ABSTRACT
It is not my purpose to provide an exhaustive account of mainstream sociological research in mass communications. I do, however, offer a resumé of the main trends and of the different emphases within that broad research strategy, essentially for two reasons: first, because my own work has been framed by a theoretical perspective which represents, at many points, a different research paradigm from that which has dominated the field to date; second, because there are points where this approach connects with certain important ‘breaks’ in that previous body of work, or else attempts to develop, in a different theoretical framework, lines of enquiry which mainstream research opened up but did not follow through.
