Understanding Media Users: From Theory to Practice focuses on the blurred concept of the "active audience" at the core of media studies. Charting the complex terrain of screen reception theory and applied research, this new volume offers wide-ranging criticism of media effects. It highlights connections and contrasts between European communications and US consumer theory, reading books and using screens, philosophy and new media research, and between the process and politics of viewing. A philosophically informed pointer to the diverse thinking on audiences that has emerged over the past quarter century, Understanding Media Users is also a guide to qualitative investigation through focus groups and student-conducted interviews. Crossing cultures and generations, and enriched by Asian perspectives, the book examines Western hypotheses on media use.