Books by Richard (Rider University Butsch

Focuses on the representation of audiences in a range of discourses. This book identifies bad audiences depicted as crowds or isolated individuals, and good audiences as publics. They are measured against the standard of citizenship, revealing preoccupation with the political significance of audiences in these discourses.

In The Making of American Audiences, Richard Butsch provides a comprehensive survey of American entertainment audiences from the colonial period to the modern day. Providing coverage of theatre, opera, vaudeville, minstrelsy, movies, radio and television, he examines the evolution of audience practices as each genre supplanted another as the primary popular entertainment. Based on original historical research, this volume exposes how audiences made themselves through their practices - how they asserted control over their own entertainments and their own behaviour. Importantly, Butsch articulates two long-term processes: pacification and privatization. Whereas during the nineteenth century, overactive audiences represented a threat to civic order through their unruly behaviour, in the twentieth century, audiences have become more passive, dependent upon and controlled by media messages. This timely study serves as an important contribution to communication research, as well as American cultural history and cultural studies.