Relating to Internet 'Audiences'

Audiences are a contested domain with Ang and others desperate toanalyse, anatomise, understand and describe them. They are particularlyimportant for the commercialisation of any medium since advertisers liketo know what they are getting for their money and, in the famous aphorism,'the role of the commercial media is to deliver audiences to advertisers'.Marshall's concept of 'audience-commodity' continues this intellectualinterrogation of the audience and its production by individual practicesof media consumption. Mass media audiences have consumed much researchattention over most of the past century with major consideration beingpaid to the displacement of other activities arising from the consumptionof newly-introduced media, effects of the media and a succession of moralpanics. It has only been in recent years that 'the audience' has beenresearched on (essentially) its own terms -- in the branch of media andculture studies enquiry called, conveniently, 'audience studies'. Well-known Australian examples of such studies often concern children andadolescents and include: Hodge & Tripp, Noble, and Palmer (now Gillard). Audience studies assumes that audience participants are sufficientlyinsightful and sufficiently cognisant of their various pleasures, desiresand frustrations to be able to discuss their media consumption patternswith interested researchers. The paradigm takes as read that people havereasons for their behaviours, and sets out to uncover what these arethrough (often) a variety of interview and observation techniques. Itaccords audience membership an importance in people's lives. The nature ofthe 'general' audience is illuminated by specific comments and examplesoffered during the research process by specific audience members --analysed and interpreted by the research team. What is clear from acursory glance at the literature is that audiences do not talk about'broadcasting' per se, they talk about specific programs and have atendency to compare programs with others of the same type. Audiencesperceive broadcasting as divided into genred broadcasting streams. Unlessasked to do so, an audience member (and I've formally interviewed over twohundred such people) is unlikely to compare Home and Away with the ABCEvening News. Comparisons between Home and Away and Neighbours arecommonplace, however. What genre is the Internet? A silly question, I know -- but one that isbegged by the repeated discussions of Internet culture, Internetcommunications and information and Internet communities as 'the Internet'.It's a long time since media studies and popular culture academics havediscussed 'broadcasting' generically because concern for the specifics ofgenred broadcasting (both in television and radio) have renderedgeneralised discussion ridiculously global and oversimplified. Inbroadcasting we talk about television and radio as if they were (sincethey are) significantly different. We recognise that the production valuesfor soap opera, drama, sport, news and current affairs and lightentertainment are dissimilar. It's only silly to ask 'what genre is theInternet' because, when we think about it, the Internet is multiplygenred. Audiences that consume broadcast programmes can be differentiated fromeach other in terms of age, gender and socioeconomic status, and in termsof viewing place, viewing style, motivation and preferred programmegenres. As Morley indicates in his 1986 treatise, Family Television:Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure, the domestic context is central tothe everyday consumption of TV. He argues that "the social dimensions of'watching television' -- the social relationships within which viewing isperformed as an activity -- have to be brought more directly into focus ifwe are properly to understand television audiences' choices of, andresponses to, their viewing" (15). That focus upon social relationships asthe domestic context within which television is consumed is the substanceof his book. Holmes suggests that much of the appeal of the Internet is aspurious one, viz. by selling "a new kind of community to those who havebeen disconnected from geographical communities" (35). He claims thatsociety has been divided into a multitude of separate domestic sphereswithin which television is consumed, creating an isolation which theInternet is marketed as solving. "The Internet offers to the dispossessedthe ability to remove some of the walls for brief periods of time inreturn for a time-charged fee" (35). A key to understanding the domestic consumption of television, however,is an understanding of the specifics of genre, and the pleasuresassociated with the consumption of the genre. Uses to which the broadcastmaterial is put in daily life in interpersonal settings are essentiallyrelated to the broadcast material consumed. Discussion of soaps, and offinance reporting, may both be used to develop interpersonal networks andto display current knowledge, but these discussions are likely to occur indifferent domestic/work contexts. Have we had enough of generaliseddiscussion of the global Internet? Can we move onto addressing whether itis genred; and if so, in which ways? Faced with the cacophony which is the Internet today -- let alone theprojected manifestation of the Internet tomorrow -- we are forced toconclude that the Internet has the potential to mimic the features of allthe media and genres that have preceded it, and more. It can operate as amass medium, as a niche medium, and as one-to-one discrete communication --Dayan's 'particularistic' media (103-13). Within all these categories itcan (or has the potential to) work in audio, visual, audiovisual, text anddata. On top of this complexity, it offers a variety of degrees ofinteractivity from simple access to full content creation as part of thecommunication exchange. You thought Media Studies was big? Watch out forthe disciplinary field of Internet Studies! The concept of the active audience has been a staple of audience studiestheory for a generation. Here the activity recognised in the 'active'audience is one of the audience actively engaging with programme content --resisting, reformulating and recirculating the messages and meanings onoffer. This is a different level of interactivity compared with thatimplicit in some aspects of the Internet (online community, for example).Internet interactivity recognises that the text is produced as part of theact of consumption. Have the audience activity characteristics of onlinecommunity members been sufficiently differentiated from -- say -- theactivity of accessing Encyclopaedia Britannica online? Are onlinecommunity members more of a 'www.participants' than an 'audience'; shouldwe see audiences as genred too? Television audiences (as my anonymous reviewer has helpfully remarked)are typically constituted via essentialising experiences' "generallydomestic/familial setting, generally in the context of other activities,generally ritualised in terms of the serialisation of these experiencesetc." We know that this is the case from detailed investigations into theconsumption of television. Less is known about the experience of onlineparticipation, although Wilbur discusses "the strangely solitary work thatmany CMC [computer-mediated communications] researchers are engaged in,sitting alone at their computers, but surrounded by a global multitude"(6). He goes on to suggest seven definitions of 'virtual community' beforeconcluding that the "multi-bladed, critical Swiss army knives" might offeran appropriate metaphor for the many uses of the Internet. 'Participation'in this culture is similarly hard to define, and (given that it is soindividual and spatially private) expressive of individual difference."For those who doubt the possibility of online intimacy, I can only speakof ... hours sitting at my keyboard with tears streaming down my face, orconvulsed with laughter" (Wilbur 18). I wait for the ethnographic researchbefore I venture further into definitions of 'www.participants'. Online community, I would argue, is a specifically genred stream ofInternet activity. Further, it is particularly interesting to audienceresearchers because it has no clear precursor in the audiences andreaderships of the traditional mass media. Holmes (32) has usefullydifferentiated between 'Communities of broadcast' (using the generic term,to offer an exception to the rule!) and 'Communities of interactivity',but he does so to highlight difference -- not to argue great similarity.The community of interest brought into being by the shared consumption andsocial circulation of elements of broadcast programming differs from thecommunity of interactivity made visible through online communitymembership -- and both differ from Anderson's notion of the imaginedcommunity. Online communities are particularly problematic for audiencestudies theorists because the audience is the content producer. There isno content apart from the interactions and creativity of communitymembers, and the contributions of new/casual online participants. Forsites where 'hits' are enumerated, the simple act of access is alsocontent production, and creates value and interest for others. Clearly the research is yet to be done in these areas. If we are totheorise cogently and in depth about people's activities andproduction/consumption patterns on the Internet, we need to identifygenres and investigate specific audience/community members. Interactionswith online community members suggest that age may offer a critical nexusof audience/participant distinction (Palandri & Green). Community membersof 35+ have had to deliberately choose to learn the conventions ofInternet interaction. They have experienced specific motivations. Inaffluent societies such as ours, on the other hand, for many people under20, the required Internet skills and competencies have been normalised aspart of an everyday social repertoire, in the same way that almost all ofus have learned the conventions of television viewing. An understanding ofthe specifics of difference, and of congruence, will make discussions ofInternet audiences/participants/content providers/community members thatmuch more useful. Such research has an added frisson. I started this article with anacknowledgement of Ang's book Desperately Seeking the Audience. Theresearch to be undertaken in the Internet genre of online communityincludes the need to seek desperately for the audience; the individualaudience member; and (in many cases) the individual audience member'smultiple identities -- each of which offers specific and different valueto the researched community member. Identity is a key issue for Internetresearchers, and a signal difference between communities of broadcast andcommunities of interactivity. As Holmes has usefully pointed out:"broadcast facilitates mass recognition ... with little reciprocity whilethe Internet facilitates reciprocity with little or no recognition" (31).We need to acknowledge, recognise and explore these differences in thenext generation of audience studies research. ReferencesAnderson, B. Imagined Communities. 2nd ed. London: Verso, 1991.Ang, I. Desperately Seeking the Audience. London: Routledge, 1991.Dayan, D. "Particularistic Media and Diasporic Communications." Media,Ritual and Identity. Eds T. Liebes and J. Curran. London: Routledge, 1998.103-13.Hodge, B., and D. Tripp. Children and Television: A Semiotic Approach.Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986.Holmes, D. "Virtual Identity: Communities of Broadcast, Communities ofInteractivity." Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace.Ed. D. Holmes. London: Sage, 1997. 26-45.Morley, D. Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure.London: Routledge, 1986.Noble, G. Children in Front of the Small Screen. London: Constable, 1975.Palandri, M., and L. Green. "Image Management in a Bondage, Discipline,Sadomasochist Subculture: A Cyber-Ethnographic Study." CyberPsychology andBehavior. USA: Mary Ann Liebert, forthcoming..Palmer, P. Girls and Television. Sydney: NSW Ministry of Education, 1986.---. The Lively Audience: A Study of Children around the TV Set. Sydney:Allen & Unwin, 1986.Wilbur, S.P. "An Archaeology of Cyberspaces: Virtuality, Community,Identity." Internet Culture. Ed. D. Porter. New York: Routledge, 1997. 5-22. Citation reference for this articleMLA style:Lelia Green. "Relating to Internet 'Audiences'." M/C: A Journal of Mediaand Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access].Chicago style:Lelia Green, "Relating to Internet 'Audiences'," M/C: A Journal of Mediaand Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), ([your date of access]). APA style:Lelia Green. (2000) Relating to Internet 'Audiences'. M/C: A Journal ofMedia and Culture 3(1). ([your date of access]).