Born 1944. Educated at Oxford University (B.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics) and London School of Economics (M.Sc. in Sociology). Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Lancaster. Appointed in 1968 as a Research Officer in a Unit specializing in town planning research in the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College, London. Moved to a lectureship in sociology at the University of Lancaster in 1970, then Professor of Sociology and subsequently Deputy Vice-Chancellor from 1995 to 2004. Now retired and Emeritus Professor.

Changing Audiences
Changing Paradigms of Research
Forms of the Audience
Spectacle and Narcissism
Imagination and Resources
Fans and Enthusiasts
The Spectacle/Performance Paradigm
Methods, Issues and Theories

`This book is worth reading for a number of reasons. It is the first introductory work of critical audience research that suggests how we can study the connection of media consumption in general with every day life, and it also goes beyond its competitors in showing how postmodern thinking can help us in the analysis of a "whole way of life"' - Journal of Communication

Audiences are problematic and the study of audiences has represented a key site of activity in the social sciences and humanities. Offering a timely review of the past 50 years of theoretical and methodological debate Audiences argues the case for a paradigmatic shift in audience research.

This shift, argue the authors, is necessitated by the emergence of the `diffused audience'. Audience experience can no longer be simply classified as `simple' or `mass', for in modern advanced capitalist societies, people are members of an audience all the time. Being a member of an audience is no longer an exceptional event, nor even an everyday event, rather it is constitutive of everyday life. This book offers an invaluable review of the literature and a new point of departure for audience research.