Front cover -- Half title page -- Issues in CULTURAL and MEDIA STUDIES -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Contents -- FOREWORD -- INTRODUCTION: DOING THINGS WITH AUDIENCE RESEARCH -- Questions of method -- Public sphere -- Working through -- The embedded audience -- Semiosis and everyday life -- Rethinking decoding: modalities of response -- What is an audience? -- 1 TELEVISION, NEWS AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE -- Textual power and audience resistance -- A theory of semiosis -- News, recall and everyday life -- Interpretative repertoires -- Misunderstanding the news -- Bad news from Angola -- Discourses of abuse -- Talking about abuse -- Truth, trust and bias -- Conclusion -- 2 REALITY TELEVISION, AUDIENCES AND ETHICS -- Modalities of response: game play and authenticity -- Working through: dramatizing morality -- Lifestyle programming: identity and an 'ethics of care' -- Talk shows and everyday life -- Conclusion -- 3 SOAP OPERA AND PLAY -- Play and ethics -- Soap opera and the carnivalesque -- Working through: soap opera and gossip -- A ludic orientation -- Personalization, character interpretation and speculation -- Working through: identity -- Play, fantasy and emotional realism -- Conclusion -- 4 TELEVISION AND DOMESTIC SPACE -- The social uses of television -- Environment -- Regulation -- Communication facilitation -- Affiliation and avoidance -- Social learning -- Competence and dominance -- Gender -- Dailiness -- Dailiness and the elderly -- Domestic time and interior space -- Conclusion -- 5 TELEVISION, IDENTITY AND GLOBAL AUDIENCES -- Imagined communities: nostalgia and self-reflexivity -- Thinking across spaces: demythologization -- Dailiness and the public sphere -- Public sphericules and community spaces -- Identity and the care of the self -- News, semiosis and global space -- Conclusion -- CONCLUSION: TELEVISION AND ETHICS.

Ethics -- Semiosis and everyday life -- Media ethics: where do we go from here? -- GLOSSARY -- FURTHER READING -- REFERENCES -- INDEX -- Back cover.