Audience Studies

This book theorizes the role of media and ICT in today's media-rich global environment and introduces a new argument of audience complexity in an accessible and lively fashion. Based on an ethnography of Japanese engagement with media and ICT in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, Takahashi offers a non-Western case study of some of the world's most advanced ICT users. Integrating non-Western and Western traditions in the social sciences, the book presents a productive new framework for understanding the complex, diverse, and dynamic nature of media audiences in the context of globalization and social change brought on by new media and information technologies. A significant contribution to the 'internationalisation' of media studies movement now underway, the book will demonstrate (1) the multiple dimensions of audience engagement; (2) the transformation of the notion of uchi (Japanese social groups) in a media-rich environment; and (3) the role of media and ICT in the process of self-creation. The study considers the future of a Japanese society caught in the currents of globalization and contemporary debates of universalism and cultural specificity, while at the same time offering a view of globalization from a Japanese perspective.

Toshie Takahashi is Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Media Studies, Rikkyo University, Japan.

List of Figures. List of Tables. Preface Sonia Livingstone. Acknowledgments. Introduction. 1. Audience Activity, Everyday Life and Complexity 2. Conceptions of Japanese Culture and Emic Concepts 3. Ethnographic Research on Japanese Engagement with Media 4. Audience Engagement with Media and ICT 5. Media and Uchi 6. Media, Self-Creation and Everyday Life 7. Reflection on the Audience. Appendix A: Japanese Culture, Family and Media: A Background for the non-Japanese Reader. Appendix B: Methodology. Notes. Bibliography. Index