Laura Lee

DAVID MORLEY & THE NATIONWIDE

AUDIENCE

The nationwide project was an infl uential media audience research project. It was conducted in the late 1970’s and the early 1980’s, the principle researchers were David Morley and Charlotte Brunsdon.

The BBC television current aff airs programme Nationwide was selected to study the encoding/decoding model, a part of reception theory. This fi rst part of the study was published by Brunsdon and Morley in 1978.

David Morley conducted qualitative research with various participants from diff erent educational and occupational backgrounds. A long side this he observed diff erent responses to a clip of its budget special to see whether they would construct dominant, oppositional or negotiated readings (the three categories of readings proposed by Hall).

The initial conclusion was that decoding's cannot be traced solely to socioeconomic position, since members of the sample occupying the same class location produced diff erent readings.

THE NATIONWIDE PROJECT

The reader shares the programme's meaning, system of values, attitudes, beliefs and assumptions and fully accepts the programme's 'preferred reading’

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DOMINANT READINGS.

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.

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NEGOTIATED READINGS.

The reader does not share the programme's code and rejects the preferred reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of interpretation.

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OPPOSITIONAL READINGS.

The meaning of the text will be constructed diff erently according to the discourses (knowledge's, prejudices, resistances etc.) brought to bear by the reader, and the crucial factor will be the range of discourses at the disposal of the audience. Individuals in diff erent positions in the social formation defi ned according to structures of class, race or sex.

Whether or not a programme succeeds in transmitting the preferred or dominant meaning will depend on whether it encounters readers who inhabit codes and ideologies derived from other institutional areas (e.g. churches or schools) which correspond to and work in parallel with those of the programme or whether it encounters readers who inhabit codes drawn from other areas or institutions (e.g. trade unions or 'deviant' subcultures) which confl ict to a greater or lesser extent with those of the programme.

CONCLUSION OF THE PROJECT.

Morley says 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 specifi c 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 diff erent discourses is determined by social position'

Individuals in diff erent positions in the social formation defined according to structures of class, race or sex, for example, will tend to inhabit or have at their disposal diff erent codes and subcultures. Thus social position sets parameters to the range of potential readings by structuring access to diff erent codes.

MORLEY’S VIEW.

Quanti tat ive: quant i tat ive research refers to the systematic empir ica l invest igat ion of soc ia l phenomena v ia s tat is t ica l , mathematical or numerica l data or computat ional techniques.

Qual i tat ive: Qual i tat ive research is a method of inqui ry employed in many diff erent academic d isc ip l ines, t radi t ional ly in the soc ia l sc iences, but a lso in market research and further contexts .

Deduct ive: process of reasoning from one or more general s tatements to reach a logical ly certa in conc lus ion.

React ive: React iv i ty is a phenomenon that occurs when indiv iduals a l ter thei r performance or behaviour due to the awareness that they are being observed.

Polysemic: the ambigui ty of an indiv idual word or phrase that can be used in d iff erent contexts to express two or more d iff erent meanings.

Pass ive audience: people who l i s ten in order to accompl ish other goals . Act ive audience: audience members who al ready are interested in an

organizat ion, i ssue, or cause. Instead of wai t ing to receive informat ion on i t , they seek i t out f rom many sources and when doing so, they speak as wel l as l i s ten.

Socio economic groups: c lass soc iety, i s a set of concepts in the soc ia l sc iences and pol i t ica l theory centred on models of soc ia l s trat ifi cat ion in which people are grouped into a set of h ierarchica l soc ia l categor ies , the most common being the upper, middle, and lower c lasses .

Demographic : Demographics are the quant ifi able stat is t ics of a g iven populat ion. Demographics are a lso used to ident i fy the study of quant ifi able subsets wi th in a g iven populat ion which character ize that populat ion at a spec ifi c point in t ime.

KEY TERMS AND MEANINGS.