The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, 7 Volume Set

12

A Framework for Audience Study of Transnational Television

Chua Beng Huat

ABSTRACT

In the past two decades, television in East Asia has become progressively integrated to constitute a regional cultural economy juxtaposed against the programs imported from the globally dominant US. In terms of popular reception, audience formation, and attendant social and political process, East Asian television programs have far greater regional impact than their US counterpart. Consequently East Asia television audience reception research has emerged in the past decade as a field that engages a new community of Asian media scholars. Drawing on this expanding field of research, the present chapter will attempt to develop the beginning of a conceptual framework that focuses on the reception of imported programs in different regional locations. Such a conceptual framework holds transnationality as the central problematic in a whole range of issues – such as the content transforming practice of dubbing, the generation of audience identification with foreign content and artistes, the politics of transnational fandom, and the possibility of a pan-East Asian identity. In addition to its heuristic value for other investigations of regional audience formations, this preliminary analysis, which has identified a small set of necessary components, invites further research to develop a more fully fleshed out framework for the analysis of transnational audience practices.

Introduction

As a consequence ...