Investigating audiences - Andy Ruddock

Picking up on some of the themes developed in his critically acclaimed book Understanding Audiences (SAGE, 2000),
this new book on audience research focuses on qualitative methods and will draw upon students own media experience.

The book is divided into chapters that deal with audience research in terms of concepts and topics.
Regarding concepts, Investigating Audiences is firmly grounded within interpretive approaches to studying viewers, readers and listeners.

Further to this, the book looks at the different ways in which media influence can be accessed and the attendant methodological consequences.
These issues are then applied to a survey of recent scholarship on a variety of topics such as violence, pornography, video gaming, and children and advertising.

Investigating Audiences will be very useful for undergraduates in media studies/mass communications courses containing qualitative research components and dealing with cultural studies themes and approaches to audience studies.

Andy Ruddock lectures in Communications and Media Studies at Monash University. He has authored four books on researching media influence. Andy is known for his work on Cultivation Theory. He has published over 50 book chapters and journal articles, applying this theory to media violence, gaming, reality TV, political celebrity pornography, drug and alcohol abuse, sport and media education. Andy is currently writing Cultivation Theory and Digital Media Challenges. This new book details the history of cultivation theory and explains its relevance to contemporary "isms"; activism, sexism, Trumpism, and extremism.