Television, Audiences and cultural studies

Bismuth

Outcome of last posting was I have spoken to SE regarding what to pursue next in terms of my research..it was suggested that I continue to read (lit review) as you know not an element I feel comfortable with but will have to get on and do! I've just read through my paper for Module: Project Management and System Thinking DE0949 together with Gantt Chart...the reason for this is I want ascertain where i have come from and where I need to go to next. Hence the title above I've decided to take another perspective and that is to look at audience studies, I  may have hinted on this in blog posting discussing Thomas Struth. 
Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies, David Morley draws on a body of empirical (experimental, observational) work to examine the emergence, development and future of television audience research. Further it looks at articulating private and public spheres of experience in social organisation of space, time and community. Looking over methodology I have pointed out that this is an area much considered to cover...what interested me (p1 introduction) was Morley quote, 'of returning over and over again to the same old questions about cultural power, sometimes reformulation those questions in different ways, and at various points shifting the angle of vision from which the questions have been asked'...This is something i plan to do, I guess it is matter of reframing the question many times to establish  where new meaning could possibly emerge??
to confirm...audience work is normally put into two areas a) is not passive, but active and b) media content (Important rather than where it is being watched or where) is polysemic (a sign, word of phase that contains lots of meanings) and open to many different interpretations. the question posed here is what these assumptions are taken mean and there theoretical and empirical (observations) consequences are..? Evans (1990) 

P 177. Ang (1989) raises the essential question of what kind of knowledge empirical research on audiences can produce. in short, what are the politics of audience ethonography? she continues to insist that doing research is itself a discursive (moving from topic to topic without order ) practice which can ever hope to produce historically and culturally specific knowledge's which are the result of equally specific discursive encounters between researcher and informants. Research is thus, from her point of view, always a matter of interpretating, (or indeed constructing) reality from a particular position, rather than the positivist approach of assuming that a correct scientific perspective will finally allow us to achieve the utopian dream of a world completely known in the form of indisputable facts.
P186. according to Hammersley and Atkinson, ethonography can be understood as...one social research method,...draws on a wide range of sources of information. The ethonographer participates in peoples lives for extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions...collecting whatever data is available to throw light in the issues with which he or she is concerned.

ongoing...not sure where this is going but opening the window as SE states and seeing whats out there...I think I need to get an up to copy of this book 1992 is it publish date...so much has happened since then in terms of how we watch tv, new tech advances, means we can basically watch anywhere, anytime...the tv does not keep us situated in time and place we now I guess keep it for when we please???

Finally I started with the 1st year students an assignment based on conversations and how random they are in may different situations...there is no outcome set for this just to consider the creative process. Ideas and how they can be extended upon and in what method etc etc. however this has proved difficult for the students to grasp, it is clear that they don't understand what is expected of them? not being able to settle on something and see it through is also problematic and finally they are not excited..I plan to talk to them this week and look to iron out issues,  go through assignment and initiate tasks. I also want to work towards a small public exhibition to ascertain if that will fire them up??? shall let you know.

signing off