http://hdl.handle.net/2160/1068 2013-06-19T07:02:15Z http://hdl.handle.net/2160/2224 I have seen the Future and it is not here yet... : Or, on being Ambitious for Audience Research Barker, Martin Audience research, after a promising period during which some crucial advances were made, seems to be in decline in several ways, yet its tasks remain as important as ever. This article, originally a presentation at the 2003 Versailles Conference on the Future of Audience Research, makes the case for expanding our vision of the field’s possibilities. To do this, it revisits some of the forgotten achievements of the Uses and Gratifications tradition, offers a critique of the dominant “Hall model” for conceiving media/audience relations, and outlines the key concept of an alternative approach: the concept of a “viewing strategy,” which has been at the heart of the 2003–2004 international project on the reception of The Lord of the Barker, Martin, (2006) 'I have seen the Future and it is not here yet...; Or, on being Ambitious for Audience Research', The Communication Review 9, pp. 123-141 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2160/2223 Envisaging ‘Visualisation’: Some challenges from the international Lord of the Rings audience project Barker, Martin This essay explores a series of issues which have emerged around the term ‘visualisation’ as a result of materials generated out of the international Lord of the Rings audience project.‘Visualisation’ is quite widely used as a term in film studies, but (apart from some quite precise meanings in production) not much considered. In this essay I begin from some elements of empirical evidence, and through some unlikely encounters that these spurred with bodies of work from outside film studies, I develop an argument for a new approach to thinking about ‘visualisation’. This approach would reach a long way and have wide implications, not least for the ways we think about and research film audiences, and for the ways we approach adaptation studies. Therefore the essay is as much a report on a journey of ideas, and a set of proposals, as it is a claim to a demonstration. Barker, Martin, (2006) 'Envisaging ‘Visualisation’: Some challenges from the international Lord of the Rings audience project', Film Philosophy 10 (3), pp.1-25 2006-12-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2160/2222 Assessing the ‘Quality’ in Qualitative Research The Case of Text–Audience Relations Barker, Martin A number of recent works on methodology for media and communication studies have sought to embrace the contributions from cultural studies qualitative investigations, in particular for their contribution to our understanding of media texts. But a problem is emerging from this. While their discussions reference the characteristic measures of validity for quantitative research, no equivalent measures of the strength of qualitative researches have yet emerged. This article draws on David Silverman’s work to formulate a number of proposals to remedy this gap. These are tested against four recent investigations of one phenomenon: women as viewers of violent/horror films. Barker, Martin, (2003) 'Assessing the ‘Quality’ in Qualitative Research The Case of Text–Audience Relations', European Journal of Communication 18 (3), pp. 315-335 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2160/1996 Changing lives, challenging concepts: Some findings and lessons from the Lord of the Rings project Barker, Martin This article presents a series of key findings from the international Lord of the Rings project, around the meanings and implications for audiences of choosing to describe the films as a „Spiritual Journey‟. Drawing on a combination of quantitative results and qualitative responses, and presenting one woman‟s responses in detail, it proffers a set of implications for the fields of film, and cultural studies. Barker, Martin, 'Changing lives, challenging concepts: Some findings and lessons from the Lord of the Rings project', International Journal of Cultural Studies 12(4, pp. 375–393 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z