The Rise of Digital Media

Timeline:Pre-historical phase

40s Von Neumann, Turing

1954 Boole: binary code

1957 Sputnik

Timeline: historical phase

The Rise of Digital Media

Timeline:Pre-historical phase

40s Von Neumann, Turing

1954 Boole: binary code

1957 Sputnik

Timeline: Computer and the net

1965 “Table computer” 1969 Arpanet 1971 First email 1974 Ethernet 1975 Personal computers

Timeline: Bases of Digital Turn

1979 Emoticons 1981 Mavica Sony, first digital camera 1982 Time declares computer “character

of the year”, TCP/IP protocol 1984 Fidonet, Apple Macintosh 1985 Windows, modem, National Domains, THE

WELL 1988 Ithiel de Sola Pool: convergence 1989 First chat line, HTML and World Wide

Web

Timeline: the Golden Age

1991 High Performance Computer Act 1992 webcam 1993 Mosaic, first newspapers on line,

Netscape at Wall Street, Yahoo, Linux 1995 DVD, MSN, Amazon, EBay 1996 Nokia 9000 Communicator 1997 Six Degrees, first social network 1998 MP3, Google, ebook readers, e-commerce 1999 DSL, My Space, Napster

Timeline: after the Crisis

2000 Nasdaq crackdown 2001 Wikipedia, Second Life, Apple iPod 2003 iTunes 2004 Flickr, Facebook, Librié (Japanese eBook) 2005 Youtube, Tim O’ Reilly: Web 2.0 2006 Twitter 2007 Apple iPhone 2010 Apple iPad

Digital Keywords

Convergence (De Sola Pool, 1988) Negroponte (1999): digitalisation=convergence Jenkins (2006): digitalisation=a specific form of

convergence Computer and the net as metamedia

Writing Hypertext Image

Digital Keywords (2)

Synthetic communication Speed (see wiki=fast) Organized mix Artificial

Globalisation See network society

Sociable power See Foucaultian perspective

WHAT IS AN AUDIENCE IN THE DIGITAL LANDSCAPE?

An Historical Sight: assumptions

The concept of “audience” is connected to the specificity of the public of radio (and then of television):

• The reception of the message is instantaneous and concurrent

• The reception is mainly domestic• The reception occurs through a single medium

An Historical Sight: a double turn

Audience research: • progressively abandoning

the opaque interpretation of reception practices typical of psycosocial researches on media effects

• progressively introducing a deepener reading of reception and interpretation practices (using post-structuralist tools deriving from the crisis of structuralism and its assumptions cfr.Eco)

Marketing research and audience measuring:

• progressively ignoring the core questions of previous researches (for instance about perceived quality) focusing on the pure reception action.

An Historical Sight: digitalization

The current media landscape, brought in by digitalization, is challenging some assumptions on “traditional” audiences.

On practices

The reception of the message is no more always instantaneous

and concurrent

The reception is no more mainly domestic and shared, but mobile

ad individual

The reception occurs through different

media

An Historical Sight: digitalization

The current media landscape, brought in by digitalization, is reinforcing some assumptions on “traditional” audiences:

Audience studies

Reception practices are read as part of everydaylife, and

somehow related to public life

(Livingstone 2005)

Media are more and more read also as

material technologies and cultural devices

Audience practices are read as a complex set of activities including interpretation and use of media contents and their interaction with

everydaylife practices (new routines, power

relations in families…)

Stressing audience

From the theoretical point of view the concept of audience has been “stressed” including: Multidimensionality and performativity Diffusion and extension (pervasiveness) Networkedness

Some of the characteristic of these “new audiences” can be useful to go a step forward

“Multidimensional” (Alasuutari 1999) and “Performative” (Abercrombie and Longhurts 1998) audiences

Performativity goes beyond the production of

UGC (and the acquisition of a voice in media space) including:

enhanced ability/power to create ad share audience tales of media experience.• testifying them in verbal or mash

up cultural products • referring to specific cultural and

social milieu and aimed at building social relationships (and their, so called, cultural capital).

the ability to use knowlingly media languages for self representation and

sociability referring to “self generated publics”.

the “reification” of audiovisual cultural products (acquiring,

sharing, archiving them) and re-defining bottom up

their lifecycle.

Cultural production as a diffused social activity

Some publics are “self generated”

Re-materialization of cultural products

Extended and diffused audiences Audience practices are

indipendent of:• specific physical spaces

(weakening boundaries between private and public spaces)

• festive or routine times • “Being a member of an

audience is no longer an exceptional event, nor even an everyday event. Rather it is constitutive of everyday life” (Abercrombie e Longhurst 1988)

Audience activities are anchored to: • individual dailylife and time

budget• social networks in real life

(often defining the context of media use and the media culture)

• socio-technical cross-media paths (Castells 1999)

Two levels: • the “event” to be part

of an audience• the awareness to be

part of an audience

Re-location of audience practices: • individual and social

networks culture • consumption paths

crossing smootly different kind of media experience

Networked publics (Varnelis 2008)

Audience as an imagined community emerges at the

intersection of cultural/ relational/social practices and media texts (involving people, technologies and practices).

The “shared culture” of these imagined communities

emerges among discourses, social exchanges (often mediated) and reception

practices.

These “shared cultures” are

fragmented, multiple, differentiated.

Audiences are socially constructed

Audience practices are part of the cultural production process of real and virtual social networks

Some considerations/1 Media Audience as an imagined

community (aggregating around media and cultural

products) still exist and interact with other social

formations.

Groups/social networks -

where people know each other;

members are aware of their

common belonging; share the same values

and cultures; have stable

relationships

Public - wide set of people,

dispersed and stable; joint by

an interest, practice (i.e

media consumption)

that can pursue common goals.

Media Audiencing as a

set of specific activities (also in

the form of reception

“events”) still exist and interact

with other practices and

new tools

Interact with a wider set of

practices of self representation,

identity building, and

production/reproduction fo

culture.

Technologies changing shapes

and tools of audiencing (i.e. social networks)

Some considerations/1

Issues and research focuses

Boundaries among lifeworlds are constantly crossed by individuals and groups: in everydaylife crossing

individual and group identities with the audience experience

being part of different groups relating to media

interacting (and sometimes reinforcing) the capacity of cultural industry to colonize and shape imaginary

Audienc

e

Digital

networks

Social

formations

Cultural industry

Everydaylife

Thanks!