Hardly a day goes by without another sensational story of young people depraved and corrupted by the mass media. Children and young people are often portrayed as passive victims, force-fed violent and dangerous images by the media. Yet this is far from the whole story. Reading Audiences offers an alternative approach to studying young people's relationships with popular media. It contains detailed qualitative studies covering a range of media, including television, comics, video and popular fiction. The contributors pay close attention to the diverse roles these different media play in the family and the peer group, and the complex ways in which young people make sense of what they read and watch. Collectively, these studies offer challenging new perspectives on the role of the media in forming the social, sexual and cultural identities of today's youth. This text is intended for undergraduates in media and cultural studies and gender studies.