Audience Studies A Japanese Perspective [Paperback]

This book theorizes the role of media and ICT in todays media-rich global environment and introduces a new argument of audience complexity in an accessible and lively fashion.  Based on an ethnography of Japanese engagement with media and ICT in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, Takahashi offers a non-Western case study of some of the worlds most advanced ICT users. Integrating non-Western and Western traditions in the social sciences, the book presents a productive new framework for understanding the complex, diverse, and dynamic nature of media audiences in the context of globalization and social change brought on by new media and information technologies.  A significant contribution to the internationalisation of media studies movement now underway, the book will demonstrate (1) the multiple dimensions of audience engagement; (2) the transformation of the notion of uchi (Japanese social groups) in a media-rich environment; and (3) the role of media and ICT in the process of self-creation. The study considers the future of a Japanese society caught in the currents of globalization and contemporary debates of universalism and cultural specificity, while at the same time offering a view of globalization from a Japanese perspective. 

Preface  Introduction  1. Audience Activity, Everyday Life and Complexity- A Theoretical Framework for Understanding Media Audiences  2. Towards the Internationalising of Media Audience Studies from a Japanese Perspective  3. Audience Engagement with Media and ICT  4. Media and Uchi  5. Media, Self-Creation and Everyday Life  6. Reflection on the Audience  Appendices

Toshie Takahashi is Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Media Studies, Rikkyo University, Japan.