Abstract
This chapter analyses fieldwork with 90 people in the UK and Germany, exploring the expectations audiences articulate about regulatory processes behind television content they find offensive. First, mapping people’s responses on to the conceptual pairing of citizens and consumers, we find audiences aligning themselves with citizen interests, even when, often on the surface, they respond to media regulation and institutions with suspicion. Second, we find that complaints that make it to media regulators are just the tip of the iceberg. Third, in investigating people’s expectations of actors and institutions in their responses to television content that startles, upsets, or just offends them, we note that it is crucial to treat a conversation on free speech and censorship with caution.
A version of this chapter has been previously published in: Communication, Culture and Critique 2017, 10 (4): 626–640.
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Das, R., Graefer, A. (2019). Regulatory Expectations of Offended Audiences: The Citizen Interest in Audience Discourse. In: Graefer, A. (eds) Media and the Politics of Offence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17574-0_10
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