Globalizing Popular Communication Audience Research: Looking to our Sister Fields for New Directions

Globalization is a phenomenon and a process that has touched every part of life, demanding new ways of conceptualizing the relation between popular communication and audience practices. In this article, recent scholarship in popular communication audience studies and issues of globalization are reviewed. A consideration of recent developments in the study of popular communication audiences in the sister fields of anthropology and American studies suggest new directions for scholars in media studies, including the adoption of an "ethnographicway of seeing" and a "humanities way of analyzing."