Audience Reception Studies

We read Janice Radway's article Woman Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context which was a response to mainstream communication research. It included both direct and indirect effect perspectives. We discussed how mainstream theories place meaning of a text within the context of the text itself. The reading questions what you do with what your given an why: the info such as a romance novel, that the media supplies for woman to read. The study was interested in what the reader does with the raw material and how it effects them. By choosing what influences you-romance novels...do you define your reality? We discussed the difference between ideology and hegemony. Ideology is a false consciousness, negative, when you are fooled into thinking, a collection of ideals that motivate an action and the beliefs of a particular group. Hegemony is when ideology becomes though of as the "natural order of things", its "just the way it is", control by consent and living in a particular way because of it. The idea of containment and resistance came up in discussion that addressed how the audience uses elements of pop culture-romance novels so they can be resisted and contained by power relationships. Ending thought was the statement that the act of reading the romance novel-power relationship-is an act of defiance.