When studying media audiences, comparisons between countries, cultures or specific geographical regions are often valued for providing rich data, offering scholars the benefit of a wider perspective. An international comparative outlook can help understand how different media systems interrelate with cultural and social contexts, as well as show how global media technologies are used and made meaningful in local settings. However, it also comes with a multitude of challenges, which can be particularly palpable using qualitative methods, resulting partly from the often relatively small-scale samples at hand, and partly from the demand to understand complex sense-making processes and nuances in audiences’ expressions and interpretations. This chapter discusses some of the methodological complications that can arise when embarking on cross-cultural audience research, especially highlighting how researchers may need to adapt in times of crisis or unforeseen events. It draws on a qualitative research project on news consumption among young people in three different countries, Sweden, Estonia and Russia, which—based on interviews, focus groups and elements of ethnographic observation—examined how young adults (aged 18–26) conceptualise and use news in their highly digitised everyday lives. During the course of the research, two major socio-political crises, Covid-19 and then the Russian invasion of Ukraine, contributed to the project taking a different route than originally planned, and the chapter emphasises the necessity of flexibility and reflexivity in audience research, as well as attempting to challenge more rigid ideas of how to compare media audiences across geographies and cultures.

The British film scholar Laura Mulvey’s essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975) provides an enticing mixture of political manifesto, hard-boiled theoretical argumentation and empirical film analysis. It depicts how classical Hollywood cinema reaffirms gendered power structures by incorporating the cinema audience into what Mulvey refers to as ‘the male gaze’. Drawing on psychoanalytical theory, Mulvey highlights how the spectator - through the positioning of the film camera, the editing and the way in which the narrative is constructed - is drawn into what she sees as a ‘male’ viewing position. This perspective remains influential in much of the public conversation about film and media and has inspired many feminist analyses of media and popular culture.

Since their emergence in the early 2000s, social media have continued to increase in popularity, particularly among adolescents and young adults. Even though they have been studied in relation to a wide range of topics, including their role in politics, social relationships, activism, identity construction, and youth cultures, the rise of social media is also connected to a number of less dramatic, yet pervasive, shifts relating to their integration into the mundane practices of day-to-day life. In this article, we explore the uses of social media as part of everyday life, a perspective that has gained less attention in research about social media. We take an interest in how young adults create meaning around their daily practices, involving many different social media platforms. Doing so, we draw on in-depth individual and small group interviews with 67 young adults, aged 18–26, conducted in Sweden during 2019–2021. We approach social media as a joint environment, consisting of a wide range of different platforms traversed by the user. The empirical analysis identifies three significant meanings of social media: filling empty slots, everyday transformations, and mood management. These three different meanings are shaped by different temporal, spatial, and technological characteristics and emphasize the importance of social media use in the lives of the young adults.

Tabloid journalism has long been a highly contested news form. With a sensationalist ap­proach and an easily digested mix of entertainment and news, it has often attracted mass audiences at the same time as it has stirred controversy and raised concern about its im­pact on public discourse. Originating in the tabloid newspaper, associated both with a small newspaper format and a particular news style, the term “tabloid” is today consid­ered to characterize a range of other media content, extending to popular TV programsand certain kinds of online news. The rise and development of tabloid journalism, in com­bination with wider processes shaping the media, has moreover led to a debate about“tabloidization,” involving ideas about shifting priorities in journalism and the media landscape as a whole.

Although tabloidization has no standard definition, an overview of empirical research us­ing the concept as a starting point highlights analyses of various media, historical peri­ods, and media markets, adding to understandings of tabloidization as multi-faceted and context-bound. Such a process, furthermore, has been viewed both as a possible threat to the public sphere and as potentially entailing democratizing elements, relating to long-standing depictions of tabloid journalism as either “dumbing down” or “reaching out.” Yet contemporary analysis in this field has tended to paint a more complex picture of both phenomena as well as pointing to emerging questions around the category of tabloid jour­nalism in digital settings.

With the internet and digital media technology increasingly central to practices around music, this shift is often seen as contributing to a networked music use characterized by individualism. Drawing on a focus group study with young adults in Stockholm and Moscow, this article argues, however, that digital music use today is shaped by discourses of difference, with gender a significant factor both in constructions of the ideal music and technology user, and in terms of musical influence and guidance. Taking into account contemporary research on new media technology, as well as feminist studies of technology and music, the article questions ideas of a neutral user of new music technologies, showing how the gendering of music and media technology can be seen as simultaneously context-bound and cutting across geographies.

This article examines how media consumers of different age, gender and socio-economic backgrounds in Stockholm relate to and talk about celebrities and celebrity media. Based on 16 small focus groups with 17 year olds and 45–55 year olds, with male and female participants from working-class as well as academic backgrounds, I investigate a range of responses to celebrity content in connection with overall media developments in Sweden, in order to gain insights into what the contemporary cultural emphasis on celebrity can mean on an audience level within a particular context. Some of the pleasures gained from celebrity content but also elements of celebrity ‘hatred’ and experiences of media manipulation are explored. Likewise, some of the articulations of individual celebrities and celebrity media are discussed as interlinked with socially determined identity positions such as age, gender and social class.

Previous research has shown that uses of media technologies (Gray 1992, Lally 2002) as well as music consumption (DeNora 2000) are gendered practices, while scholars have also emphasized how national context and ideas about nation, ethnicity and race play into the uses of media technologies (Miller & Slater 2000) and music cultures (Roy 2010).  Drawing on such analyses, this paper investigates contemporary practices in music use from an intersectional feminist perspective. It takes as its starting point the Internet as a core music platform, which is transforming listening modes and potentially also meanings of music.

Posing questions about how to understand emerging trends in music use in relation to music as a gendered and place-bound practice, the paper presents one part of a larger study of music use online among young adults in Stockholm and Moscow. The study is ongoing and is conducted by the presenters and their colleagues. Analyzing focus group interviews with young adult men and women, the paper explores how – primarily – gender and nation is articulated (Hall 1996) in the talk about music and online media technologies. Through discussions about their favorite music as well as their favorite media to use when listening to music, and how music is intricately intertwined in their social networks, the participants display ideas about themselves in a context of gender, place, ethnicity and race. We argue that the way they listen to music and use media technology such as Spotify and Last FM can be understood as interplaying with the process of articulation of gender and nation, and that this articulation may differ between different places.  

This paper presents an ongoing research project investigating how the Internet is impacting on music use in contemporary society. The backdrop to the project is the digitalization of society and culture, where the music industry has undergone profound changes, and where the Internet, for young people in particular, is changing listening modes and, potentially, meanings of, music in everyday life. Our objective is to shed light on what these transformations mean on the user level, and how their adaptation is situated specific geo-cultural settings, through a qualitative study of how young music users in Moscow and Stockholm experience and discuss music in relation to the Internet. Drawing on preliminary research findings, we aim to discuss and develop questions around how the Internet integrates with daily experience within contemporary society; what this means for music as a form of communication; and how adaptations of Internet technologies are shaped by geo-cultural frameworks.

At the centre of media controversy, tabloids continue to be the best-read newspapers in Britain. Competing for the largest group of the British newspaper readers, these papers have been criticized for abandoning their journalistic responsibility, to the detriment of society and the media climate at large. Yet, little research has been conducted on the reception of tabloid journalism. Building on the ongoing debate about popular journalism and “tabloidization”, this article draws on focus groups and interviews with 55 male and female young adult readers of the Sun and the Daily Mirror, the two circulation leaders among the popular tabloids. It provides an analysis of readers' experiences of what is often perceived of as typically “trivial” tabloid journalism, such as human interest, sport and celebrity stories, with the aim of providing a better understanding of the popularity of this kind of newspaper content. In doing so, readers' experiences are related to day-to-day routines and the social structures surrounding these, and the article shows how tabloid newspaper reading links with a wider social context.

Widely read and highly controversial, tabloid newspapers are often criticized for sensationalizing, trivializing and simplifying journalism. At the heart of debates about media standards, they continue to cause concern about the impact of popular news formats on society at large. Yet, there is little research into how tabloid newspapers are viewed by their readers. Why are they popular? What do readers think about tabloid scandals and sensationalism? What is the attraction of celebrity stories? Do readers trust tabloid news coverage?

Reading Tabloids examines British tabloid newspapers from an audience perspective. Drawing on focus groups and interviews with readers of the popular tabloids the Sun and the Daily Mirror, as well as incorporating a textual analysis of the two papers, it explores how interpretations take place in an everyday inter-play between the newspapers and their readers. The book offers a new perspective on tabloid journalism, of value to those interested in the press, the news media and popular culture in contemporary society.