Association for Media and Communication Research

This Section encourages new thinking and approaches to audience research and aims to inspire greater interest in exploring and understanding audiences in diverse settings. Critiques of popular market research strategies and opinion polls and analyses of the profitable sale of audiences to sponsors and owners are welcome. This section is also enthused by investigations of the appropriateness of ‘Western’ theories and methods in ‘other’ settings.

Chair: Virginia Nightingale (*) [contact]
Vice Chair: Brian O'Neill [contact]

(*) Section Head

This section encompasses investigations of the appropriateness of ‘Western’ theories and methods in ‘other’ settings. It is giving special attention to reassessing the theories, methods and issues that inform practices of audience researchers. The nature of audiences as ‘knowledge communities’, ethnographic approaches to researching them, and the extent to which traditional classifications of audiences (masses, publics and markets) are being challenged by the fluidity and ephemeral nature of virtual and mobile audiences are important concerns.

Members of the Audience Section.