Wilson, Tony. Understanding Media Users: From Theory to Practice.

Crandall, Heather

Wilson, Tony. Understanding Media Users: From

Theory to Practice. Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell, 2008.

Pp. 232 ISBN 978-1-4051-5566-3 (hbk.) $89.95;

978-1-4051-5567-0 (pb.) $39.95; also available as e-book

from http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1444304968.html

Tony Wilson's book, Understanding Media Users: From Theory to Practice, is about interpretation or audience response of mass media and Internet content. Wilson's aim is toward a universal interpretation process and he uses phenomenology and hermeneutics to ground his ideas theoretically. Through abduction (abstract analysis) of the way people describe their own media and Internet interpretation processes, Wilson develops a five stage game-like (ludic) universal model. This model includes, "absorptions/anticipation, articulation, and appropriation of or alienation from screen content" (p. 173).

Throughout the book, Wilson refers to one main example to help illustrate our interaction with media and his emerging model: It is the story of how a Chinese Malaysian woman in an airport uses her cell phone. The phone rings, she looks at the number, and she decides whether she will answer based on the familiar or unfamiliar number. She values her phone because if her daughter calls, it will make her day. Wilson's example is global or cross-cultural because the woman is Chinese Malaysian. Her choice to talk on the phone or not represents all of our ability to technologically opt out of a present environment and join another present. In Wilson's words:

 Being an audience, engaging in play, stands outside
 "ordinary" life (Huizinga, 1970, p. 32):
 often "intensely and utterly" (ibid.) involved, we
 forget the daily self. Viewers take aim at achieving
 sense in a mediated story: they anticipate and
 actualize textual meaning as goal. Like games,
 accessing the screen is a "stepping out" of "real"
 life into a "temporary sphere of activity with a
 disposition all its own" (ibid., p. 26), an "intermezzo,"
 an "interlude" associated with television
 or Internet surfing. Messaging on a cellphone
 screen, our concentration looks beyond
 our material location. (p. 75)

The theory is in its infancy. For this reason, Wilson recommends his model be tested through "falsifying focus groups and interviews" because these methods rely on the interpretation processes of media users.

Wilson spends the first part of his book theoretically positioning his approach. His work aligns with uses and gratifications analysis and reader reception theory and is in opposition to UK structuralist work and U.S. media effects work. Wilson dismisses these latter approaches "as irredeemably determinist." For those who teach media studies to graduate students, Understanding Media Users could be used to discuss how one vies for space at the theoretical table. The book could serve as a springboard for discussions with graduate students about the ethics of theoretical and epistemological positioning. For example, what does it mean to say that media user theory operates from a constructionist epistemology? Is it necessary to shore up the strength of your own epistemological choices the way Wilson does? How are methodological divisions maintained and perpetuated in the field of communication?

For mass media scholars, Understanding Media Users might prove a valuable resource to or as an uncommon body of literature. Wilson is concerned with how a person incorporates what he or she encounters with what he or she already knows and because of the phenomenological and hermeneutical foundation he works within, draws from a set of references different from those typically found in mass media research. Fisher's work on narrative is absent. Van Dijk's work on ideology is mentioned once. Burke's seminal work on identification is absent.

Hall's encoding/decoding model is mentioned one or two times. Lacey's work on media, genre, and narrative is absent. Wilson does not contradict what these authors outline and this makes his book fascinating and perhaps useful.

Similarly, Wilson's discussion of philosophy in Understanding Media Users could be useful. He discusses the perspectives of Derrida, Morley, Gadamer, Barthes, Heidegger, Iser, Jauss, and Fish (among many others) at a high level of proficiency. A person who does not share this philosophical proficiency could augment his or her knowledge with the references used in Understanding Media Users. For graduate seminar discussions, one could use Wilson's work as vehicle to explore what one loses and gains with breadth of material over depth.

One problem with Wilson's theory is in scope. He does not clearly describe what his theory covers, unless naming television and the Internet suffices. His psychological phenomenological constructivist media user theory is about how people come to understand, and what the source of this understanding is. Wilson claims that "Meaning is ours." Missing from the discussion is a distinction between how people come to understand "screen content," and how people come to understand anything else. Communication is the way we make sense together. Essential, I would think, to a media user theory would be the line where media and Internet interpretation differs from other interpretation.

The third and final portion of the book offers a melange of contextual examples such as marketing, brandscapes, and the focus group results from consumer citizens who engage in journalism and tourism websites. These examples, while confusing at first glance (why explore marketing, tourism, and branding?), might offer an invitation to media scholars who share Wilson's theoretical vision, to help refine his theory.

While Wilson's model, philosophy, and method are clear, his examples and supporting material are less clear and his repetitious style requires a measure of patience and respect for the difficult work of theory building. Understanding Media Users: From Theory to Practice could be valuable pedagogically, philosophically, and epistemologically.

The book includes a bibliography and an index.

--Heather Crandall

Gonzaga University