From Fan Practice to Mediated Moments: The Value of Practice Theory in the Understanding of Media Audiences

In the last ten to fifteen years, ethnographically informed scholarship on media audiences has moved away from studies of direct engagement with texts toward a consideration of multiple articulations with media in everyday life (Bird 2003). In media studies, scholars have questioned the narrowness of studies based on the concept of ‘audience response’ to specific media, arguing that the complexity of media penetration in contemporary societies cannot be captured by such approaches (see Alasuutari 1999 for overview). At the same time, anthropologists have increasingly come to realise that cultures worldwide can no longer be understood without reference to the media.