From passive receivers to distributing consumers: The changing role of Japanese TV drama audiences in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper examines the changing role of Japanese TV drama audiences in Hong Kong. Many studies on cultural circulation have assumed the audience of cultural text as a group of passive individuals and they have been accused of falling into a trap of blinkered thinking, which often overlooks the audience's ability to re-create and re-circulate the cultural product and to attach a new layer of meaning to the text in the process. The paper tries to show that the traditional cultural circuit of "Producer-Product-Receivers" cannot fully explain the complex use of cultural products in daily life by investigating the consumption of Japanese TV dramas in Hong Kong, from the perspective of the changing role of audiences and its relation to the changing social circumstances. © City University of Hong Kong.