ABSTRACT
Since the People's Republic of China (PRC) embarked on its reform and opening policy in the late 1970s, there has been a gradual transition in the country's public discourses about media audience, most remarkably from qunzhong (https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203380017/86cc87b4-d58d-4b5e-afa9-48648f75c605/content/fig12-1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>, commonly translated as masses in English) to shouzhong (https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203380017/86cc87b4-d58d-4b5e-afa9-48648f75c605/content/fig12-2_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>, translated as audience) (Zhang 2000) or guanzhong (https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203380017/86cc87b4-d58d-4b5e-afa9-48648f75c605/content/fig12-3_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>, translated as viewers). The Western-borrowed notion of “audience” has translated into diverse variations in the Chinese context. However, Zhang (2000) incisively points out that the concept of “masses” was never abandoned. In this chapter I suggest that we can only gain a good understanding of local conceptualizations about media audience through how such references are made in specific contexts, rather than a surface examination of terminology.
