メディア・「受け手」・文化 : 問題提起と一つの視点 (<特集>新しい「受け手」論の研究)

抄録

Today, in the age of rapid innovation of communication technologies, it seems to be more and more important and inevitable to reexamine and reconstruct the total frame of mass communication research because this innovation is supposed to bring great changes to almost every sphere in the social communication process and its structure. Naturally, "audience" research also faces this new stage of communication. What is the situation of the "audience", and where can we see the "audience" in this new stage of communication today? Attempting to present a new point of view from which to reconsider and reconstruct the concept cf the "audience", this article emphasizes three points of consideration as follows: 1. First of all, it seems to be crucial to deconstruct the static model of the "audience" and to redefine it under the wider aspect of social communications as a whole where they are involved. This means that the "audience"should be 'freed' from the rigid framework which deals with them simply as if they have no other real relationships except with mass media. Needless to say, the "audience" are real people who are not only in a relationship to mass media but are also in rather more complex ties with social communications in diverse spheres. That means we have to 'situate' the "audience" correctly in a wider context of social communications, in other words in a socio-cultural context. 2. Secondly, it is necessary to make the category of the "audience" clear in terms of the conditions under which it deserves to be used within the limitations in the mass media-related context. The concept of the "audience" is an historical term which was originated as a schematic directly related to mass media. 3. Thirdly, this article insists on the importance of seeing the reality of the "audience" in this revolutionary era of communications. The "audience"seems to be in a somewhat ambivalent, say contradictory, situation under this overall socio-cultural and communicational change. This change may have two orientations which contradict each other. One is the orientation to open to people the possibilities of wider accessibility to immense and valid information. The other is the tendency toward acceleration of media centralization and its monopoly. What is important in seeing the "audience" today is to clarify the ambiguity of the situation in communications which surrounds the concept and to make clear the dominant logic which loads the socio-cultural context as a whole.