Gray (2003), "New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-fans and Non-fans"

Gray (2003) argues that reception studies should move beyond fans to explore other types of textualities. While fans read texts in certain ways, non-fan and anti-fan readings renegotiate texts. This means that reception scholars are missing forms of textualities that are not represented by fan readings of texts.

1. Though fans are likely the most knowledgeable about a given text, Gray (2003) points out that everyone encounters texts fairly constantly. In order to understand how these casually encountered texts impact individuals' cultural performances, it is important to speak with people who are not fans.

2. Anti-fans hate a text, but as Gray (2003) points out, this must mean they have some attachment to the text. In order to create an anti-fan reading rather than a fan reading, the textual negotiation of an anti-fan must be considerably different from that of a fan. Importantly, though, both readings are rooted in the text.

Radway (1984), "Readers and their romances"

Radway (1984) uses interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic research to examine a group of women's uses of romance novels. He research was conducted in a town she calls "Smithton," and much of her work was facilitated through the group's leader, "Dot." Though Radway (1984) admits that she expected to make an argument about the harmfully gendered messsages of romance novels, instead she found that the books were surprisingly liberating in some ways.

1. Women used romance novel reading as a way of escaping from their daily lives.

Radway (1984) argues that romance novel reading allowed women to bracket off portions of their day in which they were not responsible for care of others. Though romance novels contain somewhat normative gender roles, the way readers used these novels allowed them to circumvent some oppressive gender roles in their own lives.

2. Readers likes and dislikes shaped the continued production of available literature.

Radway's (1984) interactions with Dot let her to confirm Hall's (1980) theory that audience members formed a feedback loop with producers. Radway (1984) learned that Dot corresponded with romance novel publishers, and that the publishers took her ideas seriously. Dot was therefore able to shape which authors and types of books were published, based on her reader's circle's particular tastes. In many cases, these specifications included gendered elements, including the type of sexual encounter and the level of violence that could be tolerated by readers.

Cui and Lee (2010), "Negotiation of media power in the case of Super Girls’ Voice in China"

Cui and Lee (2010) use the Chinese television program Super Girls' Voice to explore the relationship between media producers and audiences. Though the author's note that the show was celebrated for altering the relationship between audience and producers in China, Cui and Lee (2010) believe that this is an overly optimistic conclusion.

1. There is a line between ordinary audience and extraordinary media. Super Girls' Voice broke this pattern.

The authors use Couldry's concept of media power, which argues that media representations maintain distinction between the media and ordinary people. They argue that Super Girls' Voice appeared to overcome this barrier by using contestants who appeared more genuine and nature. Cui and Lee's (2010) reception analysis demonstrated that readers liked the competitors who appeared ordinary.

2. As the show concluded, it reinscribed the barrier between audience and media by framing the competitors as celebrity stars.

Cui and Lee (2010) argue that the show reinstated its boundary through its handling of the competitors in the finale. While the competitors had been framed as ordinary and authentic, they were reframed as members of the media elite.

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.

Gray (2003), "The Simpsons Go Global"

Gray (2003) suggests that “where the Americanization and cultural imperialism thesis at times comes close to positing the existence of a unitary and strictly managed vision of America beaming down from satellites above, this article will suggest that, in fact, there exist numerous competing Americas in the American global media, some of them satirically looking back at and attacking other Americas as presented in the more happy, glowing, and affirmative of American media products” (p. 131).

In other words, Gray (2003) uses interviews with various non-American consumers of The Simpsons to argue that American media does not cross borders without shifting its meanings. For the participants in Gray's (2003) study, The Simpsons was a text upon which to draw ideas about America. While some participants understood the show as satirical, others felt that the series was a reflection of American laziness and consumerism.

Jenkins (2004), "The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence"

For Jenkins (2004), convergence culture is marked by contradiction. Simultaneously, convergence contains increased diversity of programming and decreased diversity of media ownership. Media convergence is a process marked by a shift in patterns of media ownership and the relationship between technologies, industries, markets, genres, and audiences. Jenkins (2004) argues that this shift impacts the way we interact with media.

This shift is marked by both positives and negatives. Convergence culture can benefit audiences, since it decreases production and distribution costs and expands the range of delivery channels. Unfortunately, there are also problems with this process, including a concentration of media ownership and privileging of affluent and technologically savvy.

Along with convergence culture's shift in media production, Jenkins (2004) identifies changes in consumption practices. He argues that new audiences are active, migratory, socially connected, and take media into their own hands.