This thesis sheds light on the ways in which audiences are made through the relationships between organisational policy and news production practice. It explores the relationships between news practitioners� perceptions and definitions of audiences, production, and organisational policies, using the radio news service of the Australian national public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). In so doing, the thesis demonstrates that production, in its institutional context, is a crucial site for the creation of audiences in the study of news journalism. In the process, it illuminates the role of public service broadcasting, in a world of digital media The conceptual framework utilises a new approach to framing analysis. Framing has been used to examine the news "agenda" and to identify the salient aspects of news events. This thesis demonstrates ways in which framing can be used to research important processes in news production at different levels, from policy level to that of professional culture, and generate insights to the relationship between them. The accumulated evidence of the bulletin analysis - using structural and rhetorical frames of news - field observation and interviews, shows that a specific and coherent audience can be constructed as a result of newsroom work practices in combination with organisational policies. The thesis has increased knowledge and understanding both of how news workers create images of their audiences and what the institutional factors are that influence the manufacture of audiences as they appear in the text of news bulletins.

Bibliography: leaves 537-555.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Adelaide, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 537-555).