engleski

Media Users: From Readership to Co-Creators

The changes of media technology and its usage have to a large extent influenced the conceptualization of media users and the communication modes which emerge. Thus, we will focus on two interconnected concepts related to media users: the public sphere mediated through media technology, and forms of societal dis/integration between media users developed through the use of media technology. Indeed, the need for reflection on the concept “ media audience” – which emerged in the era of electronic mass media, is usually evoked by two simultaneous and interconnected processes: the invention and spreading of new information and communication digital media technologies, and fragmentation and heterogenization of the audiences. This change is also historically reflected in the classic scholarly understanding of audiences in which the main focus has moved from the “ transmission model” (Shannon and Weaver, 1949, in Watson, 2003) in which the power of the sender has been scrutinized, while the audience (singular) have been defined as uncritical mass consumers, to the “ exchange model” , in which audiences (plural) has been granted the role of active citizens who displays various modes of uses and responses of media outputs (Ang, 1991), but who also co-create media content, enabled by digital technologies. This move form “ old, traditional, mass media” to ‘ new, digital and interactive’ media, from passive and homogenized audience toward active, fragmented audiences, and their influences on the conceptualization of the public sphere, are some of crucial concepts that needs to be viewed from a historical perspective in order to understand the ways in which these seemingly dichotomous categories interplays in a manner of continuity.

Media users, audience fragmentation, public sphere, digital technology

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