The changing audience

Media uses are closely bound up with our social life. The way that people obtain information is changing every day in every aspect of our daily life, along with the developments of new technologies. Some researches tend to show us that the audience has become more active in a range of ways since the emergence of social media. Social media generally applied to web-based services that facilitate many forms of social interactions or networking. The design principles behind these websites enable users to create and develop online relationship with others. We are communicating with potentially large and invisible audiences by using social network sites or blogs (Zappavigna, 2012, p. 2). People has drawn attention to the fact that social media is changing the way of how we use media in daily life. All these indicate that audience research is no longer in the old-school. This article will provide a theoretical framework of how media is used, and the challenges that the emergence of social media has posed on audience theory.

Audiences play critical roles in any types of mediated communication. We all participate in the mass media, and most people have a sense of audience in every aspect of it. Back to the decades ago, some audience theories such as linear communication theory is about the direct relationship between the mass media and audience. It instils the ideas to the passive audience directly. Moreover, the two-step flow theory of mass communication. The mass media inspires opinion leaders and most people are influenced by the opinion leaders. There is an intermediate between mass media and the wider population. Media influences are not in a direct process, but by a two-step flow. They are principally focus on the question “What do media do to people?” However, the situation has changed as time goes on. The popularity of web-based services offer individuals to interact with large and diverse audiences—dozens, hundreds, thousands, and sometimes even millions of people. The ease of sharing across the Web, the extensive amount of easy access information all helps change the environment of media use (Litt, 2012, p.332). In my opinion, these days there is a greater prevalence of an interaction communication relationship between medium and user. People share something entertaining or educational on the websites, there are audiences who watch behind it. Social media develops considerable potential for reframing this interrelationship. Technological advancement brings along new research agenda as well as challenges for media audience. Comparing with broadcast audiences, social media audience become less predictable and more variable in their engagement with media, understanding their behaviour is even more difficult but also more valuable for theories of social shaping, design, market and diffusion (Livingstone, 1999, p.63). Another challenge is to distinguish imagined audience from actual audience. Microblogging site Twitter offers people post short text and picture which creates a constantly updated timeline of information. There is a directed friendship relationship, follow and followers. Tweets may update in every second. Everyone can read your tweets even if they are not your followers. It is virtually impossible for Twitter users to account for their actual readers (Marwick, 2010, p.117). This could also be considered that there are more difficulties in researching the actual audience.

Nowadays, it is crucial for us to note that the audience is a shifty concept. Researchers have to consider how the audience is framed. We always think people sitting on the sofa and watching a Television show as passive audience in the past days. But now, are we thoroughly active? How do social media audiences differ to broadcast audiences? In my point of view, no matter in the past or present, any forms of media is planned with a particular group of audience in mind. When a product is produced and a broadcast audience receives it. Television producers need them for their programmes. The effects model indicates that when consuming media, there is an influence upon audience. They are passive and powerless to prevent it. Usually, they could be defined by age, gender, income and class. However, active audiences use media in a knowledgeable and knowing way. As Livingstone observes, the audience is not an analytical category, like class, gender or race, but a product of the media industry itself and they are lived experiences (1998, p.196). However, in the new-age of media, there are so many choices. Audience has the power to choose the platforms and switch them with fewer boundaries. Sometimes I even think this digital world makes anyone could be a “journalist” with global reach. Nothing like this has ever been possible before social media comes out. I have mentioned before that technological advancement brings along new research agenda. Livingston argues that audience research is at a crossroads. In such a changing environment, audience research agenda should seek to enhance the external relations with other domains of media and culture studies. Audience is a potentially considerable pivot for the understanding of a whole range of social and cultural processes which is connected with the central questions of public communication (1998, p.195-196).

Audience research is a major element for any people who are involved in this media world. Most audience theories try to make sense of the effects which media texts have on audiences. Some earlier theories considered audience as passive and inactive. The broadcasting audiences are seen as couch potatoes who just sit there and consume media texts. While in active audience theories, people are interact with the communication process and use the mass media for their own purposes. Some challenges are brought by the diversity of social media. People behave differently as we are from different backgrounds with different experiences and attitudes. This model is considered to be a more realistic way to discuss audiences. We use media to know what is going on in the world, to interact with other people and to identify ourselves. Audience theories are now focusing on the question “what do people do with media”.

References

Litt, E 2012, ‘Knock, Knock. Who's There? The Imagined Audience’, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, vol. 56, no.3, pp.330-345.

Livingstone, S 1998, ‘Audience research at the crossroads: The 'implied audience' in media and cultural theory’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, pp.193-217.

Livingstone, S 1999, ‘New media, new audiences?’, New media and society, vol.1, no.1, pp.59-66.

Marwick, A & Boyd, D 2010, ‘I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience’, New Media & Society, vol. 13, no,1, pp.114-133.

Zappavigna, M 2012, Discourse of Twitter and Social Media, Continuum, London.