Audience Evolution by Napoli Philip M.;

Author:Napoli, Philip M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science/Media Studies
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

IMPLICATIONS FOR AUDIENCE EVOLUTION

The patterns of stakeholder resistance and negotiation discussed here affect both the actual dynamics of audience behavior and the representations of the audience that can be achieved through certain emerging audience information systems. In terms of actual behavior, the discussion above suggests a continuing struggle by many industry stakeholders to maintain a more traditional relationship dynamic between media organizations and audiences, one in which senders and receivers of content remain more easily distinguishable. This is not meant as a broad generalization characterizing the entirety of the media system. As this section has also illustrated, there are a number of instances in which the integration of a new, more egalitarian dynamic between media and audiences is being embraced, and monetized, by media organizations. Rather, the point here is that the persistence of the response patterns involved in institutional efforts to resist or modify the influence of new technologies on the content provider–audience relationship will have lasting effects on the ways this dynamic is ultimately reconfigured.

From the standpoint of new audience information systems, how much the various forms of audience activity are curtailed bears directly on the functionality of the emerging audience information systems discussed in chapter 3. That is, where emerging audience information systems are, for instance, seeking to quantify engagement via online activities such as the posting and sharing of video or audio clips, methods of preventing or discouraging such activities (such as content providers seeking to prevent the sharing or use of copyrighted material) affect the representations of the audience provided by such analytical approaches, and likely undermine their reliability as an indicator of any dimension of audience behavior. Similarly, some online content providers, such as news organizations, limit audiences’ ability to participate in, and provide feedback on, the news organizations’ activities, by providing only limited online discussion forums and few opportunities for audiences to comment on or rate stories. Whether such decisions are strategic in nature or simply a function of resource-allocation decisions, the end result is still that the development of another analytical path of audience understanding is cut off. In these ways, the process of stakeholder resistance and negotiation surrounding the changing dynamics of media consumption feeds directly into the conceptualizations of the audience employed by media industry stakeholders.

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