Media Consumption in Malaysia: A Hermeneutics of Human Behaviour

by Tony Wilson

Overview

How do visitors immersing themselves in material places such as shopping malls or video sites online make sense of the experience, enabling criticizing - or consenting to content? How is this evident in behaviour? Reflecting on accounts by Chinese, Indian, Malay and Indigenous members of Malaysian society, this book addresses these questions from a practices perspective increasingly adopted by scholars in marketing and media studies.

The volume provides an account of practices theory from its origins in critical hermeneutics (such as Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur), as reflecting on the processes of embodied understanding, developing alongside interpretive and reception theory. Part I draws upon authors as diverse as Heidegger and Henry Jenkins, with a practices perspective on media and mall consuming shown as developing from forty years of theorizing about audience activity. An empirical study of Malaysian blogging and branding on YouTube exemplifies this approach. Part II considers Malaysians absorbed in social media sites, as everyday visitors and the subjects of consumer research. The book then returns to the material world, exploring the horizons of understanding from which Malaysians enter their mediated malls, and concludes by positioning media practices theory within a spectrum of philosophical ideas.

Recognizing the current (re)turn in Consumer and Media Studies to employing hermeneutics as an account of our embodied human understanding, this book presents its major philosophical proponents, showing how close attention to their writing can now inform and shape research on ubiquitous screen users. As such, it will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Media Studies, Asian Studies and Marketing Studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138492295
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/22/2018
Series:	Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Tony Wilson has taught audience and consumer research at postgraduate and undergraduate levels in Malaysian private and public universities, and is currently affiliated to the Research Office, Sunway University, Jeffrey Cheah Educational Foundation, Malaysia. He holds a PhD from Glasgow University, UK and this book is his sixth monograph on hermeneutics, practices and Malaysian media users.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why Our (Re)Turn to Hermeneutics? Understanding as Ubiquitous Practice Part I Global Theory: the Practices Perspective on People 1. Audiences Entering Mall and Media: Visitors Projecting Everyday Practices 2. Participatory Practices in Promotional Places: Consumers from Heidegger to Henry Jenkins 3. Video Blogging and Branding on YouTube: Interpreting Ready-to-Hand Understanding Part II A Practices Perspective on Malaysian Consumers 4. Consumers Constructing Marketing Meaning: Generic Practices in Participatory Online Media 5. Consuming Sites: Malaysians Visiting Social Media: Ready-to-Hand Repertoires Presented as Practices 6. Visitors Engaging in Mall Practices: Minimally Monitored Managing Meaning Conclusion: Phenomenology’s Practices Theory: New Hermeneutics/ Old Heidegger?