The Handbook of Media Audiences E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Global Media and Communication Handbook Series (IAMCR)
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1222

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the complexity and diversity of audience studies in the advent of digital media. * Details the study of audiences and how it is changing in relation to digital media * Recognizes and appreciates valuable traditional approaches and identifies how they can be applied to, and evolve with, the changing media world * Offers diverse perspectives from which being an audience, theorizing audiences, researching audiences, and doing audience research are approached today * Argues that the field works best by identifying particular 'audience problems' and applying the best theories and research methods available to solving them * Includes contributions from some of the most outstanding international scholars in the field

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

Series Editor's Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Being Audiences

Part II: Theorizing Audiences

Part III: Researching Audiences

Part IV: Doing Audience Research

Part I Being Audiences

1 Readers as Audiences

Books as Material Objects, Reading as Physical Practice

Books as Social Objects, Reading as Social Practice4

Institutions Bringing Social and Material Together

Death and Resurrection

Readers and Social Honor: A Lesson from Africa

2 Listening for Listeners

Listening

Sound Archives: What We Know and Understand of “Sounds Past”

Audio/Spectating: Sportscasting and the Formation of Mass Audiences

The Sound of Sounds Past: Uses of the “Listening Room”

Audio/Spectating: Sounding Out Sports Events

Compiling a Sound Self

Grounding the Flow-Through Experience: Personal Sound Systems on Public Transport

The Auditory Epitaph: Music at Modern Funeral Services

“Voicing Your/Self”: The DIY Audio World of Podcasting

Conclusion

3 Viewing

Viewing

Nickelodeon: Unruly Social Space

Classical Hollywood: The Gaze

Broadcast Television: The Glance

“New Media”: The User

The Place of Viewing

4 Search and Social Media

Introduction

Transforming Search

Search, Social Media, and Family History Research

Getting Involved: A Personal Account

The Email Group

Search and Discovery in the Email Group

Attention and Time

Conclusion

5 Spreadable Media

How Susan Spread

Going Viral

Spreadability Made Simple

Understanding Appraisal

The Ecology of Media Consumption

Consumption Politics

6 Going Mobile

Mobile Phone Culture

Mobile Media Audiences

Audiences with Mobile Computers: iPhones, Smartphones, and Apps

Locating the Audience

Mobile Gaming and Locative Media

Conclusion: Theorizing Mobile Audiences

Part II Theorizing Audiences

7 Audiences and Publics, Media and Public Spheres

Publics: Some History of the Idea

Media and Audiences as Public Sphere

Print as Public Sphere

Movie Audiences as Crowds

Broadcasting as Public Sphere

Television and Mass Society

New Media Public Spheres

Conclusion

8 The Implied Audience of Communications Policy Making

Changing Regulatory Regimes and the Implied Audience

Audiences as Citizens or Consumers? The Communication Rights Debate

Audiences as Empowered or Vulnerable? The Media Literacy Debate

Re-imagining the Audience – in Whose Interest?

Acknowledgments

9 New Configurations of the Audience?

Introduction

Core Structural Components of Audience Theory

The Active-Passive Dimension in the Articulation of Audience

The Micro-Macro Dimension in the Audience Articulation

UGC and Participatory Media Practices

Conclusion

10 The Necessary Future of the Audience … and How to Research It

The “Necessity” of the Audience

Signposts from Early Audience Research

Analyzing Media as Practice

The Varieties of Audience Practice

Traditional Media

The Consequences of Media Convergence

Accessing the Media Manifold

Wider Contexts and Practices of Engagement

Dimensions of Audience Practice

Conclusion

11 Reception

What Is Reception Theory?

Reception Aesthetics and Literary Theory

Reception and the Horizon of Experience

Wolfgang Iser’s Analysis of Processes of Reading

Critique and Application of Reception Aesthetics

12 Affect Theory and Audience

Media as Biomedia

Tomkins’s Script Theory

Corporeality and Belief

Affect Contagion

Imitation and Suggestion

Audiences: Crowds, Publics, and Beyond

Opinion and Conversation

Conclusion

Part III Researching Audiences

13 Toward a Branded Audience

Mediatization and Consumer Agency

The Development of Marketing Knowledge

Capturing Creativity

Putting Consumer Agency to Work: The Brand

Conclusion

14 Ratings and Audience Measurement

The Production of Ratings Data

Theoretical Critiques

Ratings Analysis

Access to Ratings Data

The Future of Ratings Analysis

Redefining Ratings Analysis?

15 Quantitative Audience Research

Introduction

The Twin Pillars

The Early Years of Quantitative Audience Research

The Partial Death of the Dominant Paradigm

A Strange Twist …

Conclusion: The Compatibility Thesis

16 Media Effects in Context

Introduction

Effects Research in Historical Context

Children and Media Effects

Conclusion: The Uses of Effects Research

17 Cultivation Analysis and Media Violence

Introduction

What Is Cultivation Analysis?

Criticisms of Cultivation Analysis and the Question of Interpretation

Cultivation, Context, and Interpretation

Ross Kemp in Afghanistan: A Case Study

Audience Reactions

18 Creative and Visual Methods in Audience Research

The Origins of Creative Methods

Audience Research: Pictures as Prompts

Audience Research: Editing News Footage

Audience Research: Making Video

Audience Research: Young People’s Literacies

Examples from the Broader Sociological Context

Making Drawings and Diagrams in Sociological Studies

Making Photographs and Videos in Sociological Studies

Using Metaphor in Social and Media Research

Summary

19 Locating Media Ethnography

Ethnographic Roots and Trajectories

Media Ethnographies and the Field

Media Ethnographies and the Study of Production

Ethnographic Identity in Fieldwork

The Dissolving Field?

Making Ethnographic Media Ethnography

Part IV Doing Audience Research

20 Children’s Media Cultures in Comparative Perspective

Introduction

From Protectionism to Empowerment

Everyday Culture Matters

Difference and Diversity in Children’s Media Cultures

The Emerging Research Agenda

Conclusion

21 Fan Cultures and Fan Communities

Introduction

History

Convergence and New Media Culture

Fan Communities: Exemplary or Exceptional Audiences

Beyond Communities

22 Beyond the Presumption of Identity?

The Export of Meaning

Essentializing Culture – Essentializing Essentialism

Domesticating the Global

Transnational Audiences: Ambivalence and Reflexivity

The Boundary-Making Role of Media

New Media and Transnational Audiences: Lifting the Boundaries?

Methodological and Theoretical Implications for Audience Studies

Conclusions

23 Participatory Vision

Mediated Relations

The Allure of the Unspoken

Seeing Similitude

Seeing Stories

Focus, Force, and Feeling

Viewing from the Inside

Toward a Participatory Vision

24 The Audience Is the Show

“People Produce Beliefs”

The Attentive Audience

Producing Beliefs

Participation

Conclusion

25 Seeking the Audience for News

Introduction: News as a Cultural Phenomenon

News in Everyday Life: The News Habit

News in Everyday Life: News Talk

Direct Audience Response to News

The News Audience in the Digital World

Conclusion

26 Sport and Its Audiences

Introduction: An Audience for and with Sport

Audience Formation Pre- and Post Mediatization

Citizenship and Media Sport Audiences

Other Media, Other Audiences

Conclusion: The Sportization of Media and Their Audiences

Acknowledgments

Index

Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research

Series Editor: Annabelle Sreberny (School of Oriental and African Studies, London)

The Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research series is co-published by Wiley-Blackwell and the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). The series offers definitive, state-of-the-art handbooks that bring a global perspective to their subjects. These volumes are designed to define an intellectual terrain: its historic emergence; its key theoretical paradigms; its transnational evolution; key empirical research and case study exemplars; and possible future directions.

Already published

The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications edited by Janet Wasko, Graham Murdock, and Helena Sousa

The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy edited by Robin Mansell and Marc Raboy

The Handbook of Media Audiences edited by Virginia Nightingale

About the IAMCR

The International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) (http://iamcr.org) was established in Paris in 1957. It is an accredited NGO attached to UNESCO. It is a truly international association, with a membership representing over 80 countries around the world and conferences held in different regions that address the most pressing issues in media and communication research. Its members promote global inclusiveness and excellence within the best traditions of critical research in the field. The current president of the IAMCR is Annabelle Sreberny.

This edition first published 2011© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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Notes on Contributors

Adam Arvidsson is associate professor of sociology at the University of Milano. He has published extensively on brands and the history of consumer culture (Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture, Routledge, 2006). His present work is concerned with the potential of new open economic forms and their likely impact on the global economy. His new book is The Ethical Economy: Business and Society in the Twenty-First Century (coauthored with Nicolai Peitersen; Columbia University Press, 2010).

Fatimah Awan is a research fellow in media users and creative methodologies at the University of Westminster, London. She taught media studies for a number of years at Southampton Solent University and undertook her PhD at Bournemouth University (see www.artlab.org.uk). Her research interests include the sociology of young people and contemporary media, and new qualitative methods which use visual and creative techniques.

S. Elizabeth Bird is professor, Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida. Her books include For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids (1992); Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture (1996); The Audience in Everyday Life (2003); and The Anthropology of News and Journalism: Global Perspectives (2009), and she has published over 60 articles and chapters in media studies, popular culture, and folklore.

Kristina Busse has a PhD in English from Tulane University and teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of South Alabama. She has been an active media fan and has published a variety of essays on fan fiction and fan culture. Kristina is coeditor, with Karen Hellekson, of Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet (2006), and founding coeditor of Transformative Works and Cultures, an online-only international peer-reviewed journal about fan cultures and fan works.

Richard Butsch is author of The Making of American Audiences from Stage to Television 1750–1990 and The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics and Individuals. He also is editor of Media and Public Spheres and For Fun and Profit: The Transformation of Leisure into Consumption. He is currently working on a history of screen culture and a study of changes in American representations of and respect for manual labor and laborers in the twentieth century.

Nico Carpentier is Senior Lecturer in the Social Sciences Department of Loughborough University, and was previously an assistant professor in the Communication Studies Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB – Free University of Brussels). He is co-director of the VUB research center CeMeSo and vice president of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). His theoretical focus is on discourse theory, and his research interests are situated in the relationship between media, journalism, politics, and culture, especially toward social domains such as war and conflict, ideology, participation, and democracy.

Jackie Cook teaches communications at the University of South Australia, where she specializes in radio studies and new uses of digital media. She maintains a regular round of broadcasting commitments, and is currently designing media-training modules for doctorallevel research students.

Nick Couldry is professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, and director of its Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy. He is the author or editor of nine books, including most recently Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism (Sage 2010) and the revised paperback edition of Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention (with Sonia Livingstone and Tim Markham, Palgrave 2010).

David Deacon is professor of communication and media analysis in the Communication Research Centre, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University. He has published widely on political communication, media sociology, and communication theory and is coauthor of Researching Communications: A Practical Guide to Media and Cultural Analysis, which has just been published in its second edition (Arnold, 2007). His latest book is The British News Media and the Spanish Civil War: Tomorrow May Be Too Late (Edinburgh, 2008).

Jennifer Deger is an anthropologist concerned with the intercultural lives of images. Her work with Yolngu from northeast Arnhem Land in northern Australia explores the possibilities of collaborative media practice and the technological mediation of culture. She is an ARC postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, and the author of Shimmering Screens: Making Media in an Aboriginal Community (University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

Kirsten Drotner is a professor of media studies at the University of Southern Denmark and founding director of DREAM: Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials. Author or editor of 22 books, her research interests include media history, qualitative methodologies, and young people’s media uses. Recent books are Researching Audiences (coauthored with Kim Schrøder, Catherine Murray, and Steve Kline; Arnold, 2003); The International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture (coauthored with Sonia Livingstone; Sage, 2008); and Informal Learning and Digital Media (coedited with Hans S. Jensen and Kim Schrøder; Cambridge Scholars’ Publishing, 2008).

David Gauntlett is professor of media and communications in the School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster. He is the author of several books, including Moving Experiences (1995, 2005); Media, Gender and Identity (2002, 2008); Creative Explorations: New Approaches to Identities and Audiences (2007); and Making is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, from DIY and Knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0 (2011). He produces the popular website about media and identities, Theory.org.uk, and the hub for creative and visual research methods, ArtLab.org.uk.

Anna Gibbs is associate professor at the University of Western Sydney. She has published numerous essays on affect theory and mediatized forms of contagion and mimesis (or mimetic communication). Her most recent work, with Maria Angel, is on the corporeality of writing in the new media arts.

Gerard Goggin is professor of media and communications in the Department of Media and Communications, the University of Sydney. His books include New Technologies and the Media (2011), Global Mobile Media (2011), Internationalizing Internet Studies (with Mark McLelland; 2009), Cell Phone Culture (2006), and Digital Disability (with Christopher Newell; 2003).

Jonathan Gray is associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts; Television Entertainment; and Watching with the Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality. His coedited collections include Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-network Era; and Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World.

Joshua Green manages the Media Industries Project at the Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television, and New Media, based at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is coauthor (with Jean Burgess) of YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, the first large-scale analysis of YouTube’s content, structure, and uses.

Wendy Griswold is the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and professor of sociology at Northwestern University. She is the author of Regionalism and the Reading Class (University of Chicago Press, 2008); Cultures and Societies in a Changing World, 3rd edn (Pine Forge Press, 2008); and Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria (Princeton University Press, 2007).

Annette Hill is professor of communication and media at the department of Communication and Media, Lund University, Sweden. She is the author of Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television (Routledge, 2005); and Restyling Factual TV: The Reception of News, Documentary and Reality Genres (Routledge, 2007). Her previous books include Shocking Entertainment (1997); and TV Living: Television, Audiences and Everyday Life (with David Gauntlett 1999), and she has written a variety of articles on audiences and popular culture. She is the coeditor of the Television Studies Reader (with Robert C. Allen; Routledge, 2003).

Henry Jenkins is the Provost’s Professor of Communications, Journalism and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California and formerly the co-director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. He is the author or editor of 13 books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. He is currently writing a book on “spreadable media” with Joshua Green and Sam Ford. He blogs at henryjenkins.org.

Emily Keightley is lecturer in communication and media studies in the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University. She has published in relation to both conceptual and methodological issues in memory studies. Most recently this includes “Remembering Research: Memory and Methodology in the Social Sciences” (International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2010). She is currently working on the book Creative Memory with Michael Pickering, which explores and reconceives the relationship between memory and imagination. She is also editing a collection on the mediation of time in modernity.

Elizabeth Lenaghan is a doctoral student in Northwestern University’s School of Communications (Media, Technology, and Society) working on book collectors and material culture.

Sonia Livingstone is the author or editor of a dozen books and 100+ academic articles and chapters on media audiences, children and the internet, domestic contexts of media use, and media literacy. Recent books include Children and Their Changing Media Environment (coedited with Moira Bovill; Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001); Young People and New Media (Sage, 2002); Audiences and Publics (Intellect, 2005); The Handbook of New Media (coedited with Leah Lievrouw; Sage, 2006); Public Connection? (coedited with Nick Couldry and Tim Markham; Palgrave, 2007); and The International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture (coedited with Kirsten Drotner; Sage, 2008). She was president of the International Communication Association, 2007–2008.

Peter Lunt is a social psychologist and media scholar; he is professor of media and communications at Brunel University, London. His main research interests are in media audiences, public participation through popular culture, and media and social theory. He has also written widely on consumption, and his work is often at the interface between social identity as citizens and as consumers. His recent publications include a book on Stanley Milgram published by Palgrave, and he is currently working on a book on media regulation with Sonia Livingstone which will be published by Sage.

Mirca Madianou is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Lucy Cavendish College. She is the author of Mediating the Nation (UCL Press/Routledge, 2005) and several other articles on news audiences, nationalism, transnationalism, and media consumption. She is currently the principal investigator on the ESRC-funded project “Migration, ICTs and Transnational Families.”

Patrick D. Murphy is Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Broadcastng, Telecommunications and Mass Media, School of Communications and Theater, Temple University. He has published on the topics of media and globalization, media reception and ethnographic method, and Latin American cultural theory. He is coeditor of Negotiating Democracy: Media Transformation in Emerging Democracies (SUNY, 2007); and Global Media Studies: Ethnographic Perspectives (Routledge, 2003).

Michelle Naffziger is a doctoral student in Northwestern University’s Sociology Department working on education and inequality and on reading groups. All correspondence should be addressed to Wendy Griswold, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University.

Philip M. Napoli is professor of communications and media management in the Graduate School of Business, and director of the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center, at Fordham University in New York. He also serves as a Knight Media Policy Fellow with the New America Foundation and as a docent in the Department of Communication at the University of Helsinki. His research interests focus on media institutions and media policy. His books include Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace (Columbia University Press, 2003); and Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences (Columbia University Press, 2010). His research has been supported by organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the National Association of Broadcasters, the National Association of Television Programming Executives, the Social Science Research Council, and the Center for American Progress.

Virginia Nightingale held the position of associate professor with the School of Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney until retiring in 2009. Now an independent scholar, her publications include Studying Audiences: The Shock of the Real (Routledge 1996); two books published in collaboration with Karen Ross, Media and Audiences: New Perspectives and Critical Readings: Media and Audiences (both Open University Press, McGraw-Hill, 2003); and, in collaboration with Tim Dwyer, the anthology New Media Worlds: Challenges for Convergence (Oxford University Press Australia, 2007).

Brian O’Neill is head of research for the Faculty of Applied Arts, Dublin Institute of Technology, and former head of its School of Media. His research interests include media literacy and media policy in relation to digital broadcasting, new media technologies, and information society issues. He is a member of the DRACE research group (www.drace.org), originally part of COST A20, and is a contributing editor of its volume Digital Radio in Europe: Technologies, Industries and Cultures (Intellect, forthcoming).

David Rowe is professor of cultural studies at the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney. His principal research interests concern media and popular culture, including broadcast and online sport, tabloidization, cultural policy, and urban leisure. His books include Popular Cultures: Rock Music, Sport and the Politics of Pleasure (Sage, 1995); Globalization and Sport: Playing the World (Sage, 2001); and Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity (2nd edn; Open University Press, 2004).

Andy Ruddock lectures in communications and media studies at Monash University, Melbourne. He is the author of Understanding Audiences (2001) and Investigating Audiences (2007). Andy has published numerous articles on audiencerelated media subjects, including sport fandom, political celebrity, moral panics, and drinking, in journals such as The European Journal of Cultural Studies, Convergence, Popular Communication, Social Semiotics, Sociology of Sport Journal, Journal of Sport and Social Issues; and Sociology Compass.

Cornel Sandvoss is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. He is author of Fans: The Mirror of Consumption (Polity, 2005); and A Game of Two Halves: Football, Television and Globalization (Routledge, 2003); and is coeditor of Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World (New York University Press, 2007), and Bodies of Discourse (Peter Lang, 2010). He is also coeditor of Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture.

Shawn Shimpach is assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of the book Television in Transition: The Life and Afterlife of the Narrative Action Hero (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). His research has also appeared in such journals as Social Semiotics and Cultural Studies and in the collection Media and Public Spheres.

Series Editor’s Preface

Welcome to the Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research series. This grew out of the idea that the field needed a series of state-of the-art reference works that was truly international. The International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), with a membership from over 80 countries, is uniquely positioned to offer a series that covers the central concerns of media and communications theory in a global arena.

Each of these substantial books contains newly written essays commissioned from a range of international authors, showcasing the best critical scholarship in the field. Each is pedagogical in the best sense, accessible to students and clear in its approach and presentation. Theoretical chapters map the terrain of an area both historically and conceptually, providing incisive overviews of arguments in the field. The examples of empirical work are drawn from many different countries and regions, so that each volume offers rich material for comparative analysis.

These handbooks are international in the best sense: in scope, authorship, and mindset. They explore a range of approaches and issues across different political and cultural regions, reflecting the global reach of the IAMCR. The aim is to offer scholarship that moves away from simply reproducing Westcentric models and assumptions. The series formulates new models and asks questions that bring communication scholarship into a more comprehensive global conversation.

The IAMCR (http://iamcr.org) was established in Paris in 1957. It is an accredited NGO attached to UNESCO. It is a truly international association, with a membership around the world and conferences held in different regions that address the most pressing issues in media and communication research. Its members promote global inclusiveness and excellence within the best traditions of critical research in the field.

This series supports those goals.

Annabelle SrebernyPresident of IAMCR and Series EditorLondon, December 2010

Acknowledgments

In 2007, the International Association of Media and Communication Research and Wiley-Blackwell reached agreement to publish a Global Media and Communication Studies Handbook series. As chair of the IAMCR Audience Section, I was invited to put together a proposal for a Handbook on Audience Studies. This book is the result.

I would like to begin by acknowledging the authors who responded so positively and excellently to my request for papers that addressed quite specific aspects of the field of audience studies. Most, but not all, have attended and presented papers at IAMCR conferences. However when commissioning chapters, my priority was to ensure first that as many as possible of the most significant academics studying audiences in 2010 were approached; second, that the diverse concerns that motivate academics to study audiences were included; and, third, that the anthology be able to make a significant impact both by reviewing the past of audience studies and also by providing directions and insights for future research. By presenting a range of perspectives from which audiences have been and are currently being studied, it is hoped that future audience researchers will find inspiration for innovative research designs and strategies. I am sincerely grateful to all the contributing authors for agreeing to participate in the project, and for their patience with the pace of my editing.

I wish to recognize the vision and hard work that Professor Annabelle Sreberny, president of IAMCR 2008–2010, has devoted to securing the agreement with Wiley-Blackwell, and convey my personal thanks that, along with the Political Economy Section, the Audience Section was invited to develop one of the initial proposals. I would also like to acknowledge the support and encouragement of staff from Wiley-Blackwell, particularly Elizabeth Swayze and Margot Morse, who have been more than generous with their time and good advice.

Virginia Nightingale

Introduction

Virginia Nightingale

For most people, the study of audiences consists of little more than the information they read in the media, ironically “as audiences.” The most consistently reported audience information is provided by ratings agencies that monitor shifting audience allegiances across the mediascape. Since audience ratings are primarily intended for industry consumption, they are often of limited interest to audiences themselves. So the main source of public information about audiences comes from journalists reporting on media activities that they represent as “dangerous,” addictive, or shocking. Today these include cyber bullying, internet “addictions,” online “stranger danger,” and accessing prohibited content online, whether this is pornographic, political, or revolutionary. Such popular discourses on audiences are counterintuitive in terms of the day-by-day safe encounters with media that most people enjoy, and more importantly they distract us from what is really important about audiences, in particular the ways being an audience is essential to cultural participation, the ways it affects how we understand ourselves (our identity) and our power to control the world around us, and the ways familiarity with media use prepares us to take advantage of technological change as it sweeps through our everyday worlds. These are the types of issues addressed by the international scholars who have contributed to this book.

The contributors to this book hold a complex view of media audiences. They study people being audiences with diverse media technologies. They dissect the details of participation with media, the ways people engage with media content, and the implications they have for the experience of citizenship and public life. They explore how different methods of audience research might be used so that the realities of audience experiences can be better represented to the broader public. And they explore the challenges that particular audiences pose for research. The wealth of experience and knowledge they provide, and the futures they imagine for audience research in general, stand in marked contrast to the views held by some new media commentators who argue that because people can now broadcast themselves online, the need for audience research is at an end. This view is based on a narrow understanding of broadcast media audiences as passive recipients of broadcast messages, and it overlooks the emphasis on the “active audience” that has been so influential in audience studies for the last quarter of a century and more.

Still, many media scholars today do feel impatient and more than a little bored with the term audience, and by implication with audience research. There is a sense that the term is inadequate to explain the sorts of things people do with media now that social media and web 2.0 have transformed the media landscape. For example, Jay Rosen1 (2006) introduced “the people formerly known as the audience,” describing them as

those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another – and who are not in a situation like that .