Introduction: “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske
“Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach to Watching Television” by John Fiske first appeared in 1992 in the journal Poetics, Volume 21, published by North-Holland (pp. 345–359). Fiske advances a cultural studies perspective on television audiences, emphasizing the dynamic and participatory role of viewers in the production of meaning. Using the example of the controversial sitcom Married… with Children and its reception by a group of university students, Fiske explores how audiences form “social formations” around shared practices of watching television, thereby transforming media consumption into a site of cultural production. He contrasts this ethnographic, systemic approach with the more positivist methods of audience measurement and psychological effects studies. Central to his thesis is the concept of “audiencing”—viewing not as passive reception but as an active, interpretive, and often oppositional cultural act. The importance of this article lies in its challenge to traditional notions of the audience, its reconceptualization of cultural engagement, and its broader implications for media theory, particularly in its alignment with discourse analysis and structuralist theories of culture (Fiske, 1992).
Summary of “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske
- Audiencing as Cultural Practice: Fiske introduces “audiencing” as an active, culturally embedded process by which viewers engage with television content. Audiences “produce, through lived experience, their own sense of their social identities and social relations” (Fiske, 1992, p. 354).
- Particularity vs. Generality: He contrasts cultural studies’ emphasis on the particularity of audience experiences with positivist approaches that seek generality: “one of the defining differences between the two approaches is the particularity of the cultural studies’ audience against the generality of the positivist one” (p. 346).
- Case Study – Married… with Children: Fiske uses the show Married… with Children as a case study to examine how a teenage audience formed a social formation around watching the show. They used its carnivalesque satire to resist dominant “family values” (pp. 347–350).
- The Carnivalesque and Resistance: The show’s grotesque representations of the Bundy family inverted normative family ideals. Fiske writes that the show “mocked and inverted” the “normative family in which gender and age differences are contained within a consensual harmony” (p. 348).
- Teenage Viewership as Social Formation: The audience is conceptualized as a “social formation,” not merely a demographic. These formations are “formed and dissolved more fluidly according to contextual conditions” and “identified by what its members do rather than by what they are” (p. 351).
- Cultural Conflict and the Power-Bloc: The controversy surrounding the show (notably Terry Rakolta’s campaign) illustrates tensions between conservative cultural forces and youth culture. Fiske notes, “the creation of gaps is enough to provoke the power-bloc to rush to repair its system” (p. 352).
- Struggles over Audience Definition: Competing institutions (e.g., Fox, conservative activists) define the audience differently: “Fox and Rakolta struggle over the construction of ‘the teenager’” (p. 354). This reflects broader ideological contests over identity and values.
- Systemic vs. Positivist Models: Fiske critiques positivist methods for being “descriptive,” lacking a model of change or audience agency. In contrast, systemic (cultural studies) models “generate the practices by which they are used and are, in their turn, modified by those practices” (p. 357).
- The Analyst’s Role: Cultural analysis does not claim objectivity. Fiske asserts that “extraction and return are productive not objective practices” and emphasizes the analyst’s modest role in contributing to understanding rather than revealing definitive truth (p. 355).
- Meaning as Social Circulation: Ultimately, Fiske sees culture as a “maelstrom” of circulating meanings. “Audiencing is part of this flow and eddy… sometimes part of the mainstream flow, sometimes part of an upstream eddy” (p. 359).
Theoretical Terms/Concepts in “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske
| Concept | Explanation | Usage in the Article | Page |
| Audiencing | Audience engagement as an active cultural process through which social meanings and identities are produced. | “Watching the program involved a series of interactive comments… The show enabled them to engage…” | 354 |
| Carnivalesque | Subversive and grotesque humor that inverts norms of gender, class, and family. | “The carnivalesque offense of the show runs along a continuum in which offensive bodies extend…” | 348 |
| Social Formation | A group formed by shared cultural practices rather than fixed demographic categories. | “This particular audience… is best understood not as a social category… but as a social formation.” | 351 |
| Power-Bloc | Strategic alliance of dominant social interests working to maintain ideological and cultural norms. | “The creation of gaps is enough to provoke the power-bloc to rush to repair its system.” | 353 |
| Cultural Studies vs. Positivism | Contrasts interpretive, audience-centered methods with positivist, empirical audience measurement. | “The particularity of the cultural studies’ audience against the generality of the positivist one.” | 346 |
| Systemic vs. Representative | Cultural systems are dynamic and generative; positivist models are descriptive and fixed. | “Systemic theories of structure go further… they are modified by those practices.” | 357 |
| Excorporation | Subordinate groups appropriating and reinterpreting elements of dominant culture for their own ends. | “Scan the products of the culture industries looking for elements which they can excorporate…” | 354 |
| Cultural Analyst | One who interprets cultural practices to theorize the circulation of meanings. | “The cultural analyst has to find ‘sites of analysis’ where this circulation becomes accessible…” | 353 |
| Social Circulation of Meanings | Culture as the ongoing struggle over meanings within a social structure. | “Culture is the social circulation of meanings, pleasures, and values…” | 353 |
| The Active Audience | Viewers are seen as participants who negotiate meanings rather than passively absorb them. | “Audience activity is an engagement in social relations across social inequality…” | 358 |
Contribution of “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske to Literary Theory/Theories
🔵 1. Reframing the Concept of the Audience
- Fiske introduces “audiencing” as an active, interpretive practice rather than passive reception, significantly reshaping media and literary reception theory.
“Watching the program involved a series of interactive comments… The show enabled them to engage in and reconfigure the age politics of their relations” (Fiske, 1992, p. 350).
- This undermines traditional notions of the audience as a homogeneous mass or as solely an object of empirical measurement.
🟢 2. Emphasizing Lived Experience in Textual Interpretation
- Fiske aligns with cultural materialist and reader-response approaches by focusing on how meaning is produced in the interaction between text and viewer’s lived context.
“Audience activity is an engagement in social relations across social inequality” (p. 358).
- His work supports the idea that meaning is not embedded in the text but arises from use.
🔴 3. Cultural Studies as a Methodological Alternative
- Fiske promotes cultural studies as a systemic and theoretical model over positivist, data-driven research, directly influencing literary theory’s methods of interpretation.
“Systemic theories of structure go further than do positivist ones… they are modified by those practices” (p. 357).
- Encourages literary critics to view cultural products as sites of ideological struggle rather than isolated texts.
🟣 4. Integration of Discourse Theory and Structuration
- Drawing from Foucault and discourse theory, Fiske treats meaning as discursively constructed within cultural systems—parallel to poststructuralist literary theory.
“The system is produced in part… by its practices, as the practices are produced… by the system” (p. 357).
- Literary theory benefits from this model as it parallels how texts produce and are produced by cultural discourse.
🟡 5. Subordination, Resistance, and Excorporation
- Contributing to theories of resistance in literary studies (e.g., Marxist and postcolonial theory), Fiske’s concept of excorporation shows how audiences appropriate mass culture.
“Scan the products of the culture industries looking for elements which they can excorporate…” (p. 354).
- This empowers subaltern voices in interpretive contexts and critiques cultural hegemony.
🟠 6. Text-Audience Reciprocity and Systematicity
- Fiske advances a theory where the audience is not the result of the text but vice versa—challenging structuralist one-way models.
“The text is an effect of this audience… and the skill of its producers lies in their ability to respond” (p. 358).
- This reciprocity opens new pathways for literary theory to reconsider the origin of textual meaning.
Examples of Critiques Through “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske
| Literary Work | Audiencing-Based Critique | Relation to Fiske’s Concepts |
| Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen | Readers from different gender or class positions might interpret the irony and marriage norms as empowering or limiting. | Social Formation; Gender/Class-Based Audiencing; Excorporation of Marriage Ideals |
| Teenage or feminist audiences may mock the pursuit of marriage as outdated or restrictive. | ||
| Beloved by Toni Morrison | African American or postcolonial readers may ‘audience’ the novel as resistance to historical erasure. | Cultural Resistance; Historical Reinterpretation; Social Circulation of Meaning |
| Emphasizes collective trauma and memory over individual suffering, shaped by cultural and historical identity. | ||
| 1984 by George Orwell | Activist or younger readers may identify with surveillance themes, using the novel to critique modern digital politics. | Systemic Power; Audience as Interpretive Agent; Text as Effect of Reader Context |
| The novel becomes a site for articulating fears of control and political manipulation rooted in current realities. | ||
| The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald | Outsider or youth audiences may read Gatsby’s wealth as critique, not aspiration. | Carnivalesque Inversion; Class Identity; Textual Meaning as Viewer-Constructed |
| The glitz of the Jazz Age is reinterpreted as a symbol of exclusion and superficiality. |
Criticism Against “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske
- 🔸 Lack of Empirical Rigor
Critics argue that Fiske’s rejection of positivist methodologies leads to a lack of verifiable or generalizable data. His examples, such as the student viewing group, are anecdotal and not representative. - 🔸 Overemphasis on Audience Agency
Some scholars claim that Fiske overstates the power of audiences to reinterpret or resist media texts, downplaying the influence of dominant ideologies embedded in media systems. - 🔸 Vagueness of ‘Social Formation’
The concept of social formations is seen by some as too fluid or undefined, lacking methodological clarity for consistent application across studies. - 🔸 Limited Scope of ‘Audiencing’
Critics point out that Fiske’s focus on subversive or resistant readings (like youth mocking family norms) may overlook more complicit or conservative audience practices. - 🔸 Dismissal of Media Effects Research
Fiske’s dismissal of effects-based models is seen by some as too sweeping, ignoring valuable findings about how media influences behavior and attitudes. - 🔸 Elitism of the Cultural Analyst
Some scholars note a tension in Fiske’s work: while promoting bottom-up meaning-making, the analyst still plays a top-down role in selecting and interpreting cultural practices. - 🔸 Underdeveloped Account of Power
While Fiske discusses power blocs, some critiques argue that he doesn’t offer a sufficiently nuanced theory of how power structures constrain or enable audience interpretation.
Representative Quotations from “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske with Explanation
| Quotation | Explanation |
| “Culture is the social circulation of meanings, pleasures, and values” (Fiske, 1992, p. 353). | Fiske conceptualizes culture not as static artifacts but as dynamic processes of shared meanings in society. |
| “Audiencing is part of this process” (Fiske, 1992, p. 345). | Watching television is not passive consumption but active participation in cultural meaning-making. |
| “The audience stops being a social category and becomes a process” (Fiske, 1992, p. 354). | Fiske rejects demographic-based definitions of audiences in favor of audience behavior and practices. |
| “The program enabled them to mock the differences between their parents now and themselves” (Fiske, 1992, p. 350). | Teen viewers use the show to challenge generational norms and express identity. |
| “This group of people who came together to ‘audience’ the show is best understood…as a social formation” (Fiske, 1992, p. 351). | The audience functions as a temporary community organized by shared cultural practices, not fixed social identities. |
| “The carnivalesque can do no more than open up spaces; it is upon what fills them that we should base our analysis” (Fiske, 1992, p. 352). | Fiske emphasizes potentiality over outcomes in subversive or transgressive media content. |
| “In calling the text an effect of the audience, I am attempting to score a point in a debate” (Fiske, 1992, p. 358). | Fiske reverses the traditional hierarchy, arguing that audiences shape media texts as much as they are shaped by them. |
| “The relationship between them is not one of cause and effect…but one of systematicity” (Fiske, 1992, p. 358). | He argues for a non-linear, reciprocal relationship between texts and audiences. |
| “The analyst’s experience of that mouthful is quite different from that of the young man who took the bite in the first place” (Fiske, 1992, p. 355). | Highlights the gap between academic interpretation and lived cultural experience. |
| “Systems and practices both structure each other and are structured by each other” (Fiske, 1992, p. 357). | Fiske draws from structuration theory to explain the mutual shaping of culture and social practices. |
Suggested Readings: “Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach To Watching Television” By John Fiske
- Zaborowski, Rafal. “Audiences and Musics.” Music Generations in the Digital Age: Social Practices of Listening and Idols in Japan, Amsterdam University Press, 2024, pp. 41–74. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.11634944.6. Accessed 30 Mar. 2025.
- Walsh, Michael, and Jane Sloan. “Professional Notes.” Cinema Journal, vol. 33, no. 1, 1993, pp. 60–65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225636. Accessed 30 Mar. 2025.
- Fiske, John. “Audiencing: A cultural studies approach to watching television.” Poetics 21.4 (1992): 345-359.
- Reeves, Joshua. “Temptation and Its Discontents: Digital Rhetoric, Flow, and the Possible.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 32, no. 3, 2013, pp. 314–30. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42003458. Accessed 30 Mar. 2025.