Hidden: Studying media dislike and its meaning

Abstract

Audience research in media and cultural studies has developed alongside a moral economy of fandom, like and love that risks casting intense suspicion upon dislike and disengagement. An inquiry into audiences’ dislikes, though, will at times tell us a great deal about their expectations of, hopes for, and preferred uses of the media. Building on a discussion of the largely Bourdieu-ian framing in media and cultural studies literature of dislike as social ill, and drawing from qualitative interviews, the article moves past ‘poaching’ to see what active dislike tells us about audiences’ relationships to television. In particular, it focuses on audiences who use dislike as a resource to articulate both to others and themselves positions of marginalization and exclusion from a perceived televisual norm.