THE BEIJING AUDIENCE STUDY

Abstract

Communication research in China is in an early stage of development, but there are an increasing number of training and research activities in universities and in independent institutes. The Beijing Audience Survey in 1982 was the first large-scale communication field study in China. It showed a very high degree of penetration of the mass media among both urban and rural audiences in the metropolitan area of Beijing, with 97% of the sample of 2430 individuals listening daily to radio, 92% viewing television, and 81% reading a daily newspaper. The high degree of exposure to television is surprising, given that the purchase of TV receivers by Chinese families only began at the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976.