ABSTRACT
LIVINGSTONE’S essay is centrally concerned with a rather distinctive problem that we face in the communication field. Comparatively young, our discipline is in a position to benefit from methods developed in a number of diverse social science and humanistic disciplines. We have been able to apply different methodologies developed in these fields toward investigating the questions that have become central to our own. Yet, in doing so, we sometimes attempt to aggregate data that have been collected in noncomparable ways. More serious, in some cases the methodologies used to collect these data have themselves been developed in noncomparable contexts, in the attempts of different academic disciplines to answer questions that have been spawned by noncomparable concerns, questions, and slants. In the case of data about the mass media audience, in particular, this has made it very difficult to bring together into one coherent field the different bodies of literature that exist concerning media effects and audience reception.
