[ecrea] Audiences 2017: A CSJCC/ Bournemouth University Workshop

Audiences 2017: A Bournemouth University/ CSJCC Workshop



Wednesday May 3rd 2017, 09:00 – 17:30.



This event is free, but spaces are limited. Interested parties please 
email Dr. William Proctor to book places ((bproctor /at/ bournemouth.ac.uk)).



 Bournemouth University’s Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture 
and Community (CSJCC) cordially invites you to Audiences 2017, a 
workshop including activities and presentations. I am pleased to 
announce the following scholars will be speaking at the event and 
sharing their experience of audience research, addressing key issues 
such as methodology, ethics and project design.



Professor Martin Barker (Aberystwyth University):



“Not just any old data”: the role of theories and methods in audience 
research.



Dr. Ranjana Das (University of Leicester):



The Audiences of "Offensive" TV: Offence, Affect and Publicness in Front 
of Provocative Screens (drawn from research conducted by Ranjana Das and 
Ann Graefer, and forthcoming book, Provocative Screens, co-authored with 
Anne Graefer).



Dr. Jim Pope (Bournemouth University)



Reader response theory and practice, applied to readers of hypertext fiction



Dr. Richard McCulloch (Huddersfield University) & Dr. William Proctor 
(Bournemouth University):



The Force Re-Awakens: The World Star Wars Project



 The morning will be dedicated to presentations, each focusing on 
individual research projects. Following lunch, we will then proceed to 
participatory workshop exercises designed to address the ‘whys’ and the 
‘hows’ of audience research. The following overview provides a précis of 
workshop activity (with thanks to Professor Barker and Dr. Das).



Audience research is at least to a small extent the awkward cousin of 
much else in media and cultural studies: arriving on bad days, asking 
difficult questions, making life complicated for the ‘family’.  Not 
accepting favoured ‘theories’. Demanding good empirical evidence for 
‘obvious’ propositions. But audience research is also now 
well-established and practised with dedication by an increasing number 
of people in our field.  It has its dedicated Journals, its academic 
sections of major organisations, even occasional specialist conferences. 
 Understanding what we do, why, and how – and of course with what 
challenges and difficulties – is surely important.



The aim of this Workshop is to give you an opportunity to think through 
how and why you might design a piece of audience research on something 
pretty current and surely very important.  In the first part of the day, 
you will have heard four presentations from people who, in different 
ways, have practised various kinds of audience research.  In the 
afternoon, we will hope to make this as concrete and exciting as we feel 
it to be, by taking you through some of the processes that we go 
through, as we plan and design our research.  The topic we’ve chosen to 
build this around is the nature and rise of the ‘new populism’.



A lot of important work (both journalistic and academic) has been done 
on this topic, looking at the rise of specific websites, Fox News and 
radio jock shows, and social media platforms that have played a part in 
this.  There has also been valuable work on the sociology of the 
phenomenon: the rust belt in America, the former industrial towns in the 
UK, and so on.  And – more uncertainly – there has been work on the rise 
of new forms of racism, which is also part of the same phenomenon.  But 
a huge amount remains unknown.  So, what might be contributed if we were 
in a position to explore the media choices and involvements of those 
attracted to the ‘new populism’?



·      What specifically could ‘audience research’ contribute that other 
kinds of research could not – however hard we might think it will be to 
do it in practice?

·      What questions would we be aiming to ask – and how might we in 
theory go about answering them?

·      What would be the biggest barriers to doing the research – and 
how might those barriers be circumvented?

·      What might be our own assumptions as we approach the task, and 
what might we do to stop these blocking us and making us prejudge?



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