ABSTRACT

Qualitative research of the kind reported in this book does not always lead to neat conclusions. In some respects, this is not its aim. In attempting to represent and analyse the complexity of audience engagements with the media, such research often seeks precisely to challenge the easy generalizations that are sometimes seen to constitute research ‘findings’. Yet while this can lead to a necessary rethinking of received wisdom, it can also lead to a degree of complacency. There is a kind of safety in the knowledge that everything is so much more complicated than other people imagine it to be – and that one must be so much more intelligent by virtue of the fact that one can recognize this.