Tv Everyday Practice - Prop Village Uighur Audience Research

Audience research in China has been conducted from the perspective of development communications and the positivist approach mainly based on quantitative method sience 1980s. Very few studies with ethnographic approach are carried out in the obturate villages which TV has just entered, which are significantly different from reception studies that pay close attention to the relationship among audience, TV and identity in everyday life. This dissertation intents to study Uigur audience's TV use and their identity with ethnography in the rapid-changing society.The dissertation is based on the theory of the practice of everyday life, which affirms not only the dominance of political and economic order, but also the audience's ability to create meaning with practices of everyday life. So the core question is: what is the logic of Uigur audience's TV use in everyday life in Tutey village? It includes a few more specific questions:what is the characteristic of Uigur audience's adoption and use of TV technology? Have they met some of the special needs by media technology? How do they access and interpret television texts? Is television used to construct their identity? If so, what is that identity?Here are some of the findings:1. In Tutey village, wireless TV's popularity, Cable TV's slow development and satellite TV's rapid development is the basic distribution pattern of television technology, which are under the restrictions of national policy and economic factors. In families, it is usually male parent who advocates to install satellite TV antennas. That means technology adopters is the elder rather than the young, and new media technology is used to maintain ethnic traditions. This finding questions the results of previous studies.2. By means of the choice, use and transformation on TV programs, Tutey audience consolidates the traditional culture of ethnic groups, and constructs the concept on the nation. That is a flexible application of the tactical principle of everyday life. Villagers regard Chinese programs as a learning tool, achieve ethnic group's cultural and religious identity through foreign language programs, and form different attitudes to various administrative levels'governments in the course of interpreting news programs. In this situation, "passing the voice of the party", which the mainstream ideology expects, is transformed by audience. Their consistency with the mainstream depends on the vital interests that government brings to the villagers, and the way villagers pursue their interests.3. Social context plays an important role in the audience's interpretation to TV texts. Tutey is a stable and closely-tied community in which villagers are deeply affected by ethnic traditions, while the nation's influence on the villagers is limited, fragmented and suspended. In real life, both nation and ethnic group make use of media to expand their influence, and form relationship of both cooperation and competition.The above empirical studies show that Tutey audience's TV technology use and program watching are significantly affected by ethnic cultural norms, their reception is de-ideology, and the concept of nation is hierarchical in their text Interpretation. This kind of TV practice creates mobile social space boundaries, and provides new materials to construct their identity——strong ethnic identity and alienated national identity. When and how the two different identities are showed mainly depends on the practice's purpose and performance scene.In theory, the study finds that there is a certain logic in the practice of everyday life, which repairs and develops Michel De Certeau's theory of the practice of everyday life.In reality, the study shows that Tutey audience's TV practice and its identities are not isolated from social context, which includes social changes in contemporary China and local social environment. Though contradictions and tensions exist between national identity and ethnic identity, they are not necessarily irreconcilable. Nation is an abstract concept, only through actual behaviors and some symbols, villagers could perceive and understand the concept, and construct nation's image and ideas. The improvement of national identity is based on strengthening the construction of both social environment and national mainstream ideology. Positive interaction and harmonious co-existence between national identity and ethnic identity may be achieved only in this way.