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In this chapter Sonia Livingstone situates the Caring in Crisis project within scholarly traditions that focus on audience reception and interpretation of mediated texts. Drawing parallels with her research on the mediation of ‘public connection’, Livingstone stresses the significance of accounting for how people’s negotiation of meanings of texts depend on their worldviews, and how the latter are in turn shaped by their political commitments, social contexts, and personal biographies. The chapter concludes with an important reminder of the complexity of publics, arguing that the mediation of public connection opens up multiple forms of ethical response beyond direct action, including knowing and caring for others, and constructing oneself as an ethical individual.