This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of research and debate about media audiences, written by some of the leading scholars in the field. It covers a wide range of media genres, from TV news to soaps and reality shows, as well as addressing broader issues, for example to do with globalisation, the social contexts of media use and the power of the media. This is a state-of-the-art textbook, which provides students with the critical tools they need in order to evaluate existing research, and to undertake their own