ABSTRACT
Television audiences have therefore been identified in relation to a range of social and cultural categories; in relation to their shared taste for particular genres or television texts; or with reference to shared practices of watching or using the medium. Television audiences have been identified as passive in terms of effects, or active in terms of the ways in which they might be imagined to ‘read’ television, taking from it what is of value in the construction of their personal identities and management of their social lives. Children have consistently been identified as a very particular audience for television, commanding special attention and concern. While some television audience research has been influenced by the tradition of American mass communications research, other significant developments in the field have resulted from encounters with different research traditions, including that of British cultural studies. In Australia, the influence of cultural studies has also been apparent in studies which relate to television.
