Ang in retrospect

Over her career, Ien Ang has had an incredible influence and impact on the field of Media studies. From her theories concerning the representations of ethnicity and migration in “On Not Speaking Chinese”, to her work investigating the “culture paradox” in regard to the influence western and American ideologies have influence Australia’s culture, despite its geographical proximity to Asian culture.

Arguably her most influential work has focused more on methodological approaches to media research. Ang’s theories and views on the issues surrounding “critical” audience research have proven somewhat revolutionary. Inspiring a new generation of media scholars to approach audience research with much more attention on the audience as “active” in its reception of media texts, dependent on the contexts in which the text is received and the personal stance the viewer takes.

Despite receiving heavy criticism from media scholars for being too bias towards qualitative research methods - and for having issues of validity within her own methodology – Ang has been noted as one of the founder of the Empirical and “critical” active audience research movement, a movement that has changed the way in which audiences are thought of in media studies.  Today, researchers have refined the ideas of Ang and Morley to devise an overall more valid and accurate way of representing mass media audiences. This, in turn, can only lead to a better understanding of the social implications of ideologies and hegemonic ideas that are conveyed (both implicitly and explicitly) through contemporary media texts.

Ang: A "Critical" Critique

Despite their revolutionary views on empirical audience research, the movement lead by theorists such as Ang and Morley were not without their critics. It was argued that Ang’s faith in qualitative research was largely unjustified because she had been too critical of previous media research involving quantitative methods. Ang was also criticized for the holes in her methodology when writing “Watching Dallas”. For example, her sampling method, in which she advertised in a woman’s magazine posing the question;

‘I like watching the TV series Dallas but get odd reactions to it, would anyone like to write and tell me why you like, or dislike it? I should like to assimilate these reactions into my university thesis.’

There were several issues with this sampling method. As it was targeted specifically at a female audience; the number of female responses to the advert outnumbered the males tenfold. This showed a clear bias in the accessibility of the experiment to men, it was therefore decided that any conclusions drawn from Ang’s research would be invalid, as it was not representative of the whole demographic of “Dallas”.    

This criticism shows Ang in a somewhat hypocritical light. It has been said that the “active” audience research movement lacked certain methological validities. Criticisms aside, it cannot be denied that Ang and the movement towards empirical audience research have been revolutionary, if not misguided, in the field of media and mass cultural research. More recent methological theories have shifted to an equal balance of quantitative and qualitative research methods, such as the example of Schlesinger, Dobash, Dobash and Weaver, (1992) mentioned before.

References:

Livingstone, S (1993) "The rise and fall of audience research: an old story with a new ending", LSE Research online.

Miller, J (2010) "Review of introduction to Ien Ang's watching Dallas", Wordpress

Ang's Influence in Audience Research.

In the last entry I explored one of Ien Ang's most important works looking at audience research and its pitfalls. Her reclassification of "critical" audience research as a context dependent term has, in many ways, been a corner stone in media research. In this entry, I will explore the ways in which media researchers have been influenced by Ang's work.

Within the field of audience research, there has been what has been described as “a shift towards active audience research” that follows the metaphorical ‘path’ forged by leading theorists such as Morley and Ang have carved. Theorists such as Livingstone (1990, 1994) and Moores (1993) have looked at how media and new media technologies have integrated themselves into domestic life. Such theorists have also studied the diversity of textual interpretation and everyday audience discourse in terms analytical paradigms such as gender.

One article, in particular describes the application of the new ways of thinking. A study of Canadian households (Canada being recognised as a nation of high media consumption) looked at the ways in which the family dynamic affect media consumption. Another study described in the article, was that of Schlesinger, Dobash, Dobash and Weaver (1992). This study involved the analysis of women’s responses to televised violence against women.

“(Schlesinger, Dobash, Dobash and Weaver, 1992) obtained quantitative data from questionnaires about personal backgrounds and individual responses to screenings of televisual violence as well as qualitative data from group discussions”

[“The Active Pursuit of Active Viewers: Directions in Audience research”, Debra Clarke, Page 4]

This kind of methodology is an example of “active” audience research, as it accounts for individuality and contextual understanding of text interpretations. In the next entry, I will be focussing on the negative implications of “active” audience research, as well as Ang’s personal critics.

References:

http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/1138/1057

[“The Active Pursuit of Active Viewers: Directions in Audience research”, Debra Clarke Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 25, #1 (2000)]  

Ang on: The Politics Of Media Research

It may be argued that one of Ang's most acclaimed articles concerns the topic of empirical audience research. In short, the way in which media audiences are studied and therefore represented when analysing a media text or format. The article entitled On the Politics of Empirical Audience Research analyses the work of David Morley, a respected media researcher. In the article, Ang discusses the ethical and political issues surrounding audience research in media studies. In particular, she criticises commercial research that is purely based on statistics and ratings. Saying that to achieve a "critical" and empirically valid analysis of an audience, qualitative data must be used.This is because Ang agrees with Morley's reasoning; that ratings analysis does not account the social, political and environmental context of how a member of a media audience receives the product in question. It is therefore logical that qualitative data (in the form of interviews and questionnaires) would provide a much more detailed and valid analysis of the way in which audiences receive media products.

Ang also expands on Morley’s work in this article. She focusses on the difference between “mainstream” and “critical” research, saying that: 

“I am proposing an open and contextual definition of critical research, one that does not allow itself to rest easily on pre-existent epistemological foundations but, on the contrary, is reassessed continuously according to the ways in which it contributes to our understanding of the world”. 

[ P177 - Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks ]

This clear, but in itself “open”, definition of critical research allows for a more in depth and contextually valid analysis of a media audience.

It is this expansion of Morley’s work that I will be focussing on in the next instalment. What impact has this article and point of view has had on the field of audience research?

References:
Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks : Durham & Kellner (2006) Blackwell

Ien Ang: An Introduction

Born in Java, 1954, Ien Ang was schooled in the Netherlands. She is a co-founder, and professor of Cultural studies at, the University of Western Sydney after receiving her doctorate in Social and Cultural Sciences from the University of Amsterdam in 1990. Her work in the field of Media studies has focussed largely on the nature of media audiences and theoretical issues of media consumptions. Her books such as “Desperately Seeking the Audience” have illustrated key cultural differences in media production and its impact on the respective audiences. For example; the differences in how European public service broadcasters and American commercial television companies value the respective audiences.

Ang has also written books concerning the issues of ethnicity and migration in the world of media – in particularly, Australia-Asian relations in contemporary media. “On not speaking Chinese” is an example of Ang’s research into the meaning of national identity in contemporary media. This book also looks at the differences between “Asian” and “Western” cultures and the “paradox” of the Australian “western-like” culture.  

In 2001, Ang was awarded the Centenary Medal for “service to Australian society and the humanities in cultural research”. She currently works as a cultural commentator in Australia and a Council member at the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She is considered one of the global leaders in cultural studies and media theory. For this reason, I will be analysing Ang’s research, her published theories, and ideas in an attempt to understand the ever changing, global media-audience relationship and what influence cultural identity can have on it.    

References:

Ang, I (1991) "Desperately seeking the audience", Routledge 

www.connect.in.com/ien-ang/biography-122579.html 

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8431231-on-not-speaking-chinese