Media audiences, ethnographic practice and the notion of a cultural field

Abstract

This article will consider in detail the implications of a diffuse social magination for existing paradigms of ethnographic audience research. The notion of a 'cultural field research model will be offered here as an alternative structure for locating media communities as sites of social ractice. This is a theoretical framework that reformulates the conception of media audiences as 'imagined communities by replacing a demographically constituted ethnographic model with an emphasis on surveying the diverse inhabitants of a cultural field constructed around participation in particular instances of media practice.