Watching television has long been a central part of the daily lives of many people, families and groups all around the world. For example, recent statistics indicate that the average time spent on TV watching in the US is 2.8 hours per day. In the national context of this study – Turkey – the figure is as high as 4.1 hours per day. Most TV watching takes place in households where people watch TV together with their family or friends. Even though it occupies a considerable amount of time in people’s lives, how people watch TV together as a social activity still remains under-researched. This study examines the social practices performed by an audience (a group of Turkish females) while they are watching a reality TV show (marriage show) together, by examining (1) how they organize their talk during TV watching, and (2) what social and cultural practices are achieved through this activity. The study employs the methodologies of conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA) to the examination of video-recordings of people watching a reality TV show. Analysis of the recordings reveal that one of the most common social actions performed by this specific audience group is making ‘assessments’, relevant to what is being watched. As such, the main focus of analysis is placed on how assessments are produced and sequentially positioned, in addition to explicating the social and cultural functions of doing assessments during social TV watching. A fine-detailed analysis of the production and the organisation of assessments during TV watching contributes to our understanding of the organisation of ‘continuing states of incipient talk’ (CSIT) which has been given little consideration in previous literature. By examining the issues relevant to sequential positioning and response relevance in assessment sequences during TV watching, this study provides insights into the organisation of CSIT while at the same time emphasizing the importance of the activity type that people are engaged in while examining organisation of talk. This study also has significant implications for adopting micro-analytic research in media audience studies. By examining the actual video-recordings of TV watching, this study demonstrates (1) how people constitute themselves as a social group who has a shared understanding of the world, and (2) how cultural norms and expectations are co-constructed and perpetuated through social TV watching.

This thesis contains ten chapters that together put forward a case for a renewed sociological approach to the study of media and communication. I argue that the increasing complexity of contemporary media and communication processes demands not only that sociology remains at the centre of research in this field but also that a particular sociological approach is needed that aims to uncover the way individuals take and make meaning from the social situations in which they find themselves. In seven of the chapters the research described is concerned with the work of journalists. The remaining three are concerned with the study of media audiences. Each chapter is self-contained but the thesis as a whole demonstrates an overarching interest in the nature of socially-situated human action, how this can be conceived theoretically and studied empirically, and how research conducted from within this perspective can help to build a fully-rounded understanding of media production and media use. The introduction outlines this approach and describes the contribution that each chapter makes to the case I wish to make.

Nowadays, with the use of social media generalizing, increasingly more people gather online to share their passion for specific consumption activities. Despite this shared passion, conflicts frequently erupt in online communities of consumption (OCC). A systematic review of the literature revealed that a lot of knowledge has developed on OCC conflict. Different types of conflicts unfolding in an OCC context have been distinguished, various drivers of conflict identified and various consequences outlined at the individual level (experiential value) and the community level (collective engagement and community culture). However the specificity of conflicts unfolding in an OCC context has not been conceptualized. Past research is also inconclusive as to where and when does OCC conflict create or destroy value in communities. This research provides a theory of OCC conflict and its impact on value formation by conceptualizing OCC conflict as performances. The theory was developed by conducting a netnography of a clubbing forum. Close to 20,000 forum posts and 250 pages of interview transcript and field notes were collected over 27 months and analysed following the principles of grounded theory. Four different types of conflict performances are distinguished (personal, played, reality show and trolling conflict) based on the clarity of the performance. Each type of conflict performance is positioned with regard to its roots and consequences for value formation. This research develops knowledge on disharmonious interactions in OCCs contributing to the development of a less utopian perspective of OCCs. It indicates how conflict is not only a byproduct of consumption but it is also a phenomenon consumed. It also introduces the concept of performance clarity to the literature on performance consumption. This research provides guidelines to community managers on how to manage conflict and raises ethical issues regarding the management of conflict on social media.

Thanks to the evolution of modern audiovisual technology, film audiences nowadays can enjoy the flexibility of watching movies at venues ranging from multiplex theatres to living rooms and bedrooms at home through various film-viewing platforms from broadcast television, cable movie channels, VCR, VCD, and DVD to internet downloading. With the increased amount of transnational audiovisual products imported over the years, Taiwanese audiences can also consume different types of films from different places in these ways. This thesis focuses on the relationship between different generations of film audiences and their 'film-viewing' practices via various viewing platforms, attempting to reveal the social, cultural and economic significance of their everyday practices, and frame them in the structure of the local film industry and the increasingly transnational local cinema culture. The project employs various qualitative research techniques to collect Taipei film audiences' own accounts of their quotidian film-viewing practices through currently available viewing platforms. This multi-platform approach to contemporary film audiences in today's digital-rich media environment contributes to this understudied field of film audience research. Furthermore, the empirical data on the 'film-viewing' practices of five age groups yields an understanding of the complicated interrelationships among film audiences, film texts and viewing platforms. On this basis, it is argued that the conventional 'audience-film' relationship studied in audience research should be reframed as the study of the 'audience-film-viewing platform' relationship.

Cross-platform media practices have moved from being something of an under-considered side show, to a strategic necessity. A development vision that attempts to transcend historic platform delineation is becoming the norm in many areas of media production, yet cross-platform media, as an over-arching conceptualisation, is still sparsely mapped. Children’s media in particular can be said to have long spanned platform, yet there is little research that addresses media in this sense, and even less that attempts to bring together the voices of children with those that make media for children. This study sets out to explore children’s cross-platform media within the UK; with children’s media preferences acting as a trigger to dialogue. The study’s original contribution to knowledge is said to sit within its multi-method interdisciplinary design, which as well as foregrounding participant voice, operates in a tactual and reflective fashion. The study looks to explore children’s preferences within media made for them, but also to question the extent to which producers of media for children understand these preferences; with the researcher himself having a background within children’s media practice. To establish the foundations from which to consider these questions, the thesis begins by contextualising and conceptualising cross-platform media, before it moves on to address how children are positioned within media research. Argument is made that media should be seen not as distinct, or platform bound, but as utterances within a cross-platform dialogue, and similarly the study is orientated towards operating across a dialogic phenomenology in which it becomes difficult to locate the unitary, fixed and finalised. It is hoped that through engaging in dialogue on children’s preferences within cross-platform media that this study will impact on practice within the field. Analysis of the research interactions suggests that producers of children’s media share an understanding with children on the ways in which they appear averse to media that they see as unfair, unkind or in which others come to harm. Yet when it comes to the place of learning within children’s media, something child participants appear particularly comfortable with, practitioners seem less in tune with the preferences of children.

In contemporary media landscapes characterised by technological, industrial, and cultural convergence, transmedia fictional practice, that is, the generation of multiple texts, products and experiences across multiple media outlets cohered by a common narrative reality, cast of characters, or entertainment brand, is in the ascendancy. This thesis begins from the observation that although transmedia practice is coterminously beginning to receive more and more critical attention, there remains much work to be done theorising the “total entertainment” experiences (Grainge, 2008: 11) it produces in fictional terms. It identifies a particular need for further critical investigation of how transmedia fictional practice interacts with the design, development, and representation of character. It takes as its fundamental starting principle the assumption that transmediality can be defined and operationalised as a particular modality of fiction, producing particular orientations and operations of meaning and representation, and that the trans-textual, trans-medial extension of a fiction can be identified and delineated as a fictional practice. In dialogue with existing critical work organised by the concept of transmedia storytelling, and industrial discourses and practices of cross-platform production, I conceptualise and define the object of study of this thesis as the practice of transmedia franchising, of which transmedia storytelling is positioned as a sub-genre. The thesis comprises an original theory of the transmedia franchise character as a fictional object, situated in a poetics of transmedia franchising as a fictional practice. It proposes conceptual tools, theoretical frameworks, and critical positions for understanding and analysing the processes of meaning and representation that build up a picture of a character as it is franchised across texts and media, and how they are shaped and influenced by key contextual factors. The six chapters map six core features of the transmedia franchise character as a fictional object, each then providing a granular elaboration of some of the formal, operational, functional, and critical implications of these features. Chapter One engages the problem of the instability of “the text” as critical concept and material artefact relative to transmedia franchise fiction; Chapter Two theorises the franchise character as extensible, designed to anticipate, sustain and generate serial development and representation across multiple texts; Chapter Three presents transmedia franchising as an art of multiplicity, and explores how it builds up a picture of character through setting in play dialogues between rewrites, reimaginings, and alternate versions; Chapter Four focuses on the multimediality of the franchise character specifically; Chapter Five discusses how paratextual material interpolates into and contributes to the actualisation of the franchise character; and Chapter Six explores the franchise character as site and technology of participation, interactivity, and immersion in the franchise world.

Food media in the UK has grown in popularity, even during the recent recession; at the same time, the recession made thrift a fashionable topic in the public sphere and popular culture. The thesis investigates how the cultural value of thrift is constructed in the context of food magazines. The thesis employs a multi-method ‘circuit of culture’ approach in order to more adequately assess the producer-text-consumer relationship than is typical in magazines studies. In doing so, the thesis both generates a case study of how the cultural value of thrift is produced, represented and consumed through food magazines, and examines and contextualises the roles of different market actors within the circuit, including both cultural intermediaries (magazine writers) and readers. The findings demonstrate that thrift is a relational and negotiated concept. The textual analysis of the magazines demonstrates how both time and money are positioned as valuable resources within the magazines. Magazines act as manuals on resource management by offering thrift related advice on a number of issues including when to invest more or less time/ money in food preparation, and practices to reduce waste, in order to demonstrate how food work can be achieved within the constraints of everyday life. In the case of magazine writers and readers, findings reveal how thrift is defined through resource management: thrift is constructed through notions of scarcity and the associated valuing of time and money as resources. As such, individuals’ understandings of thrift—in relation to necessities, competing demands and shifting proximities to scarcity— are primarily shaped by gender (especially feminine norms around motherhood and domestic labour); and, for cultural intermediaries, genre and professional conventions. Finally, the analysis assesses the usefulness of the circuit of culture approach to studies of cultural values and cultural products.

This thesis examines the ways in which the fit body has acted as an established form of capital in Korea. In addressing this question, this research explores the theoretical and methodological links between Bourdieu‘s and Elias‘s perspectives. In particular, using the fitness field as the context, this study examines specific types of valued capital and assesses the ways in which figurations between actors are produced and reproduced in ways that reinforce and sometimes disrupt 'established-outsider‘ (E-O) figurations in other fields (such as the academic field). In working toward its findings, this work makes use of multiple methods, including historical media analysis, media production study, interviews, and comparison of Gangnam and Gangbuk, to name but a few. This diverse array of approaches allows for a more robust and nuanced look at the E-O figuration of the body (Elias & Scotson, 1994) that grounded the production and reproduction of body capital and habitus in the fitness field. The findings also reveal that fit bodies are pivotal to the formation of symbolic power in Korean socio-historical contexts. E-O figuration of fitness media production teams influences media texts. Fitness media texts underline the virtue of fit bodies while disguising symbolic violence toward the outsider body. TV producers of fitness programs and star trainers as cultural intermediaries reproduce the belief in the notion of the fit body through media strategies that include storytelling, body models, and intellectualization. Fitness clubs, members, and trainers in Gangnam and Gangbuk are distinguished by their fitness capital, academic capital, and civility. Thus, in contemporary Korean society, fitness is a hidden path that allows for and consolidates the reproduction of Established-Outsider hierarchies; as such, it has a distinctive/civilized mode, a specific form of cultural capital, and undeniable connection to Western fitness culture.

This thesis is an examination of the connection between the changes in the political economy of television, and changes in history documentary form, between 1982 and 2002 on UK terrestrial television. It reviews the literature on the political economy of the media, including public service broadcasting (PSB), and on documentary form, including history documentary form. The thesis then poses three research questions which aim to explore changes in the political economy of television, the effect these changes had on the production of history documentary, and the effect these changes in production had on the form of history documentary. The thesis used official documentation, television listings, practitioner interviews and textual analysis to answer these research questions. The thesis then lays out a historical narrative of the developments in the production of history documentary on UK terrestrial television between 1982 and 2002, and analyses the causes and results of these developments. It argues that a direct link exists between changes in the political economy of television and changes in the form of history documentary between 1982 and 2002. The thesis demonstrates that the shift from traditional PSB values towards a market-driven broadcasting ecology affected the production, and form, of history documentaries. These changes in turn challenged traditional notions of quality and history documentary‘s function as a form of PSB. The thesis also demonstrates that the effect of political economic change on history documentary form was not as simple as had hitherto been implied in the academic literature. In particular, there was a parallel between the tension between public service and commercial aims, in both the structures of television production, and the form of history documentary.

This thesis presents the processes and outcomes of a cross-national and cross-generational audience study of the varying roles of film and television in relation to people’s fearful perceptions of the world. As well as dealing with viewers’ ‘fright’ responses to individual films or programmes, the thesis provides a detailed critique of Gerbner et al.’s Cultivation Analysis and responds to current generalised discourses of a ‘culture of fear’ and the media’s role within it. The study is based on qualitative material gathered from nine three-generational families in Germany and the UK. Research tools included longitudinal viewing diaries, open-ended questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews with participants from 9 to 80 years of age. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically and discursively, with particular attention towards the kinds of ‘fear’ participants made relevant in their talk, as well as the nature and significance of wider socio-cultural processes. The material discussed in this study suggests that media-related fears are manifold and contain experiential and consequential differences. Importantly, they have to be understood in relation to viewers’ sense of life history, their theories of the media, and their understanding of themselves as emotional beings. Participants in this study inhabited different viewing positions as members of physical and/or ‘imagined’ audiences, which impacted on their interpretive stances towards a range of media material. As a result, ‘fear’ emerged as a fluid and complex concept, and one which contained both personal and social dimensions. These findings directly challenge the assumptions which underlie Cultivation Analysis and related studies on ‘fear cultures’, particularly as regards the centrality of the media text (including its representations of violence), the determinism of socio-demographic variables, and the model of ‘fear’ as singular, negative, cumulative, and intensely privatised. This study contributes to knowledge in the fields of media and communication studies, film studies, psychology, sociology, and cultural studies audience research.