2. Introduction…
Professor David Morley is a sociologist who specializes in
the sociology of the television audience. He is currently
Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths' College in the
University of London.
His studies of the former television programme
Nationwide arose from research which was conducted at
the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the
University of Birmingham between 1975 and 1979.
Nationwide was a popular news/current affairs magazine
programme which followed the main national news from
London and included human interest stories
3. Nationwide…
A previous study by Morley together with Charlotte Brunsdon, Everyday
Television: 'Nationwide', published in 1978 involved textual analysis of the
programme.
Although it has many limitations, Morley's study of The 'Nationwide'
Audience (published in 1980) has become one of the most-widely cited
studies of the television audience.
In the NWA study his major concern was 'with the extent to which individual
interpretation of programmes could be shown to vary systematically in
relation to socio-cultural background'
He was investigating 'the degree of complementarity between the codes of
the programme and the interpretive codes of various sociocultural groups the
extent to which decodings take place within the limits of the preferred (or
dominant) manner in which the message has been initially encoded'
4. BBC Survey of Nationwide
audience in 1974…
Social Group
Size
% of Audience
% of Overall
Population
Upper Middle-Class
321,000
5.4
6.0
Lower Middle-Class
2,140,000
36.3
24.0
Working Class
3,438,000
58.3
70.0
Male
2,772,000
46.1
-------------
Female
3,177,000
53.9
-------------
5. Three hypothetical positions…
Dominant reading: The reader shares the programme's 'code'
(its meaning system of values, attitudes, beliefs and
assumptions) and fully accepts the programme's 'preferred
reading' (a reading which may not have been the result of any
conscious intention on the part of the programme makers).
Negotiated reading: The reader partly shares the programme's
code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but modifies it
in a way which reflects their position and interests.
Oppositional reading: The reader does not share the
programme's code and rejects the preferred reading, bringing to
bear an alternative frame of interpretation.
6. Key Words..
Quantitative- Relating to number or quantity
Quality- Degree or grade of excellence
Deductive-Involving or using deduction in reasoning
Reactive- Tending to be responsive or to react to a stimulus
Polysemic-having more than one meaning; having multiple
meanings
Passive audience- known as the audience effect is an audience who
does not interact with media and is just injected with the messages.
Active audience- is a theory that people receive and interpret media
messages in different ways.
Socio economic groups- is a set of concepts in the social sciences
and political theory centered on models of social stratification in
which people are grouped into a set of hierarchical social categories
Demographic-statistical data relating to the population and
particular groups within it
7. Key Words..
Quantitative- Relating to number or quantity
Quality- Degree or grade of excellence
Deductive-Involving or using deduction in reasoning
Reactive- Tending to be responsive or to react to a stimulus
Polysemic-having more than one meaning; having multiple
meanings
Passive audience- known as the audience effect is an audience who
does not interact with media and is just injected with the messages.
Active audience- is a theory that people receive and interpret media
messages in different ways.
Socio economic groups- is a set of concepts in the social sciences
and political theory centered on models of social stratification in
which people are grouped into a set of hierarchical social categories
Demographic-statistical data relating to the population and
particular groups within it
