Blog

London.


The penultimate session at Transforming Audiences starts with a paper by Andrea Medrado, whose interest is in 'lamp post radio' in Brazilian favelas: speakers which are attached to lamp posts and broadcast local radio programming. Such radio - a form of community radio - needs to be understood within the wider sonic landscape of the favela environment.

Most work on community radio as such tends to be overly celebratory and usually does not focus much on the audiences for such radio programming; listening is assumed to be an isolated, individual practice, which is clearly at odds with the public nature of lamp post radio. Andrea approached her research through media ethnography; this was complicated by perceptions of Andrea as a higher-class outsider entering the lower-class social environment of the favela, and this had to be carefully negotiated in order to gain the necessary access to the local community.

London.


The second speaker in this double-barrelled keynote session at Transforming Audiences is Christine Hine. Her interest is in digital media practice in daily life, which she has approached in the past through virtual ethnography. More recently, she has used such approaches also to investigate the use of information and communication technologies by a group of biologists.

More broadly, then, media ethnography brings and attention to cultural difference, a commitment to close observation and recording, a focus on dense descriptive detail which reveals contexts that give meaning to actions for a community - which implies that that context is not known a priori.

London.


The next and final keynote session at Transforming Audiences is a panel with Shaun Moores and Christine Hine. Shaun begins by reviewing his take on audiences, and notes that they have become less central to his conceptual vocabulary. Media studies has traditionally focussed on mass communication (as in broadcasting or the print media), with its clear production/distribution/consumption divisions. There was a settled way of media studies which emerged from this, and that approach now needs to be unsettled, that vocabulary needs to be revised.

London.

The next speaker at Transforming Audiences is my QUT colleague Anna Daniel, who presents on Australian consumer trends in digital news. She also highlights the shift towards a participative Web and the confusion over the use of online news by Australian users, and points to the challenging position of news organisations in the face of declining advertising revenues in print and unclear revenue models for online news sources. The present resource was conducted in the context of a case study of the online-only newspaper Brisbane Times and the online-only entertainment site The Vine.

London.


The next speaker at Transforming Audiences is Christian Christensen, who begins by highlighting the emergence of what he calls the 'replay-relay audience'. One example here is the discussion between Daily Show host Jon Stewart and MSNBC financial host Jim Cramer about the quality of MSNBC's financial coverage; another is Stephen Colbert's White House Correspondents' Association dinner speech in 2006, which tore into both the Bush administration and the mainstream media for their coverage of Bush's administration; yet another is Jon Stewart's 2004 appearance on CNN's Crossfire, which ultimately led to the demise of that show after Stewart fatally critiqued the show's format and its effect on journalism and public discourse in America.

London.


The next session at Transforming Audiences starts with Birgit Stark, presenting a longitudinal study of Internet and traditional news media in Austria. This operates in the context of the question of whether online news is replacing ot complementing print newspapers and other news sources. Here, current research is not yet conclusive, Birgit says - the phenomenon of media substitution, if it does exist, is still in development, and while there are some indications that especially younger users are replacing older news media with online news, it is unclear how far this trend may go.

London.


The second and final day of Transforming Audiences starts with a keynote by Peter Lunt; who highlights the overall focus on new media at this conference, and shifts our focus to television in response. TV still has a key role to play in mediating public participation and engagement, both in politics and in cultural engagement in everyday life.

One of Peter's projects, Talk on Television, especially examined the role of television talk shows in the UK in this context; their evolution points to the transition of popular television as it combines factual broadcasting with entertainment and thus moves towards infotainment formats. This can be seen as a sign of a new populism in public service broadcasting, aiming to address the individual and to invite them to participate more directly in the programme. Such shows are still tightly scripted, but in a different way that also allows for more openness in their plot.

London.


The first day at Transforming Audiences finishes with a keynote by Natalie Fenton and Nick Couldry. Natalie points to creativity, knowledge, and participation as the three central themes of this conference - in that context, what does it mean to be political in the new media age? What are the principles for the way we conceived of and carry out our citizenship? How do we engage in political life?

There are multiple conflicting views on the impact of social media on political participation, of course - a sense that social media break down public/private barriers and lead to new forms of participation, and those who characterise such participation as an incessant meaningless conversation which never leads anywhere. Taken by themselves, both are likely to be wrong - so what is the real story here?

London.


The next speaker at Transforming Audiences is Uwe Hasebrink from the fabulous Hans-Bredow-Institut in Hamburg, focussing on a large study of young people's social Web use in Germany. Social Web use is a crucial tool in identity formation and expression today, of course, as well as in the managing and maintaining of relationships. The study, which Uwe conducted with his wife Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink, involved an analysis of relevant Web platforms, a qualitative study with young users, and representative telephone interviews with such users.