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European Sociological Review Advance Access originally published online on April 28, 2006
European Sociological Review 2006 22(4):397-411; doi:10.1093/esr/jcl004
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Patterns of Audio-Visual Consumption: The Reflection of Objective Divisions in Class Structure

Jordi López-Sintas and Ercilia García-Álvarez

Jordi López Sintas, Department d’Economia de l’Empresa, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Edificio B, 08193-Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain. Tel.: +34 93 5812270, Fax: +34 93 5812555; email: jordi.lopez{at}uab.es
Ercilia García-Álvarez, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Management, School of Turisim and Leisure, C/ de Sant Pere, 25, 43480 Vila-Seca I Salou (Tarragona), Spain; email: mariaercilia.garcia{at}urv.net

The heterogeneous behaviour of Spanish audio-visual audiences could be encapsulated into five classes: (1) television fans, (2) occasional film-goers, (3) light film-goers, (4) film fans, and (5) audio-visual fans. When the five clusters of audio-visual consumers were analysed according to a set of sociocultural indicators, they appeared ordered as listed above, from downscale to upscale audiences, giving support to Bourdieu’s homology thesis. Accordingly, the media orientations of each type of audience also differed: upscale audiences used the media for tension release (entertainment) and for integrative-status purposes and downscale audiences, for integrative-social and cognitive reasons (education and information). All in all, the results suggest that the five clusters of audio-visual consumption found reflected the objective divisions in the class structure that the sociology of culture proposes.

Manuscript received: August 1, 2005.


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