Media audiences

Media Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 304-359
Author(s):  
Paul Long ◽  
Beth Johnson ◽  
Shana MacDonald ◽  
Schem Rogerson Bader ◽  
Tim Wall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Media Audiences

Political corruption in Zimbabwe: News media, audiences and deliberative democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 174165902110224
Author(s):  
Mthokozisi Phathisani Ndhlovu ◽  
Phillip Santos
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Ruling Party

Even though corruption by politicians and in politics is widespread worldwide, it is more pronounced in developing countries, such as Zimbabwe, where members of the political elite overtly abuse power for personal accumulation of wealth. Ideally, the news media, as watchdogs, are expected to investigate and report such abuses of power. However, previous studies in Zimbabwe highlight the news media’s polarised and normative inefficacies. Informed by the theoretical notion of deliberative democracy developed via Habermas and Dahlgren’s work and Hall’s Encoding, Decoding Model, this article uses qualitative content analysis to examine how online readers of Zimbabwe’s two leading daily publications, The Herald and NewsDay, interpreted and evaluated allegations of corruption leveled against ministers and deputy ministers during the height of factionalism in the ruling party (ZANU PF). The article argues that interaction between mainstream media and their audiences online shows the latter’s resourcefulness and, at least, discursive agency in their engagement with narratives about political corruption, itself an imperative premise for future political action.

scholarly journals Commercial Limits to Personality: Instagram Influencers and Commoditized Content Receptivity

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Tyler Horan
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Audience Reception ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Unique Identity ◽  
The One ◽  
Commercial Relationships ◽  
Network Power

Social media influencers-individuals who utilize various forms of network power on social networks occupy a unique identity space. On the one hand, their network power is often tied to their social identity as creators of engaging material. On the other hand, their ability to promote commercial products and services steps outside the traditionally distinct commercial–social, occupational–personal divides. In this work, the network morphologies of influencers are explored in relation to their delivery of sponsored and non-sponsored content. This article explores how the disclosure of content as ‘sponsored’ affects audience reception. We show how that the promotion of content on social media often generates higher levels of engagement and receptiveness amongst their audience despite the platform’s assumption of organic non-commercial relationships. We find that engagement levels are highest among smaller out-degree networks. Additionally, we demonstrate that sponsored content not only returns a higher level of engagement, but that the effect of sponsorship is relatively consistent across out-degree network sizes. In sum, we suggest that social media audiences are not sensitive to commercial sponsorship when tied to identity, as long as that performance is convincing and consistent.

scholarly journals From audiences to data points: The role of media agencies in the platformization of the news media industry

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110298
Author(s):  
Ida Willig
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Data Points ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Many ◽  
Marketing Budgets

Media agencies have become one of the key actors in the contemporary media industry: by channelling marketing budgets to some media and some platforms and not to others, media agencies play an important role in creating the digital media infrastructure and laying the tracks of the public sphere. Yet we know very little about these commercial middlemen between advertisers and audiences, what they do, and how we should understand their role in the digital media ecology. This article discusses the role of media agencies in relation to platformization with a focus on the news media sector. Based on interviews, publicly available material and trade journals, the article depicts an industry deeply engaged in digitizing, tracking and commodifying media audiences, while at the same time aware of ethical challenges of the digital media infrastructure. This leads to a call for more political attention and critical research on the democratic implications of the new value chains between platforms, advertisers, audiences, media agencies and news media as well as the many tech companies providing derived digital services and products.

Affect, emotion, and media audiences: the case of resilient reception

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1186-1201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Cavalcante
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Audience Research ◽  
Audience Studies ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Communications Technologies

In this article, I place qualitative audience research in conversation with theories of affect. Informed by participant data from two qualitative audience studies I have conducted with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) audiences in the United States, I illustrate how cultural representations can make significant demands on one’s emotional and affective life, requiring practices of rest, rebuilding, and reclamation. I call this process resilient reception, or the strategies audiences employ to manage the affectively turbulent power of media and communications technologies. I examine two examples of resilient reception that the participants in my studies practiced: orientation devices (how audiences oriented toward and away from media) and practices of immersion (how audiences immersed themselves in empowering interpersonal communities and media fare). Ultimately, I argue that theories of affect can complement ideological understandings of media audiences by offering a more embodied and dynamic optic.

scholarly journals Who Gets to Be in The Guild?

Loading ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (24) ◽  
pp. 70-89
Author(s):  
Cody Mejeur ◽  
Amanda Cote
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Gaming Culture ◽  
Constructed Identity ◽  
Inductive Thematic Analysis

While media studies have frequently assessed the importance of representation, research in this area has often been siloed by institutional and methodological norms that define academics as “gender”, “race”, or “class” scholars, rather than inclusive scholars of all these and more. This paper thus responds to recent calls for more intersectional work by simultaneously addressing the overlapping representations of race, gender, and gamer identity, and their relation to Lorde’s concept of the mythical norm, in the popular webseries, The Guild (YouTube, 2007-2013). Via a detailed, inductive thematic analysis of the show’s two characters of color, Zaboo and Tinkerballa, we find a doubly problematic intersection between standard “gamer identity” tropes and gendered Asian/American stereotypes. The show forecloses on its potential to be truly diverse and reinforces the oppressive, marginalizing practices it tries to mock, suggesting that gaming culture will not change until we address its intersecting axes of power and exclusion. This research also demonstrates how the constructed identity of media audiences-- in this case, stereotypical “gamer” identity-- can exacerbate and reaffirm existing power disparities in representation. We suggest that media scholars remain attentive to the intersecting articulations of media consumer and individual identities in considering how representation can influence systems of inclusion and exclusion, as well as viewers’ lived outcomes.

scholarly journals Media skills for daily life: Designing a journalism programme for graduates of all disciplines

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-156
Author(s):  
Lee Duffield
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Journalism Education ◽  
Preliminary Conclusion ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Media Work ◽  
Journalism Students

This article in the journalism education field reports on the construction of a new subject as part of a postgraduate coursework degree. The subject, or unit will offer both Journalism students and other students an introductory experience of creating media, using common ‘new media’ tools, with exercises that will model the learning of communication principles through practice. It has been named ‘Fundamental Media Skills for the Workplace’. The conceptualisation and teaching of it will be characteristic of the Journalism academic discipline that uses the ‘inside perspective’—understanding mass media by observing from within. Proposers for the unit within the Journalism discipline have sought to extend the common teaching approach, based on training to produce start-ready recruits for media jobs, backed by a study of contexts, e.g. journalistic ethics, or media audiences. In this proposal, students would then examine the process to elicit additional knowledge about their learning. The article draws on literature of journalism and its pedagogy, and on communication generally. It also documents a ‘community of practice’ exercise conducted among practitioners as teachers for the subject, developing exercises and models of media work. A preliminary conclusion from that exercise is that it has taken a step towards enhancing skills-based learning for media work.

Printed media audiences.

1963 ◽  
pp. 221-242
Author(s):  
Darrell Blaine Lucas ◽  
Steuart Henderson Britt
Keyword(s):  
Media Audiences ◽  
Printed Media
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