Are audiences dependent on technology? Have these new technologies affected the traditional models of audience?

One of the great challenges modern media outlets face in the wake of the ever-growing popularity of social media is effectively understanding and responding to their audience.  

The task is complicated by the inherently elusive, intangible, and unpredictable nature of media audiences.  Consequently, media organizations have historically devoted substantial financial and analytical resources in trying to understand their audiences.  Given the time spent by audiences consuming the media, it is hardly surprising that much debate has focused on the exact nature of the relationship between audience and media output.

The influence of traditional mass media organizations is being challenged at an unprecedented level of audience participation and co-creation in online media production.  This participation and involvement has created a negative impact by blurring the lines between consumer and producer, audience and public.  

Social media has given voice to the opinions of millions of individual consumers worldwide.  While traditional mass media continues to be central to the dissemination of (mainstream) information, these same channels however are now being increasingly influenced by online conversations taking place through social media.

The media’s relationship with its audience is fighting against contending powers and counter powers are seeking to use social media to in a sense, ‘mobilize’ audiences in order to influence the way people relate to the world of information that is around them.  

This reminds me of something that I have always thought was the best way to describe the changing audience engagement behaviors taking place before our eyes, “the people formally known as the audience have become active participants in both shaping media content and public disclosure.  

For to long has an audience been perceived primarily as a singular passive recipient of media content even though an audience may comprise of multiple individuals with different interests and opinions.  Social media has evolved into providing platforms and networks, which are necessary to return the power of the media into the hands of the people.

The Internet has both broadened and fragmented the contexts of communication.  This is why the Internet can have a subversive effect on intellectual life in authoritarian regimes, which has taken place throughout the Middle East over the past 18 months.  

Whilst that rings true it must be acknowledged at the same time, the less formal, horizontal cross-linking of communication channels weakens the achievements of traditional media.  This focuses on the attention of an anonymous and dispersed public on select topics and information, allowing citizens to concentrate on the same critically fixed issues and journalistic pieces at any given time.

The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism, offered by the Internet is the decentralized access to unedited stories.  In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus.  The media create a picture of the public, but it goes live, as it were, only when people participate in its creation, not least by turning themselves into an audience.  

It’s important to appreciate that while the internet has enabled the public to be able to compare and switch websites (and therefore, switch product choice) at the click of a mouse button, by offering a wider choice between competing services, while the user is able to remain anonymous from the supplier.

Howard Rheingold predicted this in 2002; he observed how technology enabling social media was beginning to converge with mobile telephony.  His observation that mobile devices would help individuals coordinate actions with others was also about how groups of people (audiences to the marketers of those devices) would grow new forms of “social power” to organize their activities.  These forms of social power would enable what Rheingold called “associations of amateurs” who were quicker to adopt to change than the “established industry leaders” to find new ways to profit from a fast evolving social practice mediated environment.  Social media offers a sense of “privacy”, in the sense that there seems to be no one physically around to monitor the user consume online content.  

Sitting in the comfort of ones own home, an audience participant might think they have private choices at their fingertips even though their online may be monitored without their knowledge or consent.

The increased interactivity of new media technologies via mechanisms such as social networking sites brings with it a variety of new paths for gathering information about ones audience ranging from their appreciation or emotional response to the content they consume, to their recall or engagement with the content, to specific behavioural responses.

In my next post I will be discussing some of these online analytical tools that help bridge the gap between what is valued content and what will end up being some Internet space junk.