"In today's thoroughly mediated societies people spend many hours in the role of audiences, and powerful organizations, including governments, corporations and schools, reach people via the media. Consequently, how people think about, and organizations treat, audiences has considerable significance. This ground-breaking collection offers original, empirical studies of discourses about audiences as it brings together a genuinely international range of work. With essays on audiences in Ancient Greece, Post-Soviet Russia, post-colonial Zimbabwe, contemporary Egypt, China and Taiwan, each chapter examines the ways in which audiences are embedded in discourses of power, representation and regulation in different yet overlapping ways according to specific socio-historical contexts. Suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, this book is a valuable and original contribution to media and communication studies that will be particularly useful to those studying audience and international media"--