Predicted, constructed, and actual reader

Töyry, M., Helle, M., Jaakola, M. (2011). Predicted, constructed, and actual reader . Zagreb conference: "New challenges and methodological innovations in European media audience research". 7-9 April 2011.

Abstract: Our multidisciplinary research group tries to overcome methodological challenges in connecting separate research traditions of media production, analysis of texts and reception studies in audience-oriented research. We combine three different methodologies for analyzing the chain from production to reception using a third sector printed magazine as a case. We analyze the audience construction in a magazine using data from a developmental intervention called media concept laboratory. First researchers and journalists analyzed together the values and goals of the publisher and the journalists. A revised predicted reader was constructed, a new page plan was created, the layout redesigned, story types and ways of addressing the predicted reader were developed. Magazines include different kind of texts that suggested different readership positions and roles for the predicted reader. We analyze three different text types – political, discursive and advisory. We demonstrate how the reader position construed in a text could be analyzed linguistically. We scrutinize three texts and study their linguistic choices concerning the perspective and the role of the construed reader. The linguistic framework is cognitive linguistics, and especially cognitive grammar. The perspectives we are particularly focusing on are the expected level of knowledge and roles of the reader written into a text. The third phase of the research will be analyzing the media experience of actual readers with different methods like psychophysiological measurements and ethnography of media use.