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The Challenge of Changing Audiences

Or, What is the Audience Researcher to Do in the Age of the Internet?

Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science,Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK s.livingstone{at}lse.ac.uk

Mediated communication is no longer simply or even mainly mass communication (‘from one to many’) but rather the media now facilitate communication among peers (both ‘one to one’ and ‘many to many’). Does this mean that the concept of the audience is obsolete? Or does the growing talk of ‘users’, instead of audiences, fall into the hyperbolic discourse of ‘the new’, neglecting historical continuities and reinventing the wheel of media and communications research? Undoubtedly, the challenge of a moving target, and hence a changing subject matter, faces us all. This article explores the ways in which, although the argument for the active television audience may have been taken as far as possible, new interactive technologies put ordinary people’s interpretative activities at the very centre of media design and use. Hence, it considers how far existing theories and methods for researching audiences can be extended to new media and how far some significant rethinking is required.

Key Words: historical change • media audiences • media reception and consumption • new media users • text–reader metaphor

European Journal of Communication, Vol. 19, No. 1, 75-86 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0267323104040695


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