No trade-offs between news and entertainment: Evidence from online engagement data

In today’s high-choice media environment, some scholars are concerned that people selectively consume media content based on personal interests and avoid others, which might lead to audience fragmentation across different content genres. Individually, there might be trade-offs between those genres, especially entertainment versus news. This study analyzed a large user engagement dataset (~40,000 users’ comments) collected from the Chinese information application Toutiao, one of the most popular information distribution platforms in China. The results showed that (1) the commenters were not fragmented between content genres, and (2) the users’ news engagement was positively associated with their entertainment engagement. The findings indicate that the availability of high media choices will not reduce the news engagement of those who have strong interest in entertainment. Instead, news engagement might increase alongside the augmentation of the sum of information engagement. Finally, we discussed the differences between relative news engagement and absolute news engagement.

Attention Centrality and Audience Fragmentation: An Approach for Bridging the Gap Between Selective Exposure and Audience Overlap

Scholarship on audience fragmentation typically takes one of two approaches: The micro-level analysis of individuals’ selective exposure to partisan news, or the macro-level analysis of audience overlap. To bridge the gap between these levels of analysis, we introduce the concept of attention centrality as a set of macro-to-micro measures that characterize how individual news media selection is situated within networks of public attention. Relying on an online panel survey conducted in the United States (N = 1,493), we examine the relationship between three indicators of respondents’ attention centrality (closeness, betweenness, and reach) and the partisan valence of their news selections. The study finds different patterns of results for the three indicators of attention centrality, indicating that partisan news media are not uniformly isolated to the periphery of public attention. Results are discussed in light of conversations about selective exposure and audience overlap in the United States and around the world.

R U ready 4 new subtitles? Investigating the potential of social translation practices and creative spellings

In this paper I investigate novel and creative linguistic features used in non-conventional subtitling settings such as fansubbing, arguing that they can be advantageously used in professional subtitling practices for a specific medium, such as the Internet. The integration of txt lingo in subtitling is supported by the recent explosion of social translation practices as a response to an ever-growing audience fragmentation as well as changes in technology which make the integration of several customised subtitling tracks possible. In an attempt to provide empirical evidence to support this argument I present the initial results of a pilot eye-tracker-based experiment to elicit data on the reception of “unregimented” subtitling when offered as an alternative to conventional subtitling from consumers in selected new subtitling contexts.

A systematic comparison of community detection algorithms for measuring selective exposure in co-exposure networks

The use of community detection techniques for understanding audience fragmentation and selective exposure to information has received substantial scholarly attention in recent years. However, there exists no systematic comparison, that seeks to identify which of the many community detection algorithms are the best suited for studying these dynamics. In this paper, I address this question by proposing a formal mathematical model for audience co-exposure networks by simulating audience behavior in an artificial media environment. I show how a variety of synthetic audience overlap networks can be generated by tuning specific parameters, that control various aspects of the media environment and individual behavior. I then use a variety of community detection algorithms to characterize the level of audience fragmentation in these synthetic networks and compare their performances for different combinations of the model parameters. I demonstrate how changing the manner in which co-exposure networks are constructed significantly improves the performances of some of these algorithms. Finally, I validate these findings using a novel empirical data-set of large-scale browsing behavior. The contributions of this research are two-fold: first, it shows that two specific algorithms, FastGreedy and Multilevel are the best suited for measuring selective exposure patterns in co-exposure networks. Second, it demonstrates the use of formal modeling for informing analytical choices for better capturing complex social phenomena.

Rethinking Audience Fragmentation Using a Theory of News Reading Publics: Online India as a Case Study

Scholarly work that seeks to theorize about fragmentation of media audiences has largely been restricted to the experiences of advanced democracies in the west. This has resulted in a preponderance of research endeavors that have sought to understand this phenomenon through ideas that are pertinent, perhaps solely to those contexts, and not as applicable outside, particularly in the Global South. This has potentially limited our imagination into various other ways in which audience fragmentation can manifest in these often-overlooked countries. In this paper, I use the case of online India as an example to offer a theoretical framework – that of news reading publics – for understanding audience fragmentation as a more global socio-political phenomenon that allows for rigorous comparative research, without being restrictive in scope. I draw from existing theories in communication and related disciplines and show how such a framework can be situated within existing social science theory. I argue that this framework should make us think of audience fragmentation in western contexts to be special cases of a more general model. I also show how network analysis can be used as a context-agnostic tool for identifying news reading publics and demonstrate the utility of such a method in complementing this theoretical framework. Finally, I discuss potential future research directions that this framework generates.Keywords: news consumption, online news, uses and gratifications, issue publics, audience behavior, audience fragmentation, network analysis, India

The Fragmentation of Indonesian Film Audience

Nowadays, films can not only be watched in conventional media such as cinema, screening and television but also digital media such as streaming, download and shared archives. This study aims to determine the pattern of audience fragmentation, especially in the cinephile segments. The research employs an explorative qualitative method. The data collection methods include diaries and interviews. Informants were determined using a purposive sampling technique which includes visitors of the movie screened by the Jogja Movie Night, DIY Watching Club, and Cultural Department in July 2018. The results of this study show that, first, conventional media such as cinema and screening are still considered important because they provide a tasting guide, a space for social interaction and technical facilities. Second, attention is managed differently when dealing with conventional and new media. The focus of watching a movie can be created in different ways tailored to the viewing space. Third, film content is used as inspiration to produce films as hobbies and learning space. Also, it can be diverted in other forms such as short stories, performance scripts. Although being exposed to unlimited choices, film viewers only access the relative channels for a certain period. They need public space to interact with film fans, educate their appetite and watch satisfaction. Digital media is used to facilitate the autonomy of choosing and treating films based on their needs and desires. Keywords: Film audience fragmentation, audience interests, consumption pattern, new media, cinephelia.

Unpopularity and cultural power in the age of Netflix: New questions for cultural studies’ approaches to television texts

Although Internet-distributed television bears much in common with the television long studied and theorized using cultural studies-based approaches to analysis, several of its features profoundly deviate from earlier television norms and require reassessment and adaptation of theoretical frames. This article focuses on the issue of textual popularity in relation to these services and identifies key challenges to using the same frames of cultural power that have been used for studying television in the past. The underlying problem of audience fragmentation does not originate with streaming services, but this profound contextual change, in concert with industrial aspects that further distinguish internet-distributed television from television’s past norms, must be addressed. The article concludes by identifying several ways the cultural power of streaming services can be investigated despite the challenges that emerging norms of Internet-distributed video provide.

Anatomy of audience duplication networks: How individual characteristics differentially contribute to fragmentation in news consumption and trust

While partisan selective exposure could drive audience fragmentation, other individual factors might also differentiate news diets. This study applies a method that disentangles the differential contributions of the individual characteristics to audience duplication networks. By analyzing a nationally representative survey about US adults’ media use in 2019 ( N = 12,043), we demonstrate that news fragmentation is driven by a myriad of individual factors, such as gender, race, and religiosity. Partisanship is still an important driver. We also distinguish between media exposure and media trust, showing that many cross-cutting ties in co-exposure networks disappear when media trust is considered. We conclude that audience fragmentation research should extend beyond ideological selectivity and additionally investigate how and why other individual-level preferences differentially contribute to fragmentation both in news exposure and in news trust.

New audience dimensions in streaming platforms: the second life of Money heist on Netflix as a case study

The growth in popularity of on-demand content consumption, boosted by large global agents such as Netflix, Amazon and HBO, has brought audience fragmentation even further. Exponential growth in the content available to users (which reduces viewer concentration based on a limited selection), its commercialisation through a subscription-based business model (removing advertising from content) and the boom in consumption on different receivers, many of them mobile or outside the home (thus complicating people meter monitoring), has generated a new ecosystem where success can no longer be assessed using traditional audience measurement systems. This article discusses audience behaviour in streaming platforms and the new dimensions used to measure the success of a television series, above and beyond data provided by television audience measurement (TAM) techniques. From this analysis, the article reviews the transformation in the concept of popularity and how new audience indicators affect the structure of the content distribution medium, which adds further dimensions (engagement, customer retention, talent acquisition, new subscriptions and branding, among others) to more traditional elements (advertisers and international sales). Finally, we examine whether a single concept of audience, valid for all consumption models and audiovisual operations, can be established. Money heist is used as a case study, as it provides a good example of two ways of understanding audience: one linked to its commercial success in the Antena 3 Televisión channel’s scheduled programming and the other arising from its inclusion on Netflix, the platform that gave it worldwide popularity. Resumen La popularización del consumo de contenidos bajo demanda, impulsado por los grandes agentes globales como Netflix, Amazon o HBO, ha provocado una importante disrupción en los hábitos de consumo y ha intensificado el fenómeno de la fragmentación de audiencias. El gran aumento de contenido ofrecido al usuario (que reduce la concentración de espectadores a una selección limitada), su explotación dentro del modelo económico de la suscripción (que elimina la cotización publicitaria del espacio) y la multiplicación de consumos en distintos horarios y a través de distintos receptores, muchos de ellos móviles y fuera del hogar (lo que complica su monitorización), ha generado un nuevo ecosistema. Dentro del mismo, el éxito ya no se puede evaluar en base a los indicadores de la audimetría tradicional. En el presente artículo se aborda cómo se comporta la audiencia en el consumo de contenidos en plataformas de streaming y las nuevas dimensiones con las que se evalúa el éxito de una serie televisiva más allá de los datos que ofrecen las técnicas de medición de audiencias (TAM). Se repasa la transformación del concepto de popularidad y el impacto en el medio que distribuye el contenido de estos nuevos indicadores de audiencia, que añaden a los elementos tradicionales (anunciantes y ventas internacionales) nuevas dimensiones (engagement, retención de clientes, captación de talento, nuevas altas, branding, etc.). El estudio se integra en un marco de investigación más amplio que avanza en la construcción de un nuevo concepto de audiencia en el consumo de video bajo demanda en modelo de suscripción (tomando Netflix como referencia, dada su cuota de mercado) y reflexiona sobre si es posible un concepto de audiencia único aplicable a todos los modelos de consumo y explotación audiovisual bajo demanda. La casa de papel se ha tomado como estudio de caso, ya que es un buen ejemplo de estas dos maneras de entender la audiencia: la vinculada a su recorrido comercial de éxito en la parrilla de Antena 3 y la derivada de su incorporación a Netflix, plataforma donde se popularizó globalmente.