Jemma Shaw

The Nationwide Project was an influential media audience research project conducted by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies

(CCCS) at the University of Birmingham, England, in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Its principal researchers were David Morley and Charlotte Brunsdon.

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 --------------

Morley outlined three hypothetical positions, which the reader of a programme might occupy.

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‗.

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.

Morley argues that 'members of a given sub-culture will tend to share a cultural orientation towards decoding messages in particular ways. Their individual "readings" of messages will be framed by shared cultural formations and practices'

Morley insists that he does not take a social determinist position in which individual 'decoding‘s' of TV programmes are reduced to a direct consequence of social class position. 'It is always a question of how social position, as it is articulated through particular discourses, produces specific kinds of readings or decoding's. These readings can then be seen to be patterned by the way in which the structure of access to different discourses is determined by social position'

Social Status Classifications

The social status of a target audience for a magazine has an impact of the content it offers. Magazines will normally target audiences from more than one of these categories. (Eg ABC or C1&2D)

A higher managerial and professional B middle managerial and professional C1 supervisory, junior management and

professional C2 skilled manual worker D semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers E pensioners, lower grade workers and the

unemployed.

An example of how to use this in a sentence: ―The target audience for Vogue Magazine fall into the ABC1

social demographic.‖

Quantative - including surveys and customer questionnaires — can help small firms to improve their products and services by enabling them to make informed decisions.

Qualitative - about finding out not just what people think but why they think it. It‘s about getting people to talk about their opinions so you can understand their motivations and feelings.

Deductive - Deductive research is the type of social research based on deductive reasoning. Normally, it deals with starting with theories or generalizations, narrowing them down to hypotheses, and finally testing the hypothesis.

Reactive – Making a hypothesis then try to prove the assumption.

Polysemic - the ambiguity of an individual word or phrase that can be used (in different contexts) to express two or more different meanings

Passive - people who listen in order to accomplish other goals.

Active Audience - audience members who already are interested in an organization, issue, or cause.

Dominant Reading - When a text is read by the audience in a way that is intended by the creators of the text.

Negotiated Reading - The process of give and take by which members of the audience interpret, deconstruct and find meaning within a media text.

Oppositional Reading - A critical position that is in opposition to the values and ideology intended by the creators of a media text, usually the dominant reading of a text.

Socio/Economic Group - people having the same social, economic, or educational status

Demographic - Factual characteristics of a population sample, e.g. age, gender, race, nationality, income, disability, education.