Content, Channels and Audiences in the New Millennium: Interrelation and Interrelations

Content

Preface

The Media-Audience Relationships; Communicating under New Conditions

Denis McQuail. The Media Audience Concept: Decomposition and Recomposition

Wolfgang Donsbach. Audience Selectivity and Media Power – A Brief Research History

Jeroen De Keyser and Karin Raeymaeckers. Are Fear-Based Fortresses Finished? A Technology Fuelled Shift in the Flemish Journalist-Public Relations

Ingela Wadbring. Satisfactory Content. Free Dailies Good Enough for a Specific Readership

Albert Kulla and Irnrich Gazda. The Analysis of the Thesis of Impacts of Desocialisation of the Media on the Basic Social Unit

The Online Universe: Newer Platforms, Newer Creators, Newer Consumers

Pamela J. Shoemaker, Philip RJohnson, Hyunjin Seo and Xiuli Wang. Readers as Gatekeepers of Online News: Russia, China and the United States

Ulrika Andersson. Journalists: Opinions on Audience – Created Content in Online Newspapers. A Swedish Case Study

Tim Dwyer and Fiona Martin. News Diversity in Online Media Systems: A Preliminary Report on the Concept of Voice

Transforming Media Systems in Europe: Structural and Technological Factors

Elsa De Bens. Success and Failure of Digital Television

Pieter Bakker. Print Media Shifts in Central and Eastern Europe: the Development of a Hybrid Model

Kaarle Nordenstreng. The Russian Media System: Something Special?

Jukka Pietilainen. Russian Middle Class and Media: Glossy Magazines as an Indicator of New Trends

Rogerio Santos. Trends in the Media Market in Portugal over the Past Three and a Half Decades

Preface

Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University, the oldest Russian institution for teaching and researching media, journalism and communication, is progressively integrating in the international academic community as both participant and organizer of research and discussion. Currently, the Faculty of Journalism interests cover almost all major fields of media studies. On the way to support its strong and influential scientific brand it has established a new strategy of internationalizing its studies focusing on organizing international events of visible scale that contribute to Russian and global media studies.

Among its new contributions to the international academic universe was the 1st International Media Readings in Moscow hold on the MSU Faculty of Journalism in the autumn of 2009. The book that is presented now is a collection of articles written by some of its participants from Europe, Asia, Australia and both Americas.

Today the number of approaches to mass communication research in modern media and scientific environment is hardly countable. And the list keeps growing as more of the personal and mass communication processes relocates to new media space with its opening infinity of technological and communication options. The areas of contributors' interest also varied widely, but more detailed examination made it possible to see that most of the research of various academics from gurus to gifted young doctors could be linked to understating audiences and regulation, analyzing content and representation of modern social issues, dealing with technological challenges and opportunities and examining transformations in regional media systems and models.

Editors

Denis McQuail

THE MEDIA AUDIENCE CONCEPT; DECOMPOSITION AND RECOMPOSITION

Introduction

Since the early days of mass communication there have been differences of perspective, even controversies, about how to view the mass audience. Political and other propagandists saw audiences as targets of influence. Advertisers saw them as markets for other goods and services, structured by social and demographic factors. Media managers saw them as markets of consumers for media products themselves. Entertainers saw them as spectators and potential fans. Journalists (at best) imagined them as like-minded searchers after truth. Media researchers generally viewed audiences as sets of receivers of media messages. Optimistic social theory equated the media audience with the citizen public of democracy. However, we have reached a point where the very notion of an audience has been either rejected or treated as highly problematic. My aim today is to offer some reflections on the path that has been followed in thinking about the media audience.

At issue is a qualitative shift to forms of reception that do not even have an agreed name and with features that are not stable or fully understood. There are many new uses of media that do not qualify as reception and relations between senders and receivers have been radically altered. Changing technology has called into question the term “public", when used as an alternative word for audience, The construct of a 'public' presumes a collective consciousness and sense of identity, a potential for social interaction and a widely shared focus of attention on matters of general concern to the society. This understanding is challenged by contemporary developments, with much media use being ever more individualized and also more 'privatized. The many and varied sets of users of media now have less and less correspondence with any collectivity that is a genuine public or a true audience. The conceptual problem of how to regard audiences has become an acute practical problem for media research as well as for normative media theory…"

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