David Morley was a British media researcher who specialized in audience theory. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he conducted The Nationwide Project alongside Charlotte Brunsdon to study media audiences. The project focused on how people from different educational and occupational backgrounds interpreted and made sense of the popular BBC news program Nationwide. Initial findings found that social class alone did not determine how people decoded media messages. However, later analysis suggested interpretations were also influenced by factors like gender and race within social classes.

1. David Morley was a media researcher who
specialised in audience theory, which is an
element of thinking that developed within
academic literary theory and cultural studies.
His research has addressed questions in
relation to media consumption and the effect
that it has on viewers. He worked for the
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
(CCCS) – a research centre in the University of
Birmingham, primarily in the 1970s.
Morley conducted TheNationwide Project in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, alongside
Charlotte Brunsdon, which focused on media
audiences. He undertook a frequent amount of
research with various participants from various
educational and occupational backgrounds.

2. • The Nationwide Project takes its name from the
popular news/current affairs magazine programme
Nationwide, which had a regular early evening slot on
weekdays from 6.00 to 7.00 pm on BBC1. It followed
the main national news from London and included
stories from the various regions as well as regional
coverage of the major events of the day. It was
broadcast throughout the UK (including
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), though from its
general stance one might have been forgiven for
assuming that it was broadcast only within England.
Michael Barratt was the regular presenter of the
programme at the time.

3. • The initial conclusion of the project was that decodings
cannot be traced solely to socioeconomic position, since
members of the sample occupying the same class
location produced different readings.
• However, media critic Sujeong Kim's statistical re-
analysis of the project's findings suggests that this may
have been an underinterpretation. For example, Kim
observes that middle class viewers produced negotiated
readings of one particular programme, while working
class viewers produced dominant or oppositional
readings dependent on their gender and race.