Giving people a voice: on the critical role of the interview in the history of audience research

Inspired by the “Keywords in Communication” theme of the 2009 ICA conference, this paper observes the pivotal role played by “the interview” in the history of audience research. Although interviewing implies bidirectionality, research following Lazarsfeld constructed the powerful interviewer and obedient interviewee, a tradition challenged by the critical turn in reception studies and its emphasis on interviewee expertise. This enabled research to pose crucial challenges to media and communication theory through giving the audience a voice. Yet today, this challenge risks being undermined as textbooks emphasize traditional methods, as the analysis of new media repositions mass audiences as “passive,” and as researchers seem reluctant in practice to go out and talk to the public.