Professor Sonia Livingstone

This course is available on the MPhil/PhD in Data, Networks and Society, MSc in Culture and Society, MSc in Marketing, MSc in Media and Communications, MSc in Media and Communications (Research), MSc in Politics and Communication and MSc in Strategic Communications. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is 'controlled access', meaning that there is a limit to the number of students who can be accepted. If the course is oversubscribed, offers will be made via a random ballot process, with priority given to students with the course listed on their Programme Regulations. Whilst we do our best to accommodate all requests, we cannot guarantee you a place on this course.

There are no pre-requisites for this course. Students should apply via LSE for You without submitting a statement.

Please do not email the teacher with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place.

This course examines a variety of social, cultural and psychological issues as they relate to the audiences for mass and social media. It analyses people's everyday engagement with a mediated world. We will review the history of audiences and audience research from the vantage point of the present digital age, also examining key theories of audiences’ and users’ interpretation, engagement, fandom and creativity in a global and cross-media perspective. Students will be encouraged to read widely, to forge links with other aspects of media, communications and cultural studies in order to critically examine the positioning of audiences and users within the field, and to debate the nature and future of audiences in a changing media landscape.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the WT.

This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of term.

All students are expected to complete advance reading, prepare seminar presentations, and submit one essay of 1500 words.

• Abercrombie, N. & Longhurst, B. (1998) Audiences: A Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination, Sage.
• Athique, A. (2016) Transnational Audiences: Media Reception on a Global Scale. Cambridge: Polity.
• Barker, M. (2018) Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, Volume 15 issue 1 (or other volumes).
• Brooker, W. & Jermyn, D. (Eds.) (2003) The Audience Studies Reader, Routledge.
• Butsch, R., & Livingstone, S. (Eds.) (2013) Meanings of Audiences: Comparative discourses, Routledge; chapter 1 at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59640/
• Hill, A. (2018) Media Experiences: Engaging with drama and reality television. London, Routledge.
• Livingstone, S. (ed.) (2005). Audiences and Publics: When cultural engagement matters for the public sphere. Intellect Press.
• Nightingale, V. (ed.) (2011) The Handbook of Media Audiences, Wiley-Blackwell.
• Sender, K. (2012). The makeover: Reality television and reflexive audiences. New York: New York University Press.

Essay (100%, 3000 words) in the ST.