ABSTRACT
Media consumption is a common term used to describe all kinds of goods and services produced by the media as a transaction of communication. The term was borrowed by American media scholars from political economy. It is commonly used to refer to media production and their diffusion (→ Media Flows, III/35). Thus, movies (→ Cinema, III/26), music (→ Popular Music Flows, III/16), news, magazines (→ Journalism, III/32), and television (→ Cinema, III/43) programs are goods to be consumed or appropriated. The development of modern media and its consumption by audiences is related to the stage of capitalism (→ II/2) related with “the creation of needs and wants and of particular ways of satisfying them” (Williams 1983, 79) (→ Consumerism, I/23), a model that includes an extension to other fields such as politics, education (→ I/24), health (→ Cinema, I/29) and communication. Media professionals, in this sense, are viewed as industrial producers (→ Cultural Industries, III/27) while audiences are seen as “consumers of meaning”.
