Female Audiences’ Interpretation on Media Programs——A Research Based on Sherlock

Abstract

Media content has no consistent derivative meaning to female audiences. Female audiences would add their own imaginations into the process of interpreting the popular media content and finally form a discourse system belonging to subcultural circle. Female audiences routinely engage in the opposite decoding of media content, instead of just following the intrinsic message (Steiner, 1988). To examine this idea, the researcher assumed that female audiences in the digital era would interpret and utilize media content in their own way, and take Sherlock, the highquality TV program of BBC, and its audiences as research subjects. The research question is how female audiences engage in decoding of popular media content. This research contains two important aspects: media content and audience responses. The research methods in this study are textual analysis and semi-structured interview. The conclusion is that the way of interpretation and the formation of discourse system are influenced by two important factors: the subculture in the social network and the awakening of females' sense of independence.1.