Bird (2003), "Media Ethnography"

1. Though audiences are active, they are also constrained by the media they consume. Audience activity is not an option in some cases.

Bird (2003) qualifies the active audience assumption in this piece. She argues that many audiences are active many times. However, there are limits to audience activity along many different planes. Class status may limit the available options for consumers of internet technologies, for example, and body size may limit the playfulness and usefulness of mediated images of weddings. She also points out that audiences have limited choices from which to draw, since media economies only circulate certain options.

2. Audience pleasure can lead to increasingly dangerous media production techniques.

Bird (2003) notes the increase in re-creations on news and reality programming. She argues that this technique has led to a blurring between fiction and journalism. This is an effect of audience pleasure, since news networks are profit-driven. However, by providing this form of media to viewers, Bird (2003) worries, news organizations may be misleading the public.

3. Ethnography can help us understand how audiences are simultaneously creative and constrained.

Bird (2003) maintains the importance of learning what real people actually do with media. She adds that studies of audiences need to also account for the constraints placed on audiences by powerful media industries.