Building Bridges
Pathways to a Greater Societal
Significance for Audience Research
Edited by
Geoffroy PATRIARCHE
Helena BILANDZIC
Nico CARPENTIER
Cristina PONTE
Kim C. SCHRØDER
Frauke Z ELLER
January 2014 ‐ ISBN 978‐2‐9601157‐9‐6
1
http://www.cost.eu
http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu
This publication is supported by COST.
COST – European Cooperation in Science and Technology is an intergovernmental
framework aimed at facilitating the collaboration and networking of scientists and researchers
at European level. It was established in 1971 by 19 member countries and currently includes 35
member countries across Europe, and Israel as a cooperating state.
COST funds pan‐European, bottom‐up networks of scientists and researchers across all
science and technology fields. These networks, called ‘COST Actions’, promote international
coordination of nationally‐funded research. By fostering the networking of researchers at an
international level, COST enables break‐through scientific developments leading to new
concepts and products, thereby contributing to strengthening Europe’s research and innovation
capacities.
COST’s mission focuses in particular on:
•
Building capacity by connecting high quality scientific communities throughout
Europe and worldwide;
•
•
Providing networking opportunities for early career investigators;
Increasing the impact of research on policy makers, regulatory bodies and
national decision makers as well as the private sector.
Through its inclusiveness, COST supports the integration of research communities,
leverages national research investments and addresses issues of global relevance.
Every year thousands of European scientists benefit from being involved in COST
Actions, allowing the pooling of national research funding to achieve common goals.
As a precursor of advanced multidisciplinary research, COST anticipates and
complements the activities of EU Framework Programmes, constituting a ‘bridge’ towards the
scientific communities of emerging countries. In particular, COST Actions are also open to
participation by non‐European scientists coming from neighbour countries (for example
Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova,
Montenegro, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Russia, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine) and from a
number of international partner countries.
COST’s budget for networking activities has traditionally been provided by successive EU
RTD Framework Programmes. COST is currently executed by the European Science Foundation
(ESF) through the COST Office on a mandate by the European Commission, and the framework is
governed by a Committee of Senior Officials (CSO) representing all its 35 member countries.
2
The COST Action IS0906 ‘Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies’ (2010‐2014)
is coordinating research efforts into the key transformations of European audiences within a
changing media and communication environment, identifying their complex interrelationships
with the social, cultural and political areas of European societies. A range of interconnected but
distinct topics concerning audiences are being developed by four Working Groups: (1) New
media genres, media literacy and trust in the media; (2) Audience interactivity and participation;
(3) The role of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships; and (4) Audience
transformations and social integration.
COST is supported by the EU RTD
ESF provides the COST Office
Framework programme
through an EC contract
3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................................................................... 6
By
Geoffroy
Patriarche,
Helena
Bilandzic,
Nico
Carpentier,
Cristina
Ponte,
Kim C. Schrøder and Frauke Zeller
PART I. NEW MEDIA GENRES, MEDIA LITERACY AND TRUST IN THE MEDIA
The anticipated, co‐creative, and co‐designed nature of researcher‐stakeholder relationships:
Building bridges with stakeholders ..............................................................................................................................14
By Jakob Bjur, Göran Bolin and Lars Nyre
Overcoming the barriers of access, newsworthiness and organisational forms of academy and
stakeholders: Report from the stakeholder‐academy deliberations on 19 September 2013 ........30
By Göran Bolin and Jakob Bjur
PART II. AUDIENCE INTERACTIVITY AND PARTICIPATION
Introduction to part II...........................................................................................................................................................35
By Nico Carpentier and Maria Francesca Murru
The social relevance of participatory theory............................................................................................................37
By Nico Carpentier and Peter Dahlgren
Media, democracy and civil Society: The challenge of digital media ...........................................................53
By Peter Lunt
Emerging topics in the research on digital audiences and participation: An agenda for increasing
research efforts ........................................................................................................................................................................66
By Francesca Pasquali, José‐Manuel Noguera Vivo and Mélanie Bourdaa
Stakeholders and academia: Different modes of interaction...........................................................................75
By Manuel José Damasio and Paula Cordeiro
Building Bridges on Media, Interaction and Audience Participation...........................................................87
By Igor Vobic
PART III. THE ROLE OF MEDIA AND ICT USE
FOR EVOLVING SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
‘Old’ & ‘New’ Media: Theoretical and Technological Perspective..................................................................92
By J. Ignacio Gallego and Brian O'Neill
4
Methods and software for studying social media and social network sites.............................................99
By Jakob Linaa Jensen
Media and generations: An overview of the main topics and of their relevance for the
stakeholders ...........................................................................................................................................................................105
By Andra Siibak and Nicoletta Vittadini
The role of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships: WG3 report based on the
‘Building bridges’ discussion in Belgrade, 19.09.2013.....................................................................................112
By Frauke Zeller
PART IV. AUDIENCE TRANSFORMATIONS AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION
Media, citizenship and social diversity.....................................................................................................................119
By Alexander Dhoest
Transforming Societies – Transforming Families...............................................................................................126
By Sascha Trültzsch‐Wijnen
Audience Transformations and Social Integration: Building Bridges and Making a Real Difference
in the World ‐ Report of WG4 Dialogue with Stakeholders, Belgrade, September 10th, 2013.....131
By Dafna Lemish
5
INTRODUCTION
Geoffroy Patriarche, Belgium, geoffroy.patriarche@usaintlouis.be
Chair of the Action
Helena Bilandzic, Germany, helena.bilandzic@phil.uni‐augsburg.de
Vice‐chair of the Action
Nico Carpentier, Belgium, nico.carpentier@vub.ac.be
Chair of Working Group 2 ‘Audience interactivity and participation’
Cristina Ponte, Portugal, cristina.ponte@fcsh.unl.pt
Chair of Working Group 4 ‘Audience transformations and social integration’
Kim C. Schrøder, Denmark, kimsc@ruc.dk
Chair of Working Group 1 ‘New media genres, media literacy and trust in the media’
Frauke Zeller, Canada, fraukezeller@gmail.com
Chair of Working Group 3 ‘The role of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships’
One of the key objectives of the COST framework as appearing in its Mission Statement is
‘Increasing the impact of research on policy makers, regulatory bodies and national decision
makers as well as the private sector’1. The public value of COST Actions is also explicit in the way
they are defined: ‘bottom‐up science and technology networks open to researchers and
stakeholders (…)’2. This is to say that COST puts a lot of emphasis on the public value of COST
Actions – they should feed social, technological and policy innovation. The COST Action IS0906
‘Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies’ has taken this imperative of societal value
very seriously.
The COST Action ‘Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies’ (2010‐14) has been
coordinating research efforts into the key transformations of European audiences within a
changing media and communication environment, identifying their complex interrelationships
with the social, cultural and political areas of European societies. A range of interconnected but
distinct topics concerning audiences have been developed by four Working Groups: (1) New
media genres, media literacy and trust in the media; (2) Audience interactivity and participation;
(3) The role of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships; and (4) Audience
transformations and social integration. For more information about the Action, see the project
website at: http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu.
Obviously, the primary target group of the Action is the scholarly (and educational)
community. However, one of the tasks of the Action participants as initially labelled in the work
plan was ‘to reflect on the significance of their research results for civil society, industry and
policy players in the field, and provide them with insightful recommendations for their future
1
COST website, http://www.cost.eu/about_cost/mission. Accessed 28 November 2013.
2
COST website, http://www.cost.eu/about_cost/how_cost_works. Accessed 28 November 2013. Emphasis
by the authors.
6
activities and responsibilities’3. Thus the Action also had among its target groups policy makers,
regulatory bodies, media industries and professionals, civil society (including community
media) and the public at large.
The report Building Bridges is one the Action’s main responses to the question why, how
and for whom academic audience research has (or could have) public value. Addressing
this question raised important challenges in terms of how a large network of 319 audience
researchers coming from 33 countries and having mostly an academic background could make a
relevant contribution on this front. In the beginning of the Action, it was not clear how to
proceed – even the very focus of the task was rather vague. As a consequence, the Action decided
to follow an incremental route, exploring different areas and channels of interaction with non‐
academic groups and thereby redefining the focus and the working method along the way. Thus
Building Bridges was part of a broader and eclectic effort to liaise with non‐academic groups and
create opportunities for dialogues.
Many Action participants were involved in this process. Among them, one or more
Liaison Officers within each Working Group have provided advice and support for the
organisation of round tables with stakeholder representatives and the preparation of ‘building
bridges’ outputs. Thus these activities and outputs wouldn’t have been possible without the
contributions of Uwe Hasebrink (WG1), François Heinderyckx (WG1), Sonia Livingstone (WG1),
Bozena Mierzejewska (WG2, Liaison Officer for the industry), Birgit Stark (WG2, Liaison Officer
for the industry), Lucia Vesnic‐Alujevic (WG2, Liaison Officer for policy makers), Mélanie
Bourdaa (WG2, Liaison Officer for civil society), Ana Milojevic (WG2, Liaison Officer for
journalists), José Manuel Noguera Vivo (WG2, Liaison Officer for the academia), Igor Vobic
(WG2, Liaison Officer for young scholars), Stanislaw Jedrzejewski (WG3) and Piermarco Aroldi
(WG4).
ENGAGING IN A DIALOGUE
The COST Action initiated a dialogue with non‐academic stakeholders immediately
during the first period of activity in order to familiarize ourselves with their interests and points
of view. For this purpose, the Action organised two plenary round tables – ‘Media literacy:
Ambitions, policies and measures’ and ‘Audience research: Academic and non‐academic
approaches and cooperation possibilities’ – in the context of the first Action conference in
Zagreb, in April 20114. These round tables involved representatives of policy makers (European
Commission), regulatory bodies (Ofcom), associations of viewers and listeners (European
Association for Viewers’ Interests/EAVI), market research companies (TNS), research
departments in media companies (VRT, MTV International) and specialized research institutes
(International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television/IZI).
This exploratory phase continued during the second period of activity with a plenary
round table on ‘The role of audience research within mediatised societies: A dialogue between
3
Memorandum of Understanding: http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/isch/Actions/IS0906.
4
See the conference webpage at: http://www.cost-transforming-audiences.eu/node/97. The report of the
roundtable on media literacy is available at: http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu/node/223.
7
academic researchers and stakeholders from different societal groups’, which was held in
Brussels in April 20125. The panel brought together representatives of the European Platform of
Regulatory Authorities/EPRA, the VRT Research Department (Flemish public broadcasting) and
the European Alliance of Listeners and Viewers Associations/EURALVA, as well as the European
Policy Manager of Facebook.
These exploratory round tables have provided insights into the ‘different worlds’
inhabited by academic and non‐academic groups, into the opportunities and difficulties of
liaising with non‐academic stakeholders, into some possible common interests and desirable
areas of further discussion/cooperation, and into the differences and similarities among the
non‐academic groups. Most importantly, this exploratory exercise resulted in a re‐definition of
the Action’s ‘Developing recommendations’ objective as it was initially planned in the beginning
of the Action. This re‐definition had three interrelated aspects:
•
The term ‘recommendations’, although often used in policy circles, was found to be
problematic, as it might imply the idea that the Action (and hence academia) is in a
position to tell the different stakeholders what they should do – although the Action
was not invited to make such kinds of statements and has much to learn from non‐
academic stakeholders themselves. Thus there was a consensus to avoid a top
down approach to the liaison with the non‐academic groups.
•
Another related issue is that producing and sharing knowledge that has some
societal significance is useless if there is an insufficient or unbalanced relationship
between academics and other stakeholders in the field. In this respect, the term
‘dissemination’ was seen as problematic as well: it might imply the idea of a linear
transmission of ‘results’ or ‘findings’ and does not leave room for dialogue and
building relations. On the contrary, academic research can gain greater societal
significance if academic and non‐academic stakeholders get better acquainted with
each other and if stakeholders are involved in the different phases of the
research process, and not only as ‘receivers’ of knowledge.
•
A third aspect that was debated among the Action membership is the societal role
of academics. There was indeed a concern among many Action members about the
normative assumption that the Action (and academic audience research in general)
must collaborate with non‐academic groups. What is at stake here is the critical
stance of audience research, which as such does not impede interacting and
collaborating with non‐academic groups, but should be preserved as part of
academics’ role in society.
These considerations provided a new ground for the ‘Developing recommendations’
objective, which was re‐framed metaphorically as ‘Building bridges with stakeholders’ – with
a focus on creating relations and dialogue, developing a better mutual knowledge of the different
stakeholders’ ‘inhabited worlds’ (here academia is considered as one stakeholder among others)
and exploring different areas/modes of interactions/collaborations. This report, as the main
deliverable for this task, is obviously a direct output of this ‘building bridges’ perspective. We
5
See the event webpage at: http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu/node/1354.
8
will detail below how this approach was put into play in the very writing process. The plenary
round table with invited stakeholder representatives that was held in Belgrade (September
2013) was guided by the same principle: the Research & Learning Group at BBC Media Action,
the Association of Consumers of Audiovisual Media in Catalonia/TAC and the Studies & Research
department of the French‐speaking Belgian High Authority for Audiovisual Media (CSA) were
invited to elaborate on the significance of their own activities for academic audience research, as
part of a panel entitled ‘Bringing the outside in’6. In addition, the societal significance of audience
research is one of the overarching themes of the Action Final Conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia,
on 5‐7 February 20147.
In addition to these Action‐wide activities and outputs, the Action, through one of its
Working Groups, has carried out more specific ‘bridging’ activities. Working Group 1 has
developed an on‐going dialogue with a range of non‐academic stakeholders (including mainly
policy makers, regulatory authorities and associations of viewers and listeners) in the field of
media literacy. In addition to the ‘Media literacy’ round table in Zagreb, this was done through a
special issue on ‘Critical insights in European media literacy research and policy’ in Medijske
studije/Media Studies, addressing the policy implications of media literacy research8, a meeting
in Brussels on ‘Media literacy research and policy in Europe: A review of recent, current and
planned activities’, again with different stakeholder representatives (September 2013)9, and the
mapping project ‘Comparative Analysis of Media and Information Education Policies in Europe’,
the results of which will be presented to the European Parliament.
Another specific area where the Action, through Working Group 2, has sustained a
substantial dialogue with stakeholders related to audience interactivity and participation.
Through five collections of interviews and essays, Working Group 2 has explored diverse aspects
of interactivity and participation from a range of academic and non‐academic points of view, the
latter including journalists, policy makers, civil society representatives, media company
representatives and media practitioners10. Four of these collections of interviews/essays have
been published in the academic journal Participations. Journal of Audience and Reception
Studies11. The aim of the whole exercise was to improve the mutual knowledge on each other’s
perspective on interactivity and participation.
A PARTICIPATORY WRITING PROCESS
The Building Bridges report as such is the result of a long participatory process involving
many contributors inside and outside the academia. This process is represented in Figure 1.
6
See http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu/node/1029.
7
See the conference webpage at: http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu/node/1030.
8
The special issue is available online at: http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=toc&id_broj=7793.
9
More information about the meeting at: http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu/node/1354. An
extensive report of the meeting is available at: http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu/node/1683.
10
Available online at: http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu/node/303.
11
Available online at: http://www.participations.org/Volume%2010/Issue%201/contents.htm.
9
As a first step (November 2012), the Steering Group of the Action issued a call to all
Action members for individual reports on ‘How has my research been useful, or could be useful,
for which stakeholders in the field?’ This was an Action‐wide call, which was thus circulated
among the membership of each of the four Working Groups.
The call was successful: 95 individual reports were submitted (step 2, March 2013),
addressing a wide range of issues from different perspectives and covering relations with an
equally wide range of stakeholders among state, civil society, industry and the public at large. As
it turned out, because collaborative relationships with stakeholders in the media and
information technology industry were scarce, this kind of collaboration is somewhat
underrepresented in the following stages of the Action’s bridge‐building process.
For the third step, the Task Force leaders within the Working Groups prepared a draft
report on the specific topic(s) of their Task Force, using the individual reports as sources of
inspiration and exemplary cases. This resulted in 10 so‐called ‘Task Force reports’ (one cross‐TF
report for WG1, four TF reports for WG2, three TF reports for WG3 and two TF reports for WG4)
that were presented and discussed in Working Group parallel sessions during the Action
meeting in Tampere, Finland, in April 2013.
For the fourth step, the Task Forces finalised their respective reports, taking into
account the discussions in Tampere. A special emphasis was put on focusing the report on the
societal significance of the work carried out within the Task Forces and on keeping the style
easily accessible for a wider public. The final Task Force reports were then presented and
discussed in the Belgrade meeting (September 2013) in four Working Group workshops with 13
representatives of non‐academic target groups serving as discussants12. The stakeholder
representatives were invited by the Task Forces and Working Groups according to their
thematic needs and interests. The objective of these sessions was to get a better understanding
of what non‐academic stakeholders think about the societal significance of audience research
from their own perspective – and more generally to create a dialogue on why, how and for
whom audience research has or should have some kind of societal significance outside the
academia. The Working Groups reported about their respective ‘building bridges’ discussions in
a final plenary session.
The responses from the discussants provided the material for one additional report per
Working Group – a so‐called ‘dialogue report’ that aimed to synthesise the issues discussed
during the Belgrade sessions and to integrate the stakeholders’ points of view (step 5).
For the sixth and final step, all the contributions (the ‘Task Force reports’ and the
‘dialogue reports’) were assembled to form the complete and final report. The structure of
Building Bridges reflects the structure of the Action: the report has four parts corresponding to
the four Working Groups and including each the Task Force reports (one cross‐TF report for
WG1) and the WG dialogue report.
12
See the programme at: http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu/node/1029.
10
Figure 1. Building Bridges: A participatory process
This participatory writing process was only possible thanks to COST networking through
the Action, which provided a platform for academic and non‐academic groups with different
interests, backgrounds and points of view to dialogue in a very open way and on a regular basis.
AN INVITATION TO CONTINUE THE DIALOGUE
Collectively, the contributions in this report address various aspects of the researcher‐
stakeholder relationships that can be grouped into three thematic clusters:
•
WHO? What is a ‘stakeholder’, who are the (academic and non‐academic)
stakeholders for audience research and what are their distinct interests and
perspectives – in other words, which ‘worlds’ do they inhabit? Stakeholders include
many different groups within the industry, the state, civil society and the public at
large – e.g. mainstream media, journalism outlets, small and medium size
enterprises, policy makers, regulatory authorities, public sector developers,
community media organisations, minority associations, schools, universities, etc.
11
•
WHAT? WHY? What, in the view of the Action members, are key questions relevant
to stakeholders and for which a dialogue or even some kind of collaboration between
academic and non‐academic groups is desirable? Why are these questions important
and what are the resources that research funders could specifically offer in order to
address them? These questions are developed through the lens of the main topics
covered by the Action, i.e. media and information literacy, media policy and
regulation, media design and co‐production, public engagement in politics,
participation in/through the media, audience and participation, the transition from
old to new media, social media and social network sites, generations and media,
children and media, and inclusion in the public sphere in relation to media uses of
diverse social groups. For all these topics, the report provides an overview of the
work accomplished with the Task Forces – including people and institutions that can
serve as resources for stakeholder groups outside the academia – and argues for the
societal significance of academic audience research.
•
HOW? This report asked what kinds of bridges have been or could be developed
with different stakeholders. It provides an analysis of different models of interaction
(also described as tensions) between academic and non‐academic stakeholders and
of the different kinds of relevance or usefulness that academic audience research has
(or could have) for other groups in society. Building Bridges also discusses the
barriers to researcher‐stakeholder relationships and some possible solutions to
overcome them.
The report Building Bridges shows that there are many mutual benefits to be reaped
from the multiple forms of collaboration that exist or could exist between academic researchers
and stakeholders in societal organizations, in the commercial world of media and ICTs, and in
regulatory bodies close to the policy‐making process. However, as we see it, it is important for
the advancement of audience research as an agent, sometimes critical, of human enlightenment
about the media/society nexus that it continues to rest on a solid base of interest‐free
knowledge objectives. In some contexts – which appear to be on the rise – it is becoming
mandatory, and a prerequisite of obtaining funding from funding bodies at the national and
supra‐national levels, that research applications do not only promise to deliver ‘public value’ in a
broad sense but must be endorsed by outside agents driven by specific organizational or
commercial interests. We suggest that public value should not be seen too narrowly as
utilitarian, but also as a factor that advances disinterested human knowledge.
Building Bridges is all about the role(s) of academics – especially here audience
researchers – in society, which should not be seen as homogenous but as composed of different
(yet interrelated) fields. Thanks to the participatory writing process explained above, this
question has been asked from multiple points of view. While one could have anticipated strongly
opposing views between academic and non‐academic groups, it appears on the contrary that
there are many converging perspectives – including on differences and disagreements. This new
common ground is an achievement in itself and provides a new basis for continuing further the
dialogue across societal groups ‘having a stake’ in audience research.
12
PART I.
New Media Genres, Media Literacy and
Trust in the Media
13
THE ANTICIPATED, CO‐CREATIVE, AND CO‐DESIGNED NATURE OF RESEARCHER‐
STAKEHOLDER RELATIONSHIPS: BUILDING BRIDGES WITH STAKEHOLDERS
Jakob Bjur, Sweden, jakob.bjur@jmg.gu.se
Vice chair of Working Group 1 ‘New media genres, media literacy and trust in the media’ and leader
of the Task Force 1 on ‘Cross‐media challenges’ in WG1
Göran Bolin, Sweden, goran.bolin@sh.se
Leader of the Task Force 2 on ‘New media genres as texts and practices’ in Working Group 1 ‘New
media genres, media literacy and trust in the media’
Lars Nyre, Norway, Lars.Nyre@infomedia.uib.no
Leader of the Task Force 3 ‘Trust in the media’ in Working Group 1 ‘New media genres, media
literacy and trust in the media’
INTRODUCTION
This essay accounts for, and to a certain extent also discusses how researchers within
Working Group 1 (WG1) of the COST Action ‘Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies’
can build bridges towards various types of stakeholders in society. Our views upon stakeholders
emanate from Jürgen Habermas’s (1968/1972) classical discussion on knowledge and interest,
and that the interest in knowledge will determine the kind and character of research. A
stakeholder is thus a person, group or organization that is possibly affected by the results of
academic research. They hold a ‘stake’, that is, a share or interest in what we find out about
reality. We should also distinguish between the interests or stakes the stakeholder perceives of,
and the interests or stakes that the researcher perceives of or think should be relevant, and,
lastly, what actually is relevant. These three perspectives might, or might not, overlap, and it is
the aim of the following to try to sort these perspectives out based on individual reports given
by the WG’s members.
We should also stress from the beginning that the present report emphasizes the
opportunities for building bridges, the ways in which research can have an impact in the wider
society, rather than the barriers that both researchers and stakeholders face when trying to
establish liaisons. In the following report entitled ‘Report from stakeholder‐academy
deliberations, WG1, 19 September 2013’, we have dealt more with these barriers.
THE HISTORY OF STAKEHOLDER‐RESEARCHER RELATIONSHIPS
The relationship between academic media and communication research and the
knowledge produced within the media business itself has always been an uneasy one. One of the
first to problematize this relationship was Paul Lazarsfeld (1941) in his seminal article on
‘administrative and critical communications research’, where he posed the two varieties of
research as both opposed and at the same time dependent on each other. The difference
between the two, argued Lazarsfeld, is that
14
administrative research […] is carried through in the service of some kind of
administrative agency of public or private character [while] critical research
is posed against the practice of administrative research, requiring that, prior
and in addition to whatever special purpose is to be served, the general role
of our media of communication in the present social system should be
studied. (Lazarsfeld 1941: 8f)
Lazarsfeld drew up this distinction partly on personal grounds, as the difference
between his fellow European in exile in the USA, Theodor Adorno, and himself. In Lazarsfeld’s
view, Adorno was the critical scholar, while he considered himself carrying out administrative
research on the grounds of the radio industry financing his radio research institute (see Glander
2000). The article is usually used in academic debate for marking distance towards
administrative research, but one of the main points of Lazarsfeld was that the two types of
research needed each other: critical research, typically asking more general, philosophically
oriented questions, needed the empirical input in order to be of social relevance, while
administrative research needed the theoretical input from critical research in order not to
stagnate and just repeat self‐evident data.
What Lazarsfeld tried to do was to build a bridge between the knowledge produced in
the interest of the media industries, and the knowledge produced by (seemingly) free‐thinking
and autonomous academic researchers. It is very doubtful if Adorno did agree to his arguments
(most probably not), but the problem introduced by Lazarsfeld lives on in academic debate and
policy. It is also the problem in focus of this article, where we have tried to describe and discuss
the possible administrative use of the mainly critical research among the network members of
the WG1 of the COST Action.
We will proceed in the following manner: Firstly, we will shortly characterize the types
of influence (or anticipated influence) of the research of the WG on the media business, based on
individual reports on activities and the uses of research findings from the Action members.
Secondly, we will point out which stakeholders, or interested parties, that possibly benefit from
the research, as this has been reflected in the individual reports that have been submitted by
WG1 members (cf. Habermas 1968/1972). Thirdly, we will in three sections discuss in more
detail the most common three thematic areas that researchers of WG1 are engaged in, and the
usefulness of this research (as perceived by the researchers) (cf. Corner 2001). We will then end
with some general conclusions from this discussion, and hopefully raise some questions for the
future constructions of bridges between academic research, and stakeholders, or, in the
terminology of Lazarsfeld, between the critical and the administrative domains of research.
THREE KINDS OF USABILITY OF RESEARCH
In the reports given by the researchers in the WG1, three main ambitions strike out – as
judged by the usability for people outside of the academy. We call these three types of scholarly
output research of anticipated or potential significance, cocreation of knowledge and cocreation
of practices, objects, and policies. The research of anticipated significance can be further divided
into research as a resource, or it can become realized, that is, put to use in media and
15
communications practice. The last two types of co‐creative efforts can be either symmetrical, or
asymmetrical in relation to the balance of power between media business and academy (Figure
1).
Firstly, and most commonly, we have what we have termed research of anticipated or
potential significance for stakeholders. Typically, this is the kind of research where the
researcher or the research team produces reports, journal articles, even books, addressed to an
indiscriminate public of academics, media business and people generally interested in academic
research on media matters, for example the role of journalism as a democratic force in society.
For the most part, the researcher has little knowledge on how this research is adopted or used.
Although the research results are published, and thus accessible, there are most often no active
engagement in stakeholder activity on part of the researcher, and the activity of producing the
knowledge transfer is left to the extramural world outside of the academy. Therefore the
research publications are most often to be considered as a resource for stakeholders, a
potentially useful kind of knowledge for these to take advantage of if there is a felt need for
doing so on their part.
Figure 1. Three kinds of usability of research
This type of research, as it were, is of anticipated value because the researcher argues
that the knowledge produced should be of significance for the industry in one way or the other,
for example ethically, methodologically, policy‐wise, or practically. This does naturally not mean
that it is also perceived of as useful for the stakeholders within the media industry. A first
obstacle is the weak channel of communication between academy and industry: most industry
stakeholders do not follow academic journals, and many academics are poorly oriented within
internal trade publications of the media industries. Often some kind of mediator is required. A
common obstacle here, especially for research in journalism, is that the mediator is him‐ or
herself a stakeholder. Typically journalists only report on research directly related to the agenda
within the journalistic institution. This means that journalists might miss out on research that
actually is of significance, but that is not immediately perceived as so – a classical problem in the
16
encounter between administrative and critical media and communication research as observed
already by Lazarsfeld (1941).
Some of these research results, however, become realized in the meaning that the results
are indeed taken up and implemented or taken into consideration by sectors within the media
and culture industries. At such occasions this can also lead further to more structured
collaboration between academy and media industries, and hence lead to the second and third
type of collaborative research described below. One such example is the research by Göran
Bolin, who together with two research colleagues conducted a study of entertainment television
in Sweden, with the example of one of the most popular entertainment gaming shows in Sweden
during the early days of commercial television in Sweden in the 1990s. The book produced by
that project was later picked up for internal training within the broadcasting company in focus
of research (Bolin & Forsman 2002, Bolin 2002), and also led further to active collaboration
between academy and the broadcaster in the form of them financing an adjunct professorship in
practical media production.
Secondly, we have the slightly less common, although far from rare, example of research
that is actively engaged in the co‐creation of knowledge. This is the kind of research where co‐
operations between academic and industry research is established. This co‐creation can be of
two kinds: the first is research that is commissioned by private or public stakeholders. It is not
uncommon, for example, for parts of state administration to initiate research on specific topics.
A typical example is the commissioned governmental report on violent extremism on the
Internet that the Swedish Statens medieråd produced in 2013, and where the actual research
was conducted by three academic scholars from the universities of Stockholm, Lund and
Södertörn (Statens medieråd, 2013).
Quite naturally, research projects can also be commissioned by private corporations, as
exemplified by Lothar Mikos, who has conducted ‘small scale research projects commissioned by
production companies, broadcasters, games industry, regulation bodies or political institutions’.
Also Kim Christian Schrøder has worked with commercial stakeholders, in the form of Danish
newspaper Politiken (Schrøder & Larsen 2010). The same is the case with Göran Bolin’s example
of co‐operations with commercial television broadcaster TV4 in Sweden, and Jakob Bjur’s work
for polling company TNS/Sifo, also in Sweden.
Irrespective if initiated by public or private bodies; when research is commissioned, the
power relation is most often asymmetric, as the researcher has to obey to the aims of the state
administrative, public or private body that commissions the research. Quite naturally there are
degrees to which the researcher can influence the process – not least methodologically – but the
overarching aim is seldom up for discussion.
It is, however, also possible that co‐creation of knowledge can be symmetric, where the
stakeholder and the academic researcher(s) have equal influence on the research process, from
the framing of research questions to the methodological approach, etc. It can be supposed that
this is more common in co‐operations between the academy and civil society agents, but it is, as
we shall see below, also possible with state administrative and corporate actors.
Thirdly, there is the research that aims at the co‐creation of practices, objects, and
policies. This is the research where researchers and stakeholders co‐operate in the production
17
of more manifest tools for media production. It need not necessarily be material, tangible tools
(although there are of course such examples), but can just as well be in the form of a
methodological practice, or in the production of a policy for directing media production. Also
here, the co‐operation can be either symmetric or asymmetric. Some researchers might, for
example, be actively engaged in producing a media policy for children’s television programming
on equal terms with state administrative bodies, which would be an example of symmetric co‐
creating. Others may be engaged in less symmetric ways, where the researcher enters into a
prefabricated model, for example, as an advisor who have little impact on the ways in which
questions are posed, or on the final outcome of the project at hand.
WHO HAVE STAKES IN AUDIENCE RESEARCH?
Stakeholders are, as judged by the individual reports, located within three societal
spheres. Borrowing the terminology from Jürgen Habermas’ lifeworld‐systems model in The
Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1981/1992), one could say that some relationships
nurtured in all three kinds of efforts are between researchers and representatives from the
economic and the political systems. However, there are also quite few projects that co‐operate
with civil society institutions and associations, i.e. individual and collective agents within the
public sphere. There are a range of examples where researchers have collaborated with NGOs, as
will be further accounted for below.
Perhaps naturally, many audience researchers also anticipate their work to be of
significance for ordinary media users within the private or intimate sphere, and hope that they
will be individually empowered and/or gain insights into the own identity, cultural habits and
preferences. Also here, intermediaries in the form of cultural journalists are most often bridging
between research and extramural media users, although there are a lot of researchers –
especially those rooted in the humanities – who engage in media critique in the culture sections
of newspapers, writing reviews and cultural debate articles.
THREE THEMATIC AREAS OF RESEARCH
In the individual reports by the WG1 members, we have identified three major themes,
and we will account for these in more detail below. There are, of course, also individual reports
that fall outside of these three themes, but they are not many, and they are very heterogeneous.
There are also some overlaps which prove that categorization into themes is a tricky task, and
that borders between categories seldom are clean‐cut. The three themes we have observed are
Media and information literacy, Media policy and regulation, and Design and co‐production, and
the overlaps are mainly between the first and the second of these themes.
Media and information literacy
Media and information literacy is the area most commonly referred to in the bridging
reports of WG1. This is not in itself surprising. WG1 was originally formed around the four
research fields of media literacy, trust in the media, genre, and cross‐media use. During the
course of the COST Action an array of research has been produced within all four areas, but
evidently media and information literacy has enrolled the broadest group of researchers. On the
18
merits of being brought up the most, media and information literacy is here taken an example of
bridging activities aimed at stakeholders belonging to civil society – Habermas’ private and
public lifeworld. However, important to notice is that corresponding expositions could be
produced for the fields of trust in the media, genre, and cross‐media use as well.
Anticipated or potentially useful for stakeholders
The body of research of anticipated significance is by far the most comprehensive
category brought up in the reports. It consists of research in its most common form, as
performed by researchers and aimed primarily for the research community. All research that
does not directly co‐involve stakeholders belongs to this category. However, since the majority
of the academic research deals with subjects and areas of direct or indirect interest for a broad
array of stakeholders, this appears to be a potential base of knowledge, ready for exploitation.
Most research efforts on media and information literacy are described as potential
sources of insight for stakeholders. To give some examples, María del Mar Grandío brings up a
book chapter (Livingstone et al., 2013) and a special issue on ‘Critical Insights in European
Media Literacy Research and Policy’ in the Croatian peer reviewed journal Medijske studije
(Livingstone et al., 2012) as potential sources for stakeholder such as teachers, educators,
families, schools, and civic society. Conceição Costa, one of del Mar Grandío’s co‐authors for the
book chapter, also describes how her research gives voice to children and reveals learning
processes as well as the importance of the peer group and media in the experimentation and
construction of pre‐adolescents identities. In the same vein Craig Hight stresses that his research
establishes a set of ideas about software literacy that can inform pedagogical design at
secondary and tertiary level. If followed, educational institutions could educate and train
students to engage with digital media in their everyday lives.
The reports referred to above are but three examples of reports filled with insights of
immediate relevance for various public (schools, educators, and civil society at large) and
private stakeholder (young, families). These types of insights are in many of the reports referred
solely in the form of a title of an article in a scholarly academic journal. This is, important to
acknowledge, arguably a source of evidence and a form of communication far out of reach of
most stakeholders mentioned so far.
Consequently, we have in our model split this potential knowledge base in two parts.
The border runs between research of anticipated significance, as the ones cited above, and
research of realized significance. The distinction highlights that bridging with stakeholders can
occur afterwards. This is true for all independent academic enterprises without direct co‐
involvement of stakeholders. When research is taken into account by stakeholders, indirect
bridging takes place. Research results are then transformed from knowledge of anticipated
usability into knowledge of realized usability, by stakeholders.
Examples of realized research mentioned span everything from promotion of public
understanding of science to education and advocacy. Tao Papaioannou describes how survey‐
based research on media literacy competence of high school students resulted in the
development of educational resources for high school students and teachers to gain a deeper
understanding of their new media environment and improve their literacy associated with the
19
use of Facebook. Similarly, Christine W. Wijnen reports how she directly converts research
findings on media literacy and Internet safety into workshops for social workers, teachers,
parents, and into peer‐to‐peer education of 10‐14 year olds. These are but a few of numerous
examples of different forms in which research results have moved on from the academic domain,
of anticipated significance, and acquired realized significance by stakeholders.
Cocreation of knowledge
Research can, as an alternative to a merely academic enterprise, be preformed together
with stakeholders. Bridging is in this case a direct part of the research design. This does not
mean that research in itself has to be less free and independent, but it is, undoubtly, more
directly subjected to stakeholder interests and goals. Research is in cases of direct bridging
conditioned by stakeholders. To make clear that this level of conditioning exists we have
distinguished two types of co‐creation of knowledge based on the balance of power built into the
relationship between the researcher and the stakeholder. When stakeholders clearly define the
aim, methods (and God save you: the results) of the research, it is commissioned. When the
balance of power is more evenly distributed in terms of guiding the aims and methods of
research, it is symmetrical.
There are several reports that list research project co‐involving stakeholders in
symmetrical forms of knowledge co‐creation. Kirsten Drotner reports on a broader project
aimed at deciphering how SMEs such as architects, digital designers and game developers
operate as key brokers of design and development in museums. As part of the research a series
of seminars and workshops together with SMEs and parties from the museum zoomed in on key
issues adopting user‐led modes of communication. Cédric Courtois reports on a large‐scale
research into teenagers’ use of media and communication technologies, in collaboration with
youth work organisations. Viktorija Car reports on a more activist approach doing research on
how NGOs use digital media to report on corruption and other legal problem in Croatia to
communicate it with EU organisations and delegations.
We have not found any direct examples of commissioned research by stakeholders from
civil society for co‐creation of knowledge around media and information literacy in the reports.
This type of commissioned research design for knowledge production is more commonplace in
relation to stakeholders deriving from the economical and political sphere, as will be illustrated.
Cocreation of objects and practices
The last kind of usability addressed is that of co‐creation of objects and practices. It deals
likewise with a process conditioned by stakeholders, that can be symmetrical or commissioned,
but the end product is here objects and practices. Two different symmetrical research projects
can here be mentioned while we have not found any commissioned one.
The first is the development of Drotner’s research that in a consecutive phase gathers a
smaller group of the networked SMEs with an expressed interest in research‐based
development to participate in workshops focusing on methodological challenges. What is in
focus is here how the knowledge learned earlier can be set into practice and be applied in the
future work in museums. Viktorija Car has, apart from public advocacy and lobbying for a
20
national media literacy curricula in Croatia, been engaged in setting up round tables inside and
outside parliament with stakeholders (state, experts, teachers, psychologists, parents). The
common goal of advocating academics and NGOs is to initiate Media Literacy Strategy in Croatia,
to develop curricula, to start with trainings for trainers (school teachers), and to organize
workshops for parents, teachers, students with the help of NGOs which are active in Civic
Literacy issues (Political Literacy, EU Literacy, etc.).
To summarize, this exposé has focused on research addressing stakeholders that belong
to civil society, i.e. Habermas’ private and public lifeworld. Research in the field of media and
information literacy has been used as an example. However, a substantial part of research in
media and information literacy has policy implications. We will now turn to those parts of
literacy that engage in policy matters, and in addition account for other kinds of research, not
directly engaged in media and information literacy, but nonetheless of importance for media
policy and regulation.
Media policy and regulation
A second major area in which WG1 researchers are engaged is on media policy and
regulation. Quite naturally, there is much research conducted which is of anticipated or potential
relevance for stakeholders, but there is also more collaborative efforts reported by individual
researchers. However, it is also possible to discern a pattern where some research that has
stated out as being of potential interest to stakeholders, has become realized and led to co‐
production of knowledge as well as of objects and, perhaps as most common, to the development
of practices such as policies and regulations.
Anticipated or potentially useful for stakeholders
In principle, it can be argued that all research conducted by the WG1 members is of
potential significance for various stakeholders. Many of the researchers also point to such
instances, and also argue for why it should be of specific interest. This goes, for example, for
Hanna Adoni, who argues that all audience research should be of relevance, since both state
regulators and commercial media producers need to have knowledge about audience behavior.
Such usefulness to state regulators is also pointed to by Gintaras Aleknonis, regarding his
research on freedom of expression, public sphere and the quality of the media and the history of
Lithuanian media. As pointed out by Aleknonis, the possibilities of reaching stakeholders
increase if they are addressed in their national languages, as articles published in academic fora
seldom catch their attention.
Researchers who engage in questions of media and information literacy also often point
to the potential usefulness of their work, for example Conceição Costa, who studies children in
their school environments, focusing on, among other things, ‘brand literacy’, that is, the ability
for children to identify commercial messages and distinguish these from ‘ordinary’ narratives. A
similar approach can be found in the work on ‘cross‐media literacy’ by Maria del Mar Grandío,
and on ‘software literacy’ by Craig Hight.
Some researchers have, however, seen their work becoming implemented in the form of
policy, and have through persistent focus on, for example, media literacy questions, been drawn
21
into explicit policy discussions. That is, their work is beyond potentiality, and has become
realized in the forming of co‐creation of knowledge. The most obvious example is the work of
Sonia Livingstone. The findings from the two first of the studies listed in her report – Children
and their changing media environment (1995‐99) and UK Children Go Online (2003‐5) – were
observed by policy stakeholders, and especially the findings from the second project were taken
up by the UK Department for Education’s Home Access Programme, to which Livingstone was
engaged as a consultant, which in the terminology used in this report means that the power
relations were asymmetrical. As we shall see further below, such interest raised by stakeholders
might lead to further co‐operations: knowledge exchanges as well as co‐production of objects
and practices.
Cocreation of knowledge
There are quite a few projects reported on by the WG1 researchers that are engaged in
different forms of co‐creation of knowledge related to policies and regulation. Jelena Kleut has
been involved together with a regional public service broadcaster in Serbia with the focus on
questions related with the digitization of television distribution. In the course of the project, the
researchers managed to broaden the focus from the initial concentration on digitization as solely
a technological process, at the cost of a relative neglect of the demands and challenges for the
audiences, as well as meeting the audience needs. Questions raised during this project were
policy‐oriented, in that the co‐operation focused on which principles and regulative standards
were to be implemented during the process.
An example of co‐creation of knowledge together with NGOs is the research by Cédric
Courtois, who has worked together with a Belgian youth work organisation to map out
teenagers’ use of media and communication technologies in order for the youth work
organization and other policy stakeholders to better approach young people. In a similar vein,
Courtois has recently been initiating a project on the implementation of tablet computers in
schools.
Another example of co‐creation of knowledge together with NGOs is the research that
Victorija Car of the University of Zagreb, Croatia, has co‐operated with Human Rights House
Zagreb. Together with this organization she has arranged roundtables, seemingly in a symmetric
cooperative effort. She is also preparing a report on media activism for the Croatian Ministry of
Culture, and she is a member of the working group within the Ministry of Culture, with a task to
prepare the official Croatian Media Strategy. This manifest development of a media strategy
would be a clear example of the category of co‐creation of practices.
Uwe Hasebrink at the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research points to the fact that
the research at the institute is funded by stakeholders such as the regional government, the
public broadcasters ARD/ZDF, and the regional regulatory bodies, media companies and NGOs,
which means that the relationship to stakeholders is firmly institutionalized already from the
start. A specific part of the institute is dedicated to the study of media law, and the institute has
through the study of ‘media repertoires’ formulated a basis for the regulation of cross‐media
ownership in order to prevent un‐sound owner concentration. The findings from that specific
research were included in reports to the Federal Parliament (Hans Bredow Insitute 2008), and
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‘stimulated a discussion on how to adapt the existing rules on media concentration to today’s
crossmedia environments’. As such it had ‘direct political relevance’.
The degrees to which the above projects have been commissioned, and in which
instances the researchers have had a symmetric power relationship with the co‐operating body
is a bit difficult to judge from the reports. It is apparent, however, that even those projects that
have been commissioned also have had large degrees of freedom for the researchers to solve the
problems along the way, and to arrive at their own conclusions. It is probably also common that
the power relationships change over the course of the respective research projects, in light of
scientific evidence, or through new insights arrived at.
Above‐mentioned Sonia Livingstone’s initial national project UK Children Go Online, was
followed up by her and a long list of co‐researchers in a still ongoing pan‐European study: EU
Kids Online (2006‐14). This project has had impact on the European level, for example through
Insafe, the European Network of Awareness Centres, which has drawn both on European and
country‐specific findings for their efforts. It did also inform the construction of The Safer Social
Networking Principles for the EU, which led many providers to raise standards, also for ‘industry
safety tools’ such as report buttons, parental controls and privacy settings for online content
directed towards children. It has also put Livingstone in advisory positions on both national and
international level, for example for UNICEF. Although the EU Kids Online project was not
organized as a formalized co‐operative effort, there have obviously been many contact areas
during the course of the project, which in turn means that it has had its autonomous position in
relation to stakeholders.
Cocreation of objects/practices
When it comes to the co‐creation of specific policies and regulations of the media, there
are not that many examples. Since policy is most often worked out by state or regional
administration, these stakeholders most often commission reports within delimited areas of
study – reports that can later be the basis on which actual policies and regulations are worked
out. This seems, for example, to have been the case with the research by Uwe Hasebrink and the
Hans Bredow Institute referred to above.
A different example is the work of Tao Papaioannou, who has worked on a project of
media literacy together with both the Ministry of Education and industry professionals in
Cyprus. Parts of this research involved training students and high school teachers who took part
in technical training of multimedia production. The research ended with a film competition
among high school students, where stakeholders from both industry and the Ministry of
Education served as both trainers and judges of the competition. The initiative seems to have
been from the academic side for this project, enrolling or engaging stakeholders.
A similar example can be found in Christine Wijnen’s report, where she accounts for her
‘knowledge transfer’ through the Austrian Insafe node (Saferinternet.au), but also in the
engagement in arranging workshops for schools, teacher education, parent education and the
training of social workers in media literacy education.
As a last section we will now in more detail describe some of the more ‘hands‐on’
examples of co‐production that we have found in the individual reports of the WG1 researchers.
23
Design and co-production
We consider medium design to be an interesting new and direct form of contact with
stakeholders. In principle media researchers can construct prototypes that become operational,
real media out there in society. Presumably such media would be constructed on the basis of
well‐researched strategy, and be better for the public than those that dominate at present. Some
communicative practices can be avoided, like too great intimacy, unreasonable tabloid biases
and ad hominem argumentation; while other practices can be promoted, like factual precision,
cultural tolerance and democratic participation.
To design a medium means to investigate what happens when a new technology X is
introduced into an established communicative practice Y. The new medium invariably
modulates or redesigns features of the old media in the same society. Jay Bolter argues that the
design of a medium could be motivated by a critical stance toward some aspect of reality. ‘What
we need is a hybrid, a fusion of the critical stance of cultural theory with the constructive
attitude of the visual designer’, Bolter (2003: 30) writes.
And indeed, ‘medium design’ cannot simply mean that the researchers make a clever and
complex technological solution, they must also have a maximally conscious approach to the
content and cultural implications of the medium. The crucial research questions go like this:
What aspects of society should a newly constructed medium relate to? Which features of
audience literacy and competence should be appealed to?
A medium must be communicative for millions of people to have any societal value.
Therefore the program of action for a new medium must be ethically grounded, and generalized
beyond the level of the nation. Due to its lifeworld importance the success of a certain medium
should be judged by its communicative ability rather than by its potential for profitability and
efficiency in the system context. Indeed, the effort at inventing a new medium could be directed
exclusively at the communicative gain it might have in the lifeworld.
Sonia Livingstone (2005) has made a table that shows four possible audience positions
in relation to Habermas’ theory about the system and the lifeworld (Habermas 1981/1992).
They are citizen object and consumer object, plus citizen agent and consumer agent (Figure 2).
All the four compartments are relevant addressees for experimentation with medium design, as
evidenced by the WG1 individual reports.
One type of stakeholder is the traditional news journalism outlet. This stakeholder is part
of the system, and it positions the audience as a citizen and consumer object. Chris Peters at the
University of Groningen, the Netherlands is concerned with the crisis in journalism, which is
caused by technological shifts, economic uncertainty and audience fragmentation. The system
must change because of changes in the commercial logic. Peters says that research is generally
geared towards things as they are right now, or as they were before, and thus fails to
conceptualize the dynamics of change. Peters is involved in two projects that try to bring
stakeholders, preferably news organizations themselves, into a discussion about the needs,
preferences and perspectives of news journalism. How can journalistic discourse, attitudes and
innovations be altered so that they cope better with the crisis in journalism? Clearly, this
24
problem could be investigated, and in the best case solved, with the type of centralized medium
design that was just described.
Another approach is more likely to be adopted, though, and it can be called participatory
design. In the Habermasian theory the ideal would be that interests and motivations from the
lifeworld should be heard in the development of new media, and a good design process must be
cooperative and participatory. The end result would be a public platform that is representative
of the interests of the lifeworld. Andrew Feenberg (2006) and others have dealt with this
process as ‘democratization of technology’.
The ideal stakeholder in this perspective is the citizen agent. Medium design would here
be driven by needs that people have in their capacity as citizens. Merja Koskela at the University
of Vaasa, Finland has studied the function of the state tax authorities’ web sites, distinguishing
between intra‐professional genres and client‐oriented genres (Koskela 2010). She stresses that
the citizens have a right to understand what the administration is communicating to them. The
stakeholders in this case could be said to be public sector developers who need to design
websites that meets the needs of its audience, and more profoundly; the citizen agents who
needs help in finding out how to do their duty (paying taxes) in the correct way, and
understanding when they have done so.
System
Audience
as
object
Public
Private
Audience as citizen
Audience as consumer
The state specifies legal and
The economy: encompasses the
regulatory frameworks for the
media industry, characterised by
media
the commercial logics of media,
industry,
including
protection for ‘fourth estate.’
Audience
as
education
and,
vulnerabilities,
Lifeworld
Audience
agent
as
object
of
media
through
of
advertising,
their
content
marketing
and
branding.
Audience as commodity or market,
characterised
through
ratings,
guidelines and controls
market share and unmet needs
The public sphere: demands that
The personal or intimate sphere:
media serve as a forum for
embraces media for providing the
democratic
debate,
images, pleasures, habits and goods
community
participation
mediated
and
for
identity,
public culture.
lifestyle.
Audiences as active and engaged,
Audiences
informed,
interpretative,
resistant
participatory
and/or
relationships
as
and
selective,
pleasureseeking,
creative in doing identity work
Figure 2: Audience position in systems and lifeworld. Source: (Livingstone 2005)
Another type of stakeholder type is the small and midsized enterprises, where audiences
are typically positioned as citizen and consumer objects. Cédric Courtois at Ghent University in
Belgium is concerned with media innovation. His PhD project partly forms the core of a project
25
to academically support start‐up initiatives. A consortium plans to launch a new
telecommunications operator, and Courtois is developing and testing means to implement
recommendation algorithms that will fit consumers’ interests as well as possible.
Jelena Kleut at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, also wants to aid small businesses in
making better contact with users, again considering them as consumer objects. She is concerned
with interface developers and their user‐audience. She interviews graphical designers and
software developers in Serbian companies, and finds that even though they use the slogan ‘know
your users’, the importance of this is not recognized. They may not have sufficient knowledge
and skills to design a medium that engages the prospective users. Their development process
would benefit from more knowledge about academic methods of audience research.
At this point a note on methodology in collaborating with stakeholders is in order.
Kirsten Drotner at the University of Southern Denmark wants to forge partnerships with small
and medium size enterprises (SMEs) such as architects, digital designers and game developers
(Drotner & Schrøder 2010, Drotner & Schrøder 2013). She wants to improve the knowledge
exchange, by finding means to handle differences between slow, research‐based and fast
practice‐based knowledge formation. Moreover, she points to the need for knowledge
accumulation; to form systematic assessment of design methodologies, so that it gets easier to
improve quality from one project to the next. We agree with Drotner that there is a need to
formulate a comprehensive methodical framework for medium design. Such a framework would
make different design projects comparable, and their quality could be evaluated according to
shared criteria. This could in turn give medium design a more active role in shaping the quality
of future media.
The most radical approach to medium design would be action research. It would involve
co‐creation with the stakeholders, where decisions about all the central aspects of the medium
or practice would be negotiated with them. The intended users would be allowed to directly
influence the outcome of the research project. The researcher has to forego the objective,
empirical process of trial and error in relation to a program of action. There is no social
engineering here.
Such approaches will often involve stakeholders that are institutional, but particularly
open to collaboration and change. One type would be schools, where teachers and pupils might
be involved. The researcher goes inside this system to improve the learning process together
with his stakeholders. The users are clearly positioned as citizen and consumer agents. Craig
Hight at the University of Waikato, New Zealand works with new forms of documentary practice
and democratisation of audio‐visual technologies. He is particularly interested in software
literacy as it relates to individual and group forms of expression in audio‐visual form. He wants
to inform pedagogical design at educational institutions at the secondary and tertiary level. And
his project could be considered a form of action research.
Medium design has its dilemmas. It operates very close to the world outside of the
university, and the researchers can become too embedded in the commercial and political world
to keep up the critical distance. Researchers can become stooges in the maintaining of dominant
institutions, we can form alliances with groups of citizens who really do not need help, and we
26
can develop methods that can be used in malignant ways that we were not able to predict. Not
least, researchers can be corrupted like individuals in any other profession.
Tereza Pavlickova’s report voices strong hesitation at being involved with stakeholders.
She defends the ‘ivory tower’ approach, where long‐term influence is the only viable influence.
We should ‘plant the seed to inform public discourse’, but otherwise stay away from the nitty‐
gritty. This caution should be taken seriously. Although we acknowledge the use value of
collaborating with stakeholders, and optimistically assume that the commercial needs of the
media systems can be put in brackets, and that the communicative quality of medium can
actually be implemented in a lifeworld context, every proper academician would hesitate at such
an ambitious goal.
CONCLUSIONS
John Corner (2001: 3f) once pondered on the uses of academic knowledge where he
divided the stakeholders into four groups of ‘users’:
‐ Other academic users (which he considers the largest group)
‐ Commercial users
‐ Governmental users
‐ Public users
In this report we have not considered other academics as users, although we, of course,
agree with Corner that most research – also on media users and audiences – are of little interest
outside of the academy (maybe sometimes at the cost of possible lessons learned in the world
outside of the university). On the other hand we have distinguished between NGOs and other
groups of non‐governmental and commercial users, and individual audience members, who, for
example through paying licence fees for public service television, or subscribing to newspapers
or magazines, clearly have an interest in the activities among the media. This is naturally why
several broadcasters have institutionalized a television ‘ombudsman’, hired by the broadcaster,
but supposed to speak for the general media user, taking his or her side against the company.
In the above we have discussed a number of examples that fall into one of the three main
research themes of the researchers in WG1. Firstly, there are those projects that focus on Media
and information literacy; secondly, projects engaged in Media policy and regulation, and thirdly,
projects that focus on Design and coproduction. The two former themes overlap at times, as
media and information literacy often take the form of policy recommendations, which are taken
up by stakeholders, or, indeed, are co‐produced with them.
REFERENCES
Bolin, G. (2002) In the market for symbolic commodities. Swedish lottery game show
“Bingolotto” and the marketing of social and cultural values. Nordicom Review, 23(1‐2),
177‐204.
Bolin, G. & Forsman, M. (2002). Bingolotto: Produktion, text, reception. Huddinge: Södertörn
University.
27
Bolter, J.D. (2003) Theory and practice in new media studies. In G. Liestøl, A. Morrison & T.
Rasmussen (Eds), Digital media revisited: Theoretical and conceptual innovation in digital
domains (pp. 15‐34). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Corner, J. (2001). Towards the really useful media researcher? Nordicom Review, 22(1), 3‐10.
Drotner, K. & Schrøder, K.C. (Eds) (2010). Digital content creation: Creativity, competence,
critique. New York: Peter Lang.
Drotner, K. & Schrøder, K.C. (Eds) (2013). Museum communication and social media: The
connected museum. New York: Routledge.
Feenberg, A. (2006). Democratizing technology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Glander, T. (2000). Origins of mass communications research during the American cold war:
Educational effects and contemporary implications. Mahwah, N.J. & London: Lawrence
Earlbaum.
Habermas, J. (1968/1972). Knowledge and human interests. London: Heinemann Educational
Books.
Habermas, J. (1981/1992). The theory of communicative action. Volume two: The critique of
functionalist reason. Cambridge: Polity.
Hans Bredow Institute (2008). Zur Entwicklung der Medien in Deutschland zwischen 1998 und
2007. Wissenschaftliches Gutachten zum Kommunikations und Medienbericht der
Bundesregierung [Media development in Germany between 1998 and 2007. Scientific
expertise for the Report on Communication and Media of the Federal Government of
Germany]. Berlin.
Koskela, M. (2010). Tax authorities on the web. A genre system view. In W. von Hahn & C. Vertan
(Eds.), Fachsprachen in der weltweiten Kommunikation. Specialized Language in Global
Communication. Proceedings of the XVIth European Symposium on Language for Special
Purposes (LSP), Hamburg (Germany) 2007. Sprache in der Gesellschaft. Volume 30.
Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang.
Lazarsfeld, P.F. (1941). Remarks on administrative and critical communications research.
Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, 91, 2‐16.
Livingstone, S. (2005). On the relation between audiences and publics. In S. Livingstone (Ed.),
Audiences and publics. When cultural engagement matters for the public sphere (pp. 17–
41). Bristol: Intellect.
Livingstone, S., Papaioannou, T. del Mar Grandío Perez, M. & Wijnen, C.W. (Eds) (2013), Critical
insights in European media literacy research and policy. Special issue of Medijske
studije/Media
Studies,
3:6.
Available
online:
http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=toc&id_broj=7793
Livingstone, S., Wijnen, C.W. Papaioannou, T. Costa, C. & del Mar Grandío, M. (2013). Situating
media literacy in the changing media environment: Critical insights from European
research on audiences. In N. Carpentier, K. Schrøder & L. Hallett (Eds.), Audience
transformations. Shifting audience positions in late modernity. London: Routledge.
Schrøder, K.C. & Larsen, B.S. (2010). The shifting cross‐media news landscape: Challenges for
news producers. Journalism Studies, 11(4), 524‐534.
28
Statens medieråd (2013). Våldsbejakande och antidemokratiska budskap på internet, Stockholm:
Statens medieråd.
This chapter is based on individual reports by:
Hanna Adoni, Israel, hanna.adoni@mail.huji.ac.il.
Gintaras Aleknonis, Lithuania, gintaras@gmail.com.
Jakob Bjur, Sweden, jakob.bjur@jmg.gu.se.
Göran Bolin, Sweden, goran.bolin@sh.se.
Viktorija Car, Croatia, viktorija.car@fpzg.hr.
Conceição Costa, Portugal, conceicao.costa@ulusofona.pt.
Cédric Courtois, Belgium, cedric.courtois@ugent.be.
Kirsten Drotner, Denmark, drotner@sdu.dk.
Uwe Hasebrink, Germany, uhasebrink@hans‐bredow‐institut.de.
Craig Hight, New Zeeland, hight@waikaot.ac.nz.
Jelena Kleut, Serbia, jelena.kleut@gmail.com.
Merja Koskela, Finland, merja.koskela@uwasa.fi.
Sonia Livingstone, UK, s.livingstone@lse.ac.uk.
María del Mar Grandío Pérez, Spain, mgrandio@ucam.edu.
Lothar Mikos, Germany, l.mikos@hff‐potsdam.de.
Tao Papaioannou, Cyprus, papaioannou.t@unic.ac.cy.
Tereza Pavlickova, Czech Republic, tereez@gmail.com.
Chris Peters, The Netherlands, c.j.peters@rug.nl.
Kim Christian Schrøder, Denmark, kimsc@ruc.dk.
Christine W. Wijnen, Austria, christine.wijnen@univie.ac.at.
29
OVERCOMING
THE
BARRIERS
OF
ACCESS,
NEWSWORTHINESS
ORGANISATIONAL FORMS OF ACADEMY AND STAKEHOLDERS:
AND
REPORT FROM THE
STAKEHOLDER‐ACADEMY DELIBERATIONS ON 19 SEPTEMBER 2013
Göran Bolin, Sweden, goran.bolin@sh.se
Leader of the Task Force 2 on ‘New media genres as texts and practices’ in Working Group 1 ‘New
media genres, media literacy and trust in the media’
Jakob Bjur, Sweden, jakob.bjur@jmg.gu.se
Vice chair of Working Group 1 ‘New media genres, media literacy and trust in the media’ and leader
of the Task Force 1 on ‘Cross‐media challenges’
With the benign help of Sara Elias and Leo Pekkala
During the COST Action meeting in Belgrade on 18‐20 September 2013, Working Group
1 invited two stakeholder representatives for a session on the usability of audience research for
stakeholders outside of the academy. The invited guests – Leo Pekkala from the Finnish Centre
for Media Education and Audiovisual Media (MEKU) and Sara Elias from the Research and
Learning Group, BBC Media Action – were asked to respond to the Working Group’s report The
anticipated, cocreative, and codesigned nature of researcherstakeholder relationships: Building
bridges with stakeholders (hereafter ‘stakeholder report’), in which Göran Bolin, Jakob Bjur and
Lars Nyre analysed the 31 reports written by WG1 researchers about their experiences with and
views on academy‐stakeholder relations.
After a brief introduction by the authors Bolin and Bjur describing the main points in
their stakeholder report, the two invited speakers delivered their comments to it. Leo Pekkala
introduced himself and his background as a trained scholar, having a PhD in Education, and
having worked at the University of Lapland for several years before joining MEKU. He also
introduced the activities of MEKU, and their aim to ‘promote media education, children’s media
skills, and the development of a safe media environment, for children in cooperation with other
authorities, and agents in the sector’. In addition they have the mission to act as an expert, to
promote and conduct research and to monitor international development within the field.
Pekkala started his talk with a theoretical discussion on the forms of knowledge that
underpinned the stakeholder report. He contrasted what he perceived of as a slightly too linear
perspective in the report, with a rhizomatic network structure approach, following the
inspiration of Deleuze & Guattari (1980/1987). Such an approach would rather be inspired by
the root‐systems of mushrooms, or, as illustrated in a slide, by the mangrove root‐system.
Pekkala also challenged the felt dichotomisation of the academy versus the world outside
in the report, as well as the critical/administrative research division, arguing that the latter
division was more a question of time perspective than a qualitative difference. All research is
applicable, argued Pekkala, it is only a matter of how long we need to find out its applicability.
Pekkala also found a similar dichotomisation between dependent and independent research
30
problematic, and argued for there being examples of non‐goal‐oriented research efforts also
outside of the academy. In summary, he found the report to give a too gloomy picture of the
opportunities for academy‐stakeholder co‐operations, and argued that there were far more
possibilities for meetings and bridge‐building than exemplified in the stakeholder report.
Sara Elias started off by repeating some of the biographical and institutional information
from her keynote speech of the day before, explaining that the Research and Learning Group of
BBC Media Action is a charity, with relative autonomy from the mother company, which among
other things means that they are not funded by the licence fees. Elias holds a position as
research manager for the group, and characterised their activities as engaged in Communication
for development, working with country teams in different countries. These teams monitor
research in each respective region or area.
Elias commentary took its departure from the analytical model suggested in the
stakeholder report, making a tripartite characterisation of the research of the members of the
WG1, as reported in the individual reports. Commenting on the vast amount of ‘research of
anticipated significance’, Elias introduced the problem of accessibility of academic journals that
was a hindrance in getting knowledge of research, making it harder for this ‘resource’ to become
‘realized’, as it was phrased in the stakeholder report. She pointed to one of the tasks of their
country teams in monitoring research in the respective areas of their work, and explained the
need to have contact with active researchers, as BBC Media Action workers ‘do not have time to
create their own measures’.
When it comes to the co‐creation of knowledge, Elias said that they did not commission
research that often, although they sometimes commissioned literature reviews. However, they
did from time to time convene conferences, and if they came across interesting projects they
could sometimes add additional funding. The problem, as Elias put it, was to know which
research would be of use for BBC Media Action. She also expressed as a general aim for her team
to develop co‐creation of knowledge, although they had not reached this position yet. ‘This is
where we want to be – we’re not there yet, but we would like to be’, as she phrased it.
She also pointed to the ‘different worlds’ of the academy and stakeholders, and
emphasised that access to the academic world sometimes was difficult.
BARRIERS FOR RESEARCHER‐STAKEHOLDER RELATIONSHIPS
A number of barriers for further cooperation between stakeholders and academy were
identified in the following discussion, triggered by the input from Pekkala and Elias, and
especially in relation to their different backgrounds and experiences of work within the
academy. These barriers concerned, firstly, several aspect of access: technological, symbolical
and social. Secondly, it concerned what we in this report have called ‘newsworthiness’, thirdly
aspects of the way in which the academy is organised, and fourthly, the way in which some
stakeholders are organised, or how they relate to academic cooperation.
It should be noted that these barriers were identified, and judged possible to overcome.
In the following, we will list these barriers, and also touch upon potential solutions to them. We
have tried to analytically separate the barriers in themes, and we would like to stress that this is
an interpretation of the debate, and a way of structuring the themes in it. It was not necessarily
31
phrased in the terminology that we have chosen here, so it should be noted that it is our
interpretation of the discussion.
Access
The largest barrier identified in the discussion was that of access. Firstly, there are some
obstacles produced by lack of technological access. As identified by Elias in her introduction,
people that are not affiliated with an academic institution have difficulties in accessing the
publications in which research results are published. The commercialisation of academic
publishing has resulted in journals being published electronically behind pay‐walls. Those that
do not subscribe to the academic journals, thus cannot access but the abstracts. And abstracts far
from always reveal the usefulness of the research.
Secondly, there is the problem of what might be called symbolic, or discursive access, a
problem that stem from discursive differences. The specialised language of the academy can at
times be of hindrance for the full understanding of the research results and their applicability.
Conversely, the specialist terminology of the media industry, or the bureaucratic‐
legislative ways in which certain policy formulas are framed, can be quite incomprehensible also
to the researcher.
A third access issue concerned the social networking aspect of the ‘two separate worlds’.
It was apparent from the discussion that for a person like Pekkala, having worked within the
academy with research and teaching, the access to networks of researchers was less of a
problem than it was for Elias. One interpretation of the ‘worlds apart’ problem is that when you
do not know where to start, whom to call or mail, this makes the approach to the academic
world more problematic and is a threshold for entering into that world. This could be said to be
the social side to the discursive split between the academy and stakeholders.
So these different symbolic or discursive worlds of stakeholders and researchers, which
in worst cases can be made up of pure jargon, is an obstacle that should be easy to remedy, by
the shared willingness to understand the other discourse. Language, as it were, is the tool for
symbolic domination and power (Bourdieu 1991), but through a shared knowledge interest such
obstacles should be easy to overcome.
‘Newsworthiness’
Another type of barrier is derived from the lack of technological, discursive and social
networking access to the academy for stakeholders. This is the dependence on mediators that
mediate the information between the academy and stakeholders. Most often this is the role of
journalists, either science journalists, or ‘ordinary’ news reporters. When in the latter case, as
was pointed out in the discussion, it most often concern ‘crisis reports’, and other spectacularly
framed news stories where expert opinion is needed. In the first case, however, many news
outlets have their scientific reporters who monitor what is going on within the academy.
Nonetheless, both the academy and stakeholders are at prey to the evaluations of what is
newsworthy from within journalistic judgement.
32
The organisation of the academy
Another obstacle, somewhat related to the social network access problem, is the
organisation of the academy into disciplines. As all media scholars know, the media saturates all
parts of modern life, which also means that research of importance for media and audience
studies is also carried out within other disciplines than media and communication studies:
historians, political scientists, sociologists, the arts and aesthetics, philosophy, etc. To the
stakeholder it is not easy to distinguish between the intra‐academic specialties, which makes it
hard to orient themselves to the research that matters to them.
Another academic barrier is the lack of incentives for addressing the world outside the
university. The systems for accessing academic quality privilege specialised academic publishing
(in peer review journals) at the cost of other publication forms directed to a wider public.
The organisation and ideology among (certain) stakeholders
In a similar way, the ways in which some of the stakeholders, most notably within the
state administration, are organised, and the ideological steering of their business, can make the
asymmetric relationships boil down to the researcher becoming ‘the token academic’ in state
reports, committees, etc. In the discussion many bore witness to having sat on such committees
and working groups where their voices where politely listened to, but not really taken into
consideration by the stakeholder, but where the stakeholder could pride him/herself with
having had a broad referential group to guide the report.
However, there were also voices raised that argued for situations where the academic
impact was indeed strong, and where the symmetry between ‘the two worlds’ was more even.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
From the above account of the panel meeting it can be concluded that there is indeed a
sincere and mutual interest in collaborations between stakeholders and academy. The main
barriers to be overcome concern different kinds of access problems. Some of these can be met
with, for example, increased open access to academic results. Others have to be worked at via
networks, conferences and other meeting grounds between academy and stakeholders. Other
tasks concern the need for academics to engage in public debate, and address non‐academic
audiences (also within the commercial sector, and among audience members themselves). By
pointing to these obstacles, and some of the possible solutions for overcoming them, we hope
that this report can be a stepping stone along that road.
REFERENCES
Bourdieu, Pierre (1991): Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge: Polity.
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (1980/1987): A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, Minneapolis & London: Minnesota University Press.
33
PART II.
Audience Interactivity and Participation
34
INTRODUCTION TO PART II
Nico Carpentier, Belgium, nico.carpentier@vub.ac.be
Chair of Working Group 2 “Audience interactivity and participation”
Maria Francesca Murru, Italy, maria.murru@unicatt.it
Member of Working Group 2 “Audience interactivity and participation”
This collection of essays are part of the reflection of Working Group 2 (WG2 – focussing
on audience interactivity and participation) of the Transforming Audiences, Transforming
Societies (TATS) COST Action. TATS is a large network financed by the European Cooperation in
Science and Technology (COST) framework. The main objective of this network is to advance
state‐of‐the‐art knowledge of the key transformations of European audiences within a changing
media and communication environment, identifying their interrelationships with the social,
cultural and political areas of European societies. As part of this COST Action, WG2 has been
working on the possibilities and constraints of mediated public participation; the roles that old
and new media institutions and professionals (including journalists) play in facilitating public
participation and in building citizenship; the interlocking of mainstream media and non‐
mainstream media and their production of new hybrid organisational structures and audience
practices.
The TATS COST Action set out five tasks for itself, as described in the Action’s
Memorandum of Understanding13. First, relevant initiatives would be reviewed (task 1),
followed by the definition of a concerted research agenda (task 2). Task 3, entitled “scoping
audience and society transformations”, consisted in accumulating and integrating research
results. Grounded in this reflection, task 4 the drew theoretical and methodological lessons from
their concerted works and progressively built new approaches that revitalised audience
research and paved the way for further developments. Finally, task 5, consisted of a reflection on
the significance of these research results for civil society, industry and policy players in the field.
Although the title of recommendations was sometimes used for task 5, this task was in the end
more aimed at stimulating a dialogue about the research findings with non‐academics. For this
reason, the “building bridges” metaphor was sometimes used.
In order to organize this dialogue, the four working groups of the TATS COST Action
(including WG2) followed a specific trajectory, in which first all members of the TATS COST
Action were invited to write short individual reports about their perspectives on the social
relevance of their work. These individual reports were then analysed by the Task Force leaders
of the working groups. In the case of WG2, each of its four Task Forces14 participated in this
process, and analysed the 26 individual reports of the TATS‐WG2 members using a specific angle
(see below). Provisional analyses were presented at the TATS COST Action meeting in Tampere
13
See http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/isch/Actions/IS0906
14
See http://www.cost‐transforming‐audiences.eu/node/6
35
(Finland) on 18 April 2013. Then the four Task Forces produced the articles that can be found in
this document.
In the next stage, WG2 will organise a round table at the Belgrade (Serbia) meeting on 19
September 2013. Here, a number of key representatives of the political field, civil society and
business will be invited to reflect upon these four articles.
The four articles develop different perspectives on the social relevance of academic work
in the field of communication and media studies. The first article, on “The social relevance of
participatory theory” written by Nico Carpentier and Peter Dahlgren first argues for the social
relevance of theory, and then focuses on the importance of participatory theory. Peter Lunt’s
article “Media, Democracy and Civil Society: the challenge of digital media” reflects on the roles
academics can take in relation to a series of other societal fields. The third article, “Emerging
topics in the research on digital audiences and participation. An agenda for increasing research
efforts,” written by Francesca Pasquali, José‐Manuel Noguera Vivo and Mélanie Bourdaa,
discusses the social relevance of specific research topics in the field of communication and
media studies. And finally, Manuel José Damásio and Paula Cordeiro’s article, “Stakeholders and
academia”, analyses the different modes of interaction between academia and its stakeholders.
The four essays and the introduction were first published in the 2014 issue 1 of
Comunicazioni sociali. Rivista di media, spettacolo e studi culturali, as part of a special
issue on “The responsibility of knowledge: The values of critique and social relevance in
research on media and communication”, edited by Maria Francesca Murru and Nico
Carpentier.
36
THE SOCIAL RELEVANCE OF PARTICIPATORY THEORY
Nico Carpentier, Belgium, nico.carpentier@vub.ac.be
Chair of Working Group 2 “Audience interactivity and participation” and leader of the Task Force 1
on “Interrogating audiences: theoretical horizons of participation” in Working Group 2
Peter Dahlgren, Sweden, Peter.Dahlgren@kom.lu.se
Leader of the Task Force 1 on “Interrogating audiences: theoretical horizons of participation” in
Working Group 2 “Audience interactivity and participation”
INTRODUCTION
Theory is not always accepted as a relevant contribution to our social world. From a
common sense perspective, theory becomes articulated as difficult to understand and grounded
in esoteric knowledge which has nothing to say about “the real world”. This status of
disconnection implies that the relevance of theory is (seen as) restricted to a specific societal
field, academia, and that the main role of theory is to narcissistically strengthen the societal
position of this field. This positions theory as the servant of a power strategy, a sentinel to
protect academia for the outside world and to allow academia to remain uncontested in its
ability to speak about that world. Sometimes we can find these types of arguments in academia
as well, where the governing (and thus restrictive) capacities of theory is problematised. For
instance, in their article “Against theory”, Knapp and Michaels (1982: 723) discuss a series of
theoretical problems within literary studies, such as “the function of authorial intent, the status
of literary language, the role of interpretative assumptions and so on.” They then continue that:
“the mistake on which all critical theory rests has been to imagine that these problems are real.”
(Knapp and Michaels, 1982: 724).
Our article takes a different position, and sets out to argue in favour of the social
relevance of theory, and more particular in favour of participatory theory. It will do so by
reverting to an academic language, doing what we (hopefully) do best, in full awareness of the
possibilities and limitations of this choice. The article starts with a more general reflection on
the social relevance of theory, developing four arguments in support of theory’s social relevance.
In the second part of the article, we focus more on one specific theoretical area, participatory
theory. Some of the inspiration – mainly for this second part ‐ was gathered through an analysis
of a series of short essays (labelled “Individual Reports”), written by colleagues within the
framework of an academic network on audience studies, the COST Action Transforming
Audiences, Transforming Societies (TATS).
But let us first clarify the concept ‘theory’. This concept emerges from a number of
different discourses and has a number of usages; it is a term whose definition is often taken for
granted, yet whose meaning may in fact vary among different traditions of research. Thus, in the
natural sciences, ‘theory’ is usually something to be tested, to be verified or not, within the logic
of the scientific approach. Popper’s (1963) notion of ‘falsifiability’ looms large here. Theory is
also at times used as a loose synonym for ‘philosophy’ (also loosely understood…). This usage is
37
mostly situated in the common sense contexts of everyday life – and has some significance for
our presentation, as we will see shortly. Within the social sciences there are some currents that
align themselves with a view of theory that derives from the natural sciences; however, other
currents explicitly define their scientific logic as distinct from the natural sciences.
In these traditions, theory is seen as bodies of thought that can serve a number of related
purposes, such as: help make sense of the social world; frame the analysis of phenomena; offer a
guide action; or predict consequences of specific measures. Speaking about sociological theory,
Ritzer (2007: 5) sees theory “as a set of interrelated ideas that allow for the systematization of
knowledge of the social world. This knowledge is then used to explain the social world and make
predictions about the future of the social world.” In positioning ourselves with these currents,
we would express it as follows: theory is that which basically furnishes the intellectual
scaffolding for research; it orients us, integrating assumptions, evidence and normative
dispositions. That is to say, most research in fact is predicated upon several elements of
theoretical conceptualisation. And theory is usually plural in character, even when the term is
used in its singular form, as is the case in this article.
THEORY IN SOCIAL RESEARCH: A CONCEPTUAL TOOLBOX
The first argument in support of the social relevance of theory is its capacity to generate
concepts and frameworks by articulating concepts for tasks at hand, be it research or social
practices. In fact, theory is sometimes defined precisely as a framework that defines and
arranges concepts, and structures the relationship between those concepts, focusing on specific
phenomena, actions, problems, with varying degrees of complexity. This underscores the
importance of articulation, or connecting concepts with each other to form theories. Here we
have to keep the specificity of Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985: 105) definition of articulation in mind.
They see articulation as “any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their
identity is modified as a result of the articulatory practice.” This definition implies that
particular discursive arrangements also have an impact on how concepts are exactly defined,
and what role they (can) play in specific theories.
It is important to emphasise that theory is discursive; there is no natural unity between
itself and what it represents; in other words: we always face a representational gap. Theory
unavoidably has particular claims towards reality. One key component here is that theory is
embedded within paradigms and their three basic dimensions (ontology, epistemology and
axiology15), which increases a paradigm’s particularity (and normativity – see later). In Ritzer’s
words, “a paradigm is a fundamental image of the subject matter within a science” (Ritzer, 1980:
7). There are struggles between fields and disciplines, where “each of its paradigms is competing
for hegemony within the discipline as a whole as well as within virtually every sub‐area within
sociology” (Ritzer, 1980: 158). Such contestation becomes part of the contingencies that shape
any particular field of research.
As a discursive construction, theory must be challenged, and theorists must engage in
self‐reflection. Since all knowledge, including theory, is discursively constructed under specific
15
Sometimes also methodology is mentioned as a component of paradigms.
38
contingencies, we can never position ourselves outside of our social circumstances. Thus,
historicism and relativism are our inexorable fate. However, we can certainly reflect upon our
contingencies – and try to illuminate how they impact on our knowledge and our theorising; not
least, this can fruitfully be focused precisely on our concepts. We need to highlight the conditions
that nudge our thought (and its vocabularies) in certain directions (as opposed to others). Even
such reflection has its contingencies – there is no ultimate escape – but such efforts, an eternal
cat‐and‐mouse game, helps to keep us alert and invites self‐correction and re‐interpretation,
thus stimulating our knowledge development.
In sum, theory is socially relevant because it allows us to conceptually capture the social
world. It provides us with a wide range of concepts – toolboxes – to narrate and to understand
that world. Moreover, theory allows ordering these concepts into articulated narratives that
claim consistency and plausibility, but at the same time theorists should remain vigilant towards
the contingencies that influence these concepts.
THEORY: SPEAKING ABOUT THE SOCIAL WORLD FROM A SEMI‐AUTONOMOUS POSITION
Theory is distinct from common sense and common practice; theory involves
abstraction, versatility (time), hermeneutic effort and a sense of holism. At the same time, theory
has a complex relationship with the concepts circulating in the social worlds that it seeks to
describe. First of all, these theoretical concepts are not located outside the social. In outlining his
notion of the ‘double hermeneutic’, Giddens (1987: 20) explains that philosophers and social
scientists have often considered the way “in which lay concepts obstinately intrude into the
technical discourse of social science. Few have considered the matter the other way around.” He
asserts that “the concepts of the social sciences are not produced about an independently
constituted subject‐matter, which continues regardless of what these concepts are. The ‘findings’
of the social sciences very often enter constitutively into the world they describe” (Giddens
1987: 20).
Yet theoretical concepts also need to (re)connect with these social worlds. Gramsci’s
analysis of common sense is grounded in the difference between common sense and theory, in
combination with an emphasis on the need to connect them. As he puts it: “The active man‐in‐
the‐mass has a practical activity, but has no clear theoretical consciousness of his practical
activity, which nonetheless involves understanding the world in so far as it transforms it.”
(Gramsci 1999: 333). Theory thus needs to link up with everyday horizons, and not remain
exclusively within the confines of an intellectual elite, alienating from practice life and the vast
majority of the population. To quote Gramsci (1999: 331) at length on this point:
“… one could only have had cultural stability and an organic quality of thought if
there had existed the same unity between the intellectuals and the simple as there
should be between theory and practice. That is, if the intellectuals had been
organically the intellectuals of these masses, and if they had worked out and made
coherent the principles and the problems raised by the masses in their practical
activity, thus constituting a cultural and social bloc. The questions posed here was
the one we have already referred to, namely this: is a philosophical movement
39
properly so called when it is devoted to creating a specialized culture among
restricted intellectual groups, or rather when, and only when, in the process of
elaborating a form of thought superior to ‘common sense’ and coherent on a
scientific plane, it never forgets to remain in contact with the ‘simple’ and indeed
finds in this contact the source of the problems it sets out to study and to resolve?
Only by this contact does a philosophy become ‘historical’, purify itself of
intellectualistic elements of an individual character and become ‘life’.”
We can note that this has wide implications: academia as a centre for the production of
knowledge and the generation of theory must expand its efforts to engage in joint knowledge
production and dialogue, e.g. in civil society, to engender participatory knowledge construction.
At the same time, the independence of academia, as one location where theory is generated,
needs to be cherished. One way to capture this idea is to refer to academia as a semi‐
autonomous field, capable of thinking the social world from a mixture of an inside‐oriented and
outside‐oriented position.
This argument brings us to the second reason why theory is socially relevant: It allows
theorists to speak precisely from this inside/outside position, where theory – because of core
characteristics such as abstraction – can distance itself from the (rest of the) social world,
exercising a semi‐autonomous position, and showing complexities, contingencies and absences.
At the same time this distance is never a disconnection: Theory’s speaking about the social
world is never fully outside that social world; in contrast, theory is worldly, which also allows
theory to intervene in it.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CRITICAL THEORY: DEMOCRACY AS A NORMATIVE GROUNDING
‘Critical’ is another multivalent concept, emanating from philosophy, the humanities and
politics. Our perspective here builds on the tradition from Hegel, through Marx, and various
emancipatory projects where ‘critical’ has come to denote a confrontation with unnecessary and
illegitimate constraints on human equality, community and freedom. In other words, the
adjective ‘critical’ signals a concern with normatively problematic discrepancies in power
relations.
Theory that is critical incorporates this normative dimension into its toolbox,
becoming thus, at a general level, critical theory (not to be confused with the Frankfurt School’s
specific programme of Critical Theory, though it may well have relevance at some point,
depending on the project at hand)16.
Critical theory claims no monopoly: other forms of theorising are also necessary. Critical
reflection on power relations can be seen as a particular moment or phase of a research
endeavour, or may well constitute its dominant character. There is also a role for theory to
engage critically against prevailing intellectual status‐quo (i.e. discursive resources and their
hegemonic positions). Our position is that today, given several problematic trajectories of
societal development at both the national and global level, there is a need for enhanced
reflection on problematic power relations – not least because they can take increasingly subtle
16
A fuller discussion of this is found in the final chapter of Dahlgren’s (2013) new book, The Political Web.
40
and efficacious forms, within institutions, organisations, and larger societal contexts. Power
relations are mediated not least via modes of knowledge and societal position that they have (cf.
Foucault, 2002). This emphasis on power (crucial for participatory theory) is only one
illustration how theory can produce normative anchorage points, and allows us to develop
critical projects that strive for social change. In this sense, theory provides discursive structures
which allow us to formulate, translate, and encapsulate normative positions.
We can readily situate these considerations within the framework of democracy, seen as
an ongoing normative project where participation in decision‐making is a central premise and
where power arrangements are required to be transparent, accountable, and legitimate. The
history of existing democracy is chequered yet encouraging, while today it generally finds itself
in a situation where the gaps between reality and ideals seem to be growing. There is of course
much national variation here, but in the past two decades there has emerged an international
recognition that democracy has hit on hard times, and among the key problems are the declines
in participation in the formal political processes, as well as – on many fronts – in civil society
activities. There is a hegemonic discourse that underscores the theme of indifference and apathy
among citizens, thereby defining the problem as emanating from the people rather than from the
elites and the structures of power.
While there are certainly patterns of passivity at work, other researchers accentuate
such things as various mechanisms of exclusion, the lack of responsiveness among political
representatives, the dearth of opportunities for engaging with political life, the de‐politicisation
of inherently political questions via economistic rationality, and corruption among political and
economic elites – all of which serve to deflect participation (and even engender apathy towards
the formal political arena). From this perspective, research engagement with the life of
democracy needs to adapt a critical stance, that is, one that challenges key developments in
regard to power relations. Theory exactly allows producing these normative anchorage points
and developing critical projects that strive for social change.
CRITICAL PARTICIPATORY THEORY: DE‐DOXIFYING MYTHS AND FANTASIES
One way to move critical theory further is to shift gear and integrate (elements of)
psychoanalytic theory. From the standpoint of psychoanalytic theory, our subjectivity is never
fully unitary and centred, and we are never fully transparent to ourselves, since the unconscious
always intervenes, as it were, behind our back. Thus, our actions are always to some extent
shaped by factors within us but which lie beyond our awareness. That people are to a significant
extent driven by unacknowledged desires and fears, unresolved guilt, emotional double binds,
that the self is cloven between its conscious awareness and a murky, elusive unconscious, is all
very unsettling, to say the least, if one’s point of departure is the transparent self with an
exclusively rational mindset. However, to acknowledge these dynamics within our subjectivity
opens up the door to a more extensive and richer theoretical and research horizon within the
human sciences.
There are a number of versions of the unconscious, but the Freudian model, with its
various revisions and offshoots, has incontestably become the dominant one. One major offshoot
is found in Lacan’s reformulation, which, among other things, posits that the subject’s selfhood is
41
ultimately fictitious, being founded on a misrecognition of a unified, omnipotent self deriving
from ‘the ‘mirror stage’ of infancy, where the small child sees him/herself in a mirror but does
not understand that it is just a reflection. Elements of this pattern continue through life as an
inexorable part of our subjectivity, what Lacan calls ‘the Imaginary order’. A result is a deep‐
seated perennial lack, as Lacan terms it, within the psyche. This poststructuralist version of the
Freudian self is thus seen as an imaginary projection, one that can lead the adult subject into
problems such as narcissistic delusion, if it cannot come to terms with its earlier misconceptions.
In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, fantasy is conceptualized as having (among other
functions) a protective role (Lacan, 1979: 41). In providing the subject with (imaginary) frames
that attempt to conceal and finally to overcome the major internal psychic cleavage of the lack
(Lacan, 1994: 119–120), fantasy functions as “the support that gives consistency to what we call
‘reality’” (Žižek, 1989: 44). Subjects “push away reality in fantasy” (Lacan, 1999: 107); in order
to make the reality (imaginary) consistent, social imaginaries are produced, accepted and then
taken for granted. Nevertheless, this ultimate victory remains out of reach, and eventually all
fantasies are again frustrated. Their limits become visible, showing the contingency of the social.
However important fantasies may be as psychological support, critical theory needs to
flesh out how they work, illuminate their normalising strategies, and highlight their limits.
Fantasies can become readily embedded as taken for granted, assuming positions of orthodoxy.
These need on occasion to be challenged, to be rendered so to speak de‐doxified, where ‘doxa’ (a
term we borrow from Bourdieu 1977), is understood as prevailing common‐sensical and largely
unconscious perceptions about the world and one’s place in it, is critically confronted. Critical
theory, armed with psychoanalytic tools, can help reveal that which is repressed – made
invisible – by the psyche and rendered invisible, at least on the surface.
One example (developed earlier – see Carpentier (2011a)) of the workings of fantasy
within the field of the political‐democratic deals with the fantasies of policy‐making. Arguably,
there are three distinct fantasies at work in policy‐making: the post‐political desire to attain
political consensus in the face of social conflict, deploying, in a contradictory manner, strategic
power to attain it; the fantasy of social makeability, where political agency via formal politics
confronts the (ever‐growing) domain of the non‐institutional expression of the political; and the
fantasy of universality, which envisions political and social‐cultural unity among citizens but is
confronted by manifestations of the non‐incorporated particular, and by the Other. These
fantasies can be seen as thematic patterns that imbue much contemporary policy discourse,
which in turn often makes claim to a neutral and rationalistic logic. The three fantasies are
summarised in the table below.
42
Postpolitical
A desire for
Frustrated by
Social makeability
Universality
Political
(Full) political agency and
Political
consensus
the primate of politics
cultural unity
Antagonism and
The
The particular and the
conflict
component of the political
non‐institutionalized
and
social‐
Other
Figure 1: Three key fantasies of policy (based on Carpentier 2011a: 121)
As a component of critical theory, the analysis of political fantasies illustrates that theory
can render the invisible visible. Through such logics, theory has the capacity to uncover
mythological and hegemonic projects that benefit from the cloak of taken‐for‐grantedness.
Theory can not only offer a deconstruction of universality by showing its particularity, it can also
show the very necessity of the social processes of universalisation and hegemonisation.
EMBEDDING PARTICIPATORY THEORY IN SOCIETY
Pulling together what we have said about theory, critical theory, and democracy, let us
here offer a thumbnail sketch of participatory theory, in order to discuss its societal relevance.
Participatory theory is seen as the body of discourses that aim to describe, explain and predict
the decision‐making practices of actors situated in imbalanced power relations and the attempts
to redress these imbalances.
Democracies today do not assure full and authentic participation of their citizens, either
in electoral or in extra‐parliamentarian contexts. Democratic systems in fact provide structures
of opportunity for participation that can vary considerably. Within the same society there can
also be different obstacles for different groups. Participation certainly depends on the initiatives
that citizens themselves take, but a fundamental point is that given prevailing power
arrangements – often of an informal kind – such agency is always contingent on circumstances.
A particular structural problem for participation (and democracy generally) that has
emerged in recent decades is the pattern whereby formal political power moves away from the
accountable political system and into the private sector; while not a new phenomenon under
capitalism, in the logics of recent neoliberal versions of societal development this trend has
intensified dramatically. When market dynamics come to be seen as the most suitable path
towards a better future, democracy and the opportunities for meaningful political participation
become undermined. Normative frameworks that concern justice are subverted, as economistic
values seep into and put price tags on just about all areas of human life, derailing the
foundations for democratic political discussion (Sandel, 2012). The upshot of such currents is
often a process of depoliticisation.
If we then look at the field of alternative political participation, we see many citizens
engaging politically, but outside the electoral system. Often propelled by frustrations that the
established parties are insufficiently responsive or even by a sense that the mainstream political
system marginalises or excludes, many citizens are finding new routes to engagement and
43
participation. Some forms of engagement are leading to new kinds of political practices, new
ways of being citizens, effectively altering the character of politics in some contexts.
Participation is fundamentally an expression of political agency, and as such takes on
relevance in the context of the political. ‘The political’ refers to collective antagonisms, conflicts
of interest that can emerge in all social relations and settings (see, for example, Mouffe (2005)).
This is a broader notion than that of politics, which most often refers to the formalised
institutional contexts. Thus, we can say that participation implies involvement with the political,
regardless of the character or scope of the context; it therefore always in some way involves
struggle. Certainly some instances of the political will be a part of formalised politics and involve
decision‐making and/or elections, but it is imperative that we keep the broader vista of the
political in view as the terrain of political agency and participation.
We can note that in today’s society that there may at times be some ambiguity as to
where to draw the boundaries between participation in the political and the non‐political. While
we can largely dismiss as a misuse of the term those formulations that invite us to ‘participate’ in
various commercial and promotional contexts, we need to be alert to possible dimensions in, for
example, popular culture that may still have some significance for power issues.
Carpentier (2011b: 17) makes a basic distinction between minimalist and maximalist
versions of participation; we can see them as forming the poles of a continuum within various
strands of democratic theory. The minimalist position tends to emphasise the dynamics of
representation, where power is delegated, and leans towards elite models of democracy; the role
of citizens is largely limited to the selection of their representatives through voting. Maximalist
versions of democratic participation, on the other hand, underscore the importance of achieving
a balance between representation and promoting other, more extensive forms of participation.
In attending to politics, it also keeps the broader view of the political in focus.
In discussions about participation, media and democracy, another distinction is often
made between participation in the media and participation via the media; these two strands
have a long history of entwinement (see Carpentier, Dahlgren and Pasquali, 2013). Participation
in the media involves not only making use of the media, but can also imply being active in some
way in the creation of content. In the era of mass media such opportunities were few and quite
constricted. With the advent of the web and its affordances, participation in media has certainly
been transformed. This is an important democratic step; still, we must bear in mind the
distinctions in scale and impact between on the one side, small organisations, groups, and
individuals, and on the other side, major corporate actors. The corporate colonisation of
communicative space online and the growing domination of market logic on the web of course
has implications for power relations online.
Participation via the media takes us into social domains beyond the media. Participation
in these domains is facilitated by the media, but the focus of engagement lies with the contexts
and issues that media connect us to. Increasingly our relation to the social takes this route, hence
the contemporary attention accorded to the concept of mediatisation. A crucial point concerning
this concept is that the media never serve as neutral carriers that simply mirror something else,
but always, through their various logics and contingencies, impact on the relationship between
media user and that which is mediated.
44
LINKING THE TATS COST ACTION WITH PARTICIPATORY THEORY – THE SOCIAL RELEVANCE OF
PARTICIPATORY THEORY
Theory is always deployed in specific contexts. The latter part of this article analyses
how participatory theory is deployed in the specific context of the TATS COST Action. More
specifically, this part is inspired by 26 individual reports written by members of Working Group
2 of the TATS COST Action. The aim is to illustrate the above‐mentioned social relevance of
theory, and to apply this to the relevance of participatory theory. To recapitulate our previous
discussion on the relevance of theory in general, theory matters because it:
1/ provides ways to order/structure the social world and provides us with concepts (a
toolbox) to narrate and understand that world
2/ allows us to speak about the social world from an inside/outside position, showing
complexities, contingencies and absences, without disconnecting from the social world (and
allowing interventions in it)
3/ produces normative anchorage points, and allows us to develop critical projects that
strive for social change
4/ allows to make visible the invisible, and show the particularity of universality
1. Concept of participation and related concepts
Participation itself is obviously the nodal point of participatory theory, while at the same
time it is not the only one. Together with a series of related concepts, such as
interaction/interactivity,
engagement,
involvement,
empowerment
and
(co‐)creation,
participation captures a specific set of social practices that deal with the decision‐making
practices of actors situated in imbalanced power relations and the attempts to redress these
imbalances. Without this theoretical toolbox, it would remain impossible to capture these social
practices.
At the same time, participatory theory validates participatory processes; the power
struggles in society and the attempts of a diversity of actors to increase their power positions
gain visibility and thus relevance. Here, the representational is performative; through the logics
of discursification, a specific set of practices is grouped together, and through this process of
grouping, that set of practices becomes signified as relevant. As Sara Henriques’ individual
report17 illustrates, this process of validation can also be exported to other fields (although not
without problems):
“academic research can add value and significant to interpret in a deeper way
stakeholder’s data by considering more qualitative analysis or by using more than
descriptive quantitative data, by focusing on users experience and by assessing other
details that industry often fails to parse, which are more related to the social
17
The term ‘individual report’ is used to refer to the individual reports written by members of Working
Group 2 of the TATS COST Action. The list of individual reports that were referred to in this article is at the
end.
45
involvement allowed by technology and the impact of technology on social practices
and relationships.”
Moreover, participatory theory allows concentrating the attention on a specific type of
process, but also to flesh out the interconnectedness with other social processes and
phenomena. This implies that a wide range of theoretical concepts become articulated with/in
participatory theory, allowing for its mobilisation for the analysis of the social world. To use one
individual report as illustration: Jose Manuel Noguera Vivo writes in his essay: “I would argue
that we need to focus in a deeper way on the systemic changes caused by the influence of
participation in spheres and processes formerly related just to the professionals.” This plea for a
deepened focus on participatory processes requires the concept of participation, but also its
connection to the concepts and models of journalistic theory to explain the workings of the
participation of non‐professionals in the journalistic field.
2. Showing their complexity (and contingency) / paradoxes
The abstract nature of participatory theory produces particular narrations that focus on
the complexity and contextualised nature of social relations, driven by theoretical elegance and
the confrontation with empirically accessed social realities. The concept of participation does
not refer to a very straightforward and clear social process, but has many overlapping and
contradictory layers. In his discussion of participatory (open) ethics, Ward (2011) explains how
judgements about participatory processes are always relative, and a matter of degree. Moreover,
participation in a specific process might be intense in one component, but minimal in another.
For instance, participatory (open) ethics could be open in the discussion of new ethical
guidelines, but not in their formal adoption. Often, Ward (2011: 227) argues, we can “only reach
a rough, comparative judgment”, especially when “there are forces pulling in opposite
directions.”
Examples in the domain of media production are situations where slowly but surely
forms of interaction turn into (minimalist) forms of participation. Is the first interactive film, the
Czechoslovak Kinoautomat. A man and his house (1967), where audience members could decide
on which pre‐prepared segments would be screened (see Carpentier, 2011b), interactive or
participatory? That is not an easy discussion. Labelling this interaction or minimalist
participation becomes an analytical decision that needs to be argued from the specificity of the
case.
Participatory theory shows this complexity, but at the same time cannot stay outside this
complexity. Also at the level of theory, the signification of participation is part of a “politics of
definition” (Fierlbeck, 1998: 177), since its specific articulation shifts depending on the
ideological framework that makes use of it. Debates on participation are part of a political‐
ideological struggle for how our political realities are to be defined and organised. An illustration
of the existence of this conceptual vagueness can be found in Birgit Stark’s individual report,
when she writes: “Notwithstanding this strong research interest, there is currently no consensus
about the multi‐faced and hard‐to‐grasp concept of interactivity.” Of course, conceptual
vagueness is omnipresent in academia and should not be over‐problematised; but at the same
46
time this conceptual vagueness is also indicative of the ideological political struggle over this
concept. This struggle is not only located within the domain of theory development (often this is
academia), but often involves many different fields of the social, that not always accepts
academia’s self‐legitimating logics (see Lyotard, 1984).
As a concept, participation remains a construction, which can be studied as such, but it
also requires scholars – or broader: users of participatory theory – to apply a strong self‐
reflexive position, expressing permanent awareness of the constructed nature of the key
concept(s) they use. An example of this awareness can be found in Mikko Villi’s individual
report, focussing on User‐Distributed Content (UDC): “Thus, along with discussing the relevance
and the implications of UDC for the media industry, my aim is to refine and elaborate on UDC as
a concept and a construct in media management” (our emphasis).
In some cases theory supports a more explicitly interventionist strategy. This brings us
to action research. Action research has been defined by Reason and Bradbury (2001: 1), in The
Handbook of Action Research as seeking: “[...] to bring together action and reflection, theory and
practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing
concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of individual persons and their
communities.” Action research is a broad concept, but, as Dickens and Watkins (1999: 134)
remark, it is characterised by “cycles of planning, acting, reflecting or evaluating, and then taking
further action.” Arguably, action research is one of the areas where participatory theory can be
deployed to support interventionist strategies. In one of the author’s individual report, the
following illustration can be found:
“The example here is the Estonian National Museum (ENM) project in which I was
involved, entitled ‘Developing museum communication in the 21st century
information environment.’ This project was aimed at introducing a more maximalist
participatory set of ideas (and practices) into the EN museum, in collaboration with
the University of Tartu (especially Pille Pruulmann‐Vengerfeldt), and staff members
of the ENM (and the Estonian Literary Museum). Apart from more regular research
components, this project also had a series of interventions, which for instance
consisted in allowing (and stimulating) museum visitors to comment on the pictures
displayed in the ‘1000 Steps’ exhibition by adding post‐its, or in the organisation of
an open curatorship project, where non‐museum staff members could propose ideas
for museum exhibitions. Out of the proposed exhibitions, two were effectively
realised.” (Nico Carpentier’s individual report)
3. Critical dimension
Especially the emphasis on struggle and power in participatory theory allows us to bring
in the critical component of theory. The debates on participation in all other societal fields,
including media participation, have a lot in common in that they all focus on the distribution of
power within society at both the macro‐ and micro‐level. The balance between people’s
inclusion in the implicit and explicit decision‐making processes within these fields, and their
47
exclusion through the delegation of power (again, implicit or explicit), is central to discussions
on participation in all fields.
Through this focus on power, participatory theory takes on a critical character by
confronting social relations of power that deflect, subvert, or even exclude forms of participation
where they in principle are legitimate and valid. Power relations are not necessarily balanced;
on the contrary, frequently we can find forms of minimalist participation. In these (very)
minimalist forms of media participation, media professionals retain strong control over process
and outcome, often restricting participation to mainly access and interaction, to the degree that
one wonders whether the concept of participation is still appropriate. In this minimalist version,
participation remains articulated as a contribution to the public sphere but often mainly serving
the needs and interests of the mainstream media system itself, instrumentalising and
incorporating the activities of participating non‐professionals. As two of the WG2 members ‐
Marie Dufrasne and Geoffroy Patriarche – write in their individual report: “On the one hand,
citizens often do not feel as – and indeed do not have the status of – fully ‘ratified’ partners in the
decision making process. On the other hand, relatively powerful interest groups and lobbies
often monopolize participatory initiatives, which leaves few room for associations and
individual citizens.”
(Participatory) theoretical frameworks have the capacity to critique the tendencies to
move towards these minimalist versions of participation, and to portray minimal participation
as the only possible option. The risk of erasure of more maximalist forms of participation also
occurs at the conceptual level: Obscuring the link with the main defining component of
participation, namely power, also obscures the more radical (maximalist) versions of
participation and hegemonises the more minimalist forms of participation. From this
perspective, for instance, the conflation of access, interaction and participation is actually part of
the struggle between the minimalist and maximalist articulations of participation.
The theme of participation, when set against the media landscape, readily turns our
attention to the practices and skills that people have in their use of the media. In this regard, a
sub‐field of inquiry has emerged over the years, called media literacy (see Erstad et al., 2012, for
an overview). While media literacy should engage with technical capacities among
audiences/citizens in dealing with media, a critical mode must also facilitate normative
reflection about media in regard to democracy, consumption, one’s life‐world, and so on. Media
literacy that is critical cannot remain an individual pedagogic issue, but rather must be
inexorably anchored in collective contexts. Basically, critical media literacy has less to do with
formal education and more with democratic agency: empowerment in the political world is its
ultimate goal. Thus, while media literacy addresses the media, it must also connect with people’s
life‐worlds to larger societal contexts (see also Buckingham, 2009; Livingstone, 2004).
Nurçay Türkoglu (2011 – see also her individual report) underscores the significance of
critical media literacy for understanding and enhancing participation, and notes as well the
importance that researchers and intellectuals who engage with it take what she calls a worldly
disposition, that is, that they are engaged with society and its problems and conflicts. That
means that concerted efforts to promote critical media literacy will always have an oblique,
tension‐ridden quality, as it confronts problematic power relations as well as well as what she
48
refers to as “alienated audiences, industrialised academies and cynical media professionals”
(Türkoglu, 2011: 142). Aside from a general resistance to theory, especially in its critical
versions, critical media literacy is confronted by audiences who are to a great extent embedded
in and defined in terms of consumerist culture by media industries and the researchers who
serve their commercial interests.
4. Participatory fantasies
Finally, deepening the critical project, we can turn to the role of fantasy‐driven
approaches towards participatory theory. This approach permits us to deconstruct some of the
core hegemonic logics in contemporary Western societies. One fantasy is based on the idea that
there is a centre of society and that this position is taken by the media (see Couldry (2003) on
his work in regard to the myth of the mediated centre). The expectation that participation in the
media is a privileged channel to allow for participation in society is productive but also
problematic as it ignores the complexity of the polis. This limitation does not mean that
participation in the media and participation through the media are irrelevant, but care should be
taken that an evolution to a more balanced society is not smothered by the disappointment over
participation not living up to expectations that can never be met.
A second fantasy that is relevant in the debate on participatory theory is the democratic‐
populist fantasy of the disappearing media professional. This democratic‐populist fantasy is
based on the radicalization of a cultural‐democratic discourse that articulates the media
professional as superfluous and about‐to‐disappear. In contrast to the othering processes, which
privilege the media professional, this democratic‐populist discourse is based on the replacement
of a hierarchical difference with total equality, manifested in the unhampered participation of
citizens. It is considered to be a populist discourse, because (following Laclau’s approach) it is
based on an antagonist resistance of the people against an elite. As Laclau (1977: 143) puts it,
“Populism starts at the point where popular‐democratic elements are presented as an
antagonistic option against the ideology of the dominant bloc.”
This democratic‐populist fantasy has two main variations. The celebrative‐utopian
variation defines the equalization of society and the disappearance of its elites, as the ultimate
objective for the realisation of a ‘truly’ democratic society. Media professionals in this
perspective become problematised, and the symbolic power that is attributed to them is seen to
be obstructing the process of democratisation. But there is also an anxietatic‐dystopian
variation, based on the fear that the democratic‐populist discourse might actually be realized.
One recent example is Keen’s (2007) The Cult of the Amateur, where the ‘amateurs’ who produce
user‐generated content come to be seen as a threat to (expert) tastes, knowledge, and truths.
CONCLUSION
Our starting point was an emphasis on the fundamental importance of theory as a
toolbox for helping us to understand the world; it is the intellectual scaffolding of research and
serves to provide us with analytic prisms to focus on the social world and make it more
understandable. Theory clarifies our premises, makes it possible to sharpen and link together
our concepts, and allows us, from a semi‐autonomous position, to make sense of our
49
observations. Theory also specifies normative horizons, and critical theory prods us to reflect on
problematic social relations of power, not least in relation to the normative dimensions of
democracy, and the hidden corners of the social.
What applies in general to theory, also applies to a more specific field, participatory
theory. Participatory theory in particular also comprises a reflexive dimension, where we as
researchers must consider how and where we can and should participate beyond the academic
setting, utilising our skills to help enhance participation in the social world and increasing the
societal relevance of academia in general (and theorists in particular). At the same time the main
thrust is to facilitate the participation of different societal groups – both civic and commercial –
in societal processes. While we are profoundly troubled by the onslaught of neoliberalism in
terms of the illegitimate and unaccountable shifts in power relations that it involves, we
underscore the essential necessity for democratic society of functioning economic processes,
commercial activity, and market processes. It is a question of framing such economic dynamics
with the norms of democracy, not impeding them. Thus, from our horizons, participation theory
extends to the commercial as well as the civic – while retaining a firm anchoring in the critical
theory of power relations, which whether recognised as such or not, criss‐crosses all sectors of
society.
Participatory theory in its critical mode can thus help us gauge the normative democratic
character of existing participation, as well as help us envision more enhanced forms. There
should be no difficulty in filling research agendas with these concerns – and participating with
them in the context of society beyond the university.
REFERENCES
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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and Perspectives. Brussels: EuroMeduc, pp. 13‐24.
Carpentier, N. (2011a) ‘Policy's hubris. Power, fantasy and the limits of (global) media policy
interventions,’ in Robin Mansell and Marc Raboy (eds) Handbook on Global Media and
Communication Policy. London: Blackwell, pp. 113‐128.
Carpentier, N. (2011b) Media and Participation. A site of ideologicaldemocratic struggle. Bristol:
Intellect.
Carpentier, N., Dahlgren, P., Pasquali, F. (2013) ‘The democratic (media) revolution: A parallel
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Individual TATS COST Action reports
Carpentier, Nico (2012) The significance of participatory research for social practice. Belgium,
nico.carpentier@vub.ac.be
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Dufrasne, Marie, Patriarche, Geoffroy (2012) The significance of our research on citizen participation
for social practice. Belgium, dufrasne@fusl.ac.be and patriarche@fusl.ac.be
Henriques, Sara (2012) The significance of our research for social practice – a perspective from mobile
technology research. Portugal, shenriques@ulusofona.pt
Noguera Vivo, José‐Manuel (2012) The radical need of a better understanding about participation.
Spain, jmnoguera@ucam.edu
Stark, Birgit (2012) Changing News Consumption. Germany, birgit.stark@uni‐mainz.de
Türkoglu, Nurçay (2012) Scholarly research and the stakeholders in the field. Turkey,
nurcay.turkoglu@gmail.com
Villi, Mikko (2012) Mobile media and user‐distributed content in media management. Finland,
mikko.villi@aalto.fi
52
MEDIA, DEMOCRACY AND CIVIL SOCIETY: THE CHALLENGE OF DIGITAL MEDIA
Peter Lunt, UK, pl108@leicester.ac.uk
Leader of the Task Force 2 on “Public voice and mediated participation” in Working Group 2
“Audience interactivity and participation”
INTRODUCTION
A central theme in the COST Action Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies
(TATS) is the role of the media in democracy and in particular its role in supporting civil society
(the formal and informal institutions that support public life and underpin democratic
participation) and civic culture (ways of living that enhance engagement in social and political
life). In other words, media have always played a dual role – as part of the institutional
infrastructure of democracy (as the ‘third estate’, reporting and commenting on government
activity and providing information to the public) and as a context, or public forum, in which
people can express their opinions and voices and potentially participate and deliberate in
democratic politics (Christians et al., 2010). The media, in increasingly diverse forms and across
different scales are implicated in both formal politics (e.g., e‐government) and in the informal
ways in which individuals and groups participate in the political (Mouffe, 2000). While
democracy predates modern media of communication it is difficult to imagine democracy
without media in contemporary mediatised societies (Hepp, 2013; Halvard, 2013). These
questions have been given a renewed purchase in contemporary liberal democratic societies
because of the way that the internet and digital media are transforming politics and political
culture. In this article, I will first map out some of the main contours of these transformations as
they affect public engagement in politics and then draw on the work of members of the COST
Action TATS as examples of academics’ contributions to the analysis and of the different ways in
which they have worked with and for stakeholders as part of this research. The latter part of the
article draws on the idea that, in this period of transformation, academics are both aiming to
contribute to academic theory and research but also wish to engage with policy makers,
commerce, civil society bodies and the public aiming to give their work public value.
THE MEDIA, DEMOCRACY AND CIVIL SOCIETY
Despite this long history of interrelation between media and democracy (Keane, 1991;
Lichtenberg, 1990), all of the terms implicated in that relation, democracy, civil society, civic
culture, media are in transition due to technological, social, economic, cultural and political
change. In societies with a long history of liberal capitalism (in the Global North and West)
democracy is challenged by increasing economic inequality ‐ the proliferation of social
difference so that the alignment between identity and political affiliation is blurred ‐ and the
corresponding lack of a credible sovereign public (White, 2000: 80‐2). Yet these were the
assumptions that legitimated welfare state liberalism: that economic inequality would not be so
extreme as to affect political influence or participation, that there was a broad public consensus
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that legitimated state interventions in the lives of citizens and that an active civil society and
engaged political culture reinforced political consent (Mau, 2004). In the post‐soviet and Central
and Eastern European democracies the development of civil society and the opening up of the
media were equally important aspects of the development of democracy (see the individual
report of Gintaras Aleknonis, 2012).
If it were possible to think that the media might play a role as part of the infrastructure
of civil society in welfare liberalism then what are we to make to the increasingly global and
regional organisation of media industries? Thompson (1995) and Held (2006) see these
developments as a critical disjuncture in the potential for democratic politics challenging the
autonomy of nation states and the sustainability of civil society as an “autonomous centre of
culture, able to foster and sustain a national identity, with a secure environment for its people”
(Held, 2006: 302). Held (2006) points to the ways in which the global media industry has
developed, with great rapidity, over recent years marked by the spread of English as the lingua
franca of many areas of global transaction and culture, by telecoms extending across national
borders with extraordinary speed, by the internet connecting people and intuitions across the
globe, by international tourism continuing to expand rapidly, commerce and communications
spreading across borders. As Held (2006) argues, it is too early to argue that these developments
have technologically determined a global media led culture. However, these developments make
important incursions into the cultural and communicative coherence of the nation state and
limit the capacity of political and civil society institutions to sustain a national identity and an
engaged political culture (Held, 2006: 302). Consequently, the idea of a sovereign public, living
in a bounded territory and having a high degree of autonomy to set against the autonomy of the
state and the power of commerce is supplemented by a multiplicity of dispersed orders of
governance and of political culture.
The challenges to civil society in this environment are as acute as the challenges to
governments and, at the least, as Held (2006) suggests, if democratic politics is to be realised
through a vibrant civil society in this context then that will take new forms not as a global public
sphere but something more complex and nuanced consisting of a dialectic relationship between
autonomous associations at a number of scales (local, national, regional and global) and across a
range of political concerns (social, cultural, economic and environmental). A question from a
media and communications perspective is whether digital media technologies which contribute
to the shaping of these challenging conditions for democracy might also enhance the potential
for individuals to join in mediated forms of association which can sustain political autonomy at
different levels from the local to the global.
For academic theories these considerations require a rethink of the relations between
media and civil society and the importance of this for democracy, which has predominantly been
conducted to date through engagement and criticism of public sphere theory, particularly
Habermas’ (1989) account of the Bourgeois public sphere (for an overview, see Lunt and
Livingstone, 2013). Even though there are many criticisms of Habermas (Calhoun, 1992;
Dahlgren, 2009), his idea of a public sphere of discussion and debate in which legitimate public
opinion might emerge to contest established power remains influential. Habermas compared the
role of the media in early, disorganised capitalism of the late eighteenth century with that of mid
54
twentieth century commodity capitalism. His thesis was that in the early days of capitalism the
emergence of a new class formation (the Bourgeoisie) took place in the context of a cultural
public sphere that enabled, through public discussion of matters of social significance a new kind
of reflexivity based on reciprocal dialogue and debate by private individuals coming together in
public to come to a point of view on the pressing issues of the day. Equally significant, Habermas
argued that the developing institutions of liberal democracy were influenced by this culture,
reflected in the development of a complementary relationship between civil society and
representative parliamentary democracy, debate, inquiry and political agency based on
commitment to the resolution of difference in the public interest (Lunt and Livingstone, 2013).
The historical voracity of this account has been criticised as having a lack of
consideration of those excluded from Bourgeois culture and Habermas’s claims for reasoning as
a universal claim to legitimacy (Fraser, 1992). Nevertheless, the key elements of Habermas’s
formulation of public sphere theory are relatively uncontested: the idea of a connection between
the culture of everyday life and the political sphere, the importance of civil society as a means of
encouraging individuals to engage in reflection and of a parallel between legitimate forms of
public engagement and political debate all reflected in democratic institutions. Although
Habermas can be thought of as a liberal theorist, his theory of the public sphere can be regarded
as a view of radical democracy. The public sphere potentially links everyday life to politics so
that not only public opinion on substantive issues is taken into account by the political sphere
but also that the political institutions reflect broader political culture standing in a dialectic
relationship between public reason and political debate as politics becomes a process that
formalises public deliberation. Significantly, for Habermas (1989), early print media were at the
centre of this as the means through which the results of public discussion could be publicised
and thereby influence the political sphere. In contrast, according to Habermas, by the mid
twentieth century, through a process that reflects Weber’s account of rationalisation, the media
became businesses and no longer provided the means to articulate emergent political opinions
so that the dialectic relation between public deliberation and parliamentary politics was
severed. Political decision making was rationalised and communicated to the people rather than
emerging from the people (Lunt and Livingstone, 2013).
Dahlgren (2009) has written persuasively about the need to go beyond Habermas’
(1989) formulation of public sphere theory to engage with the more nuanced and diverse
mediated civic cultures that provide different routes to public participation and thereby create
the context for potential engagement in public and political spheres. He argues that mediated
civic cultures are diverse in form, loosely corresponding to the different media environments in
which they occur and reflecting different media logics. He therefore makes useful distinctions
between different popular cultural forms on TV that enrol audiences in subtly different forms of
public participation and contrasts these to online contexts as forms of embodied agency that are
forerunners of the conditions for engagement in these more diverse and dispersed public
spheres. He also explores the way that digital media are influencing media logics themselves
using the case of the transition to online journalism. In this vein, also, Dahlgren (2009) begins to
explore the role of mediated civil society bodies (such as NGOs and online activist movements)
in creating a link between the deliberations of those who are represented by, or participate in,
55
such bodies and new forms of governance at the local, national, regional (European) and global
levels.
THE TASK FOR MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION RESEARCHERS
From the above discussion we can see that there is a large task facing media and
communication researchers who wish to examine the mediatisation of civil society and its
relation to politics and political culture. We can no longer expect to articulate a definitive cluster
of institutions and associations at the national level (although these are still vitally important),
but will also need to include mediation of civic culture in popular cultural forms as well as in
factual broadcasting at local and national levels. In addition, we can expect a revitalised localism,
a recasting of national level civil society, strengthening regional and global forms of association.
In addition, and perhaps most important, we should, following Held (2006) and Giddens (1990)
examine the ways in which diverse forms of association at different levels engaged in different
spheres of public life connect and play off each other, and whether this connects with political
institutions in a new dialectic. We should, at the same time, register a note of caution, as well
illustrated by Couldry (2010) in his analysis of the fate of voice in neoliberalism. The very forces
that provide the context for a nuanced account of deliberation in different civic cultures at
different levels are those that Couldry reminds us are behind the apparently increasing
dominance of neoliberalism around the world. In this article I will look at research conducted by
members of the TATS COST Action to examine how they are thinking about the role of the media
in supporting civil society and culture in contemporary mediatised society and the implications
that their research potentially has for this important area of media policy.
EXAMPLES OF RESEARCH WITH SOCIAL PURPOSE FROM THE TATS COST ACTION
Academics who have been part of Working Group 2 (WG2) of the TATS COST Action have
focused on research on media audiences, interaction and participation. The WG2 Task Force on
Public Voice and Mediated Participation has particularly addressed the issues discussed above in
relation to the media and public life. In this article, I will discuss examples of research by
members of the TATS COST Action, on the basis of 26 individual reports written by WG2
members, that address questions related to the role of the media in democracy and in particular
in the relationship between emerging forms of digital media and public engagement in politics
and political culture. In this discussion I will examine the different ways in which academic
research can contribute to non‐academic audiences concerning these important transformations
in the relationship between media, politics and society. In particular, I will focus on the question
of how the internet and digital media might sustain an engaged political culture and enhance the
relationship between media and democracy.
To bring some order to the diverse ways in which this research potentially provides
public value I will adopt the framework suggested by Lunt and Livingstone (2012) following
Nutley et al.’s (2007) classification of research as a contribution to evidence based policy. Nutley
et al. (2007) suggest six kinds of research that can potentially inform evidence based policy: 1)
Knowledge Driven Research, 2) Problem Solving Research, 3) Political Uses of Research, 4)
Tactical Uses of Research, 5) The Interactive Model (sustained interaction between research and
56
user communities, 6) The Enlightenment Model (transcending instrumental uses of research
through a constructive engagement with user communities).
I will adapt this framework in this context since the focus of research is not only to
provide evidence for policymakers, but on broader social value or impact. First is the case of
independent academic research conducted for theoretical reasons but which addresses issues of
public concern and aims to contribute to public debate and discussion (knowledge driven
research). Second, research can address a specific project as consultancy, problem solving
research or aimed at providing evidence for policy debate (consultancy/problem solving
research). Third, research can be developed in interaction with stakeholders including
governments, civil society bodies, firms or the public (interactive or action research). Within this
classification of research activities we can also identify different potential or actual user
communities that are institutionally grounded (policy makers or media organisations), civil
society bodies, individuals or groups in the public.
CASE STUDIES
1) Knowledge Driven Research
Most of the statements produced by researchers in WG2 are examples of knowledge
driven research ‐‐ reflecting the work of academics producing research that they intend to be of
value to policy makers, commerce, civil society bodies and the public; basic research that
addresses issues of public concern. In the TATS COST Action, academics are conducting wide
ranging research examining the implications of transformations related to globalisation and the
development of digital media for the longer running concern of democratic participation as
discussed above.
A good example of this approach is the work of Peter Dahlgren which focuses on
mapping and understanding different uses of media in political participation by citizens,
examining the ways that both linear and digital media are used in participation. In his individual
report he writes: “I would also suggest that this work is of relevance to journalists who write
about these matters, and citizens generally who wish to deepen their understanding of some of
the key transformations affecting democracy” (Peter Dahlgren’s individual report, 2012).
Dahlgren argues that it is a central part of academic work to recognise the intellectual challenge
of the mediatisation of public life as being one which requires us to analytically weave together
aspects of social structures and institutions with media technologies, the socio‐cultural
parameters of media environments, and concrete organisation and collectivities. It is then our
responsibility to disseminate the results of our reflections to interested civil society actors who
are concerned about enhancing participation in their activities – and thereby in democracy – and
use media as an important tool in this regard.
Dahlgren also suggests that rather than being limited to the immediate practical issues
facing civil society and the links between media and democracy in a digital world, academics are
working to a longer time horizon and seek “to contribute to deeper reflection and the
development of long‐term strategies based on a more profound understanding of participation,
57
the role of the media, and how both of these relate to democracy” (Peter Dahlgren’s individual
report, 2012).
Members of WG2 of the TATS COST Action also identify that academics have a role to
play as public intellectuals – especially at a time of social and technical transformation. In his
individual report, Gintaras Aleknonis (2012) discusses the important role that academics in
smaller countries have to play in both researching the transformations in public life linked to
mediatisation in their countries (in this case Lithuania) and to do this as part of cosmopolitan
culture thereby contributing to the dissemination of international research. In this, academics
recognise the importance of universities not only as centres of learning but as critical
institutions in the public sphere (Lunt and Livingstone, 2012).
Academics can provide the evidence for public policy through their research. A good
example from the TATS COST Action is provided by Annika Bergström (individual report, 2012)
discussing her research into political participation through online media in Sweden. The
interplay between policy relevant research and theory is emphasised as interpretations of the
potential of digital media are informed by political theories of deliberation. Bergström reports
on her studies of how political parties and candidates use online media and the importance of an
emerging understanding of digital democracy. Her studies using national representative surveys
are of interest to political organisations and public authorities who aim to navigate the new
media environment. The focus here is on the emerging knowledge and understanding of how the
convergence of linear and digital media are impacting on politics. The potential public value that
this research has as “an invaluable public resource for reflection on social, political and
economic processes” (Annika Bergström’s individual report, 2012).
Lucia Vesnic‐Alujevic (2012) discusses in her individual report the potential value that
research can have in restoring trust in communications by arising from the increased
transparency that digital media brings to public life. The research focuses “on how political
actors and European institutions can use the Internet in order to promote political engagement
and participation, and develop trust in the EU institutions, diminish the democratic deficit and
motivate European citizens to participate in politics” (Lucia Vesnic‐Alujevic’s individual report,
2012). This focus on political institutions is balanced by research on audiences from Norway on:
“... how politically engaged young people use social media for political purposes.
Based on focus group interviews with Norwegian teenagers, the project shows that
social media have become an important platform for young people to participate in
political activities” (individual report of Tanja Storsul, 2012).
And in Spain: “[…] two of the most important projects with these topics are ‘Digital
convergence on media 2006‐2009’ and ‘eDemocracy in 2008 political campaign’, both with
public funding. A research line linking eDemocracy with Digital Journalism will let to have a
deeper approach to the unresolved question about the role of media in a new ecosystem of
political participation with/for media” (individual report of José‐Manuel Noguera Vivo, 2012).
58
The relevance of such research comes partly from the range of potential stakeholders
and the sense that this is a critical moment of transition in public life in which the media are
playing a key role:
“My research is directed towards the broad theme of democratic participation, with a
point of departure in media use. […] Thus, the stakeholders here can be seen as a
vast array of civil society and political organisations, networks, collectivities, and
movements” (individual report Peter Dahlgren, 2012)
2) Problem Solving/Consultancy Research
Some researchers in the TATS COST Action conduct research that is oriented to problem
solving or consultancy research focused no particular policy issues including in support of the
companies that aim to adapt to or to enter the convergent media market.
Mikko Villi (individual report, 2012) for example, works with stakeholders in the media
in Finland, including media companies, news organisations and media publishing houses,
addressing the strategic challenges these face in converging media markets. His research aims to
help broadcasters adapt news sites to fit the needs of the digital audience and to help media
companies to develop Web 2.0 interactive strategies. He terms the new approaches to audiences
that are required in convergence culture as combining social curation and user‐distributed
content. This research also involves examining audiences as hyperlocal news content creators
based on studies in the Helsinki area. It is complemented by input into the design of mobile and
online ICT solutions to enable local contributions and guidance on how firms can develop
crowdsourcing methods and feedback mechanisms based on academic research into
participation preferences and motivations and improving the quality of online contributions
(Heli Väätäjä’s individual report, 2012). This work in Finland is part of a broader collaboration
between industry and academia in which academics play a key role in research and development
for industry as part of a national research project ‘Next Media’. Similar collaborative research is
reported by Tanja Storsul (individual report, 2012) which aims to help companies to combine
innovations in online services with viable business models.
Working with stakeholders to enhance interactivity through digital media occurs at
different levels of abstraction including government agencies. For example, a key stakeholder in
innovations that might use the advantages of digital media to increase political engagement is
the political sphere. Several TATS COST Action members are engaged in this type of research,
producing ideas based on the study of online interaction to give advice to governments (Lucia
Vesnic‐Alujevic’s individual report, 2012). Similarly, again at the European level, academic
studies are used to develop models of good and bad practice (individual report of Marie
Dufrasne and Geoffroy Patriarche, 2012). These researchers aim to develop a framework for
analyzing EU participation initiatives, developing the concept of ‘participatory genres’ in which
initiatives such as consultations, petitions and expert juries are examined as “organising
structures” (Orlikowski and Yates, 1998). The potential to build shared expectations about these
initiatives in participation is seen to be central to their success. They argue that:
59
“For the initiators, designers, promoters and managers of participatory projects, it is
thus important to clarify the participatory genres that structure their initiative and
to provide the citizens with all the resources needed in order to enact appropriate
genres. The participatory genre approach is relevant to associations and citizens as
well: recognising, enacting and negotiating appropriate participatory genres are
important conditions to participation” (individual report of Marie Dufrasne and
Geoffroy Patriarche, 2012).
At a national level, Miroljub Radojković (individual report, 2012) deploys academic
analysis on cross‐media in his work advising the Serbian government on the drafting of cultural
policy legislation. Nico Carpentier (individual report, 2012) has collaborated with the Czech
media regulator RRTV, in assisting them to organise a consultation about the implementation of
community media regulation: “This collaboration resulted in a green paper, co‐authored by
RRTV staff, community media activists and myself. The results of this consultation are currently
being processed, although it is likely that a slower process of conscience‐raising will have to be
organised.” (Nico Carpentier’s individual report, 2012)
We have seen that academics understand their basic research as influencing public
knowledge and debate, that they are involved in a variety of collaborative projects with a range
of stakeholders. In addition, as a result of their research expertise, academics are often called
upon to provide policy advice or act as consultants.
3) The Interactive Model
There are a number of projects being conducted by members of the TATS COST Action
that have developed an interactive model, which combines stakeholder engagement in research,
an attempt to influence deliberation and public debate, has a collaborative orientation with
stakeholders and looks to develop an interaction with user communities as part of the research.
Nico Carpentier (individual report, 2012) uses (together with Pille Pruulmann‐Vengerfeldt and
Pille Runnel) action research in a civil society context, Peter Lunt and Sonia Livingstone (2012)
developed an interactive research project (published in their book Media Regulation) looking at
the role of the UK media regulator Ofcom as an institution in the public sphere and Beybin
Kejanlioglu (individual report, 2012) develops an interactive research project with alternative
media in Turkey.
Nico Carpentier (individual report, 2012) focuses on civil society (with some reference to
their relations with government) and argues that impact on user communities is most likely to
result if there is a direct interaction between academics and non‐academic stakeholders. In his
individual report, he reviews examples of previous studies that have developed interactions
between researchers and user communities as a model of research with social significance. For
example, he discusses the Civil Media Unconferences, organised by the Austrian Radiofabrik 18:
18
http://www.radiofabrik.at/
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“These Unconferences were not only locations where academics and community
media activists and producers could meet, but these Unconferences were also
organised by a group of people from diverse backgrounds. In the case of the 2011
Civil Media Unconference, six content streams were included in the programme, four
of which (on Public Value and Community Media; Feminist Media Production in
Europe; Cross Media Publishing ; and Alternative Funding Methods/Crowdfunding)
were organised by community media activists/producers, while two others were
organised by academics” (Nico Carpertier’s individual report, 2012)
Nico Carpentier (individual report, 2012) also discusses the example of the 2011 CMFE
conference in Cyprus19, where a dialogue developed between members of the Community Media
Forum Europe20 and academics, regulators, representatives of the council of Europe and the
UNDP. Out of these dialogic contexts interactive research developed in which Nico Carpentier
worked with the Cyprus Community Media Centre (CCMC). This collaboration led to joint
academic‐practitioner publications and a developing role for Nico Carpentier as a policy advisor
to the development community media legislation in Cyprus. Nico Carpentier (individual report,
2012) argues for a dialogic approach to action research that combines academic research,
consultation and meetings with stakeholders that Dickens and Watkins (1999: 134) characterise
as “cycles of planning, acting, reflecting or evaluating, and then taking further action.”
Peter Lunt and Sonia Livingstone (Media Regulation, 2012) in their research on the UK
media regulator Ofcom examine the role of the regulator as an institution that engages a variety
of stakeholders in issues of media policy and regulation at a number of levels. They examine the
variety of ways in which the public are engaged in, or configured through, regulatory practice.
For example, as consumers, people are engaged through annual consumer surveys, through the
analysis of consumer complaints and through the Consumer Panel set up to represent consumer
issues within the regulator. Each of these provide different contexts of engagement with their
own logics and provide multiple perspectives on consumer concerns. People are also engaged as
citizens by the regulator through its work on public service broadcasting, through the possibility
of engaging in consultation and by giving their opinions on matters related to media. Civil
society bodies and the industry are also stakeholders engaged in consultation as well as being
regulated and providing information to the regulator. Although there is no hard and fast
distinction, the voices of citizens are represented in different ways to the concerns of consumers.
These modes of engagement with consumers and citizens are manifold in form and
provide a complex set of interconnections between audiences and publics and a variety of
stakeholders from the industry. In Media Regulation, Peter Lunt and Sonia Livingstone (2012)
argue that through this range of activities the regulator plays a role as an institution in the public
sphere that can be evaluated according to Habermas’ normative criteria for public institutions
that combine legitimacy and effectiveness by articulating the public interest, balancing
constraints, combining legitimacy and effectiveness, and ensuring reflexivity regarding the
19
http://www.cmfe.eu/conference2011
20
http://www.cmfe.eu/
61
consequences of regulation. The complexity of the practical connections that are maintained and
sustained by the regulator suggest that there is no unitary institutional logic of this organisation
and that, while it is a principled, statutory regulator, in practice it is connected in networks with
a wide range of bodies. This research raises the question of the role of public institutions in
enabling both a variety of forms of deliberation and linking these to different bodies and
institutions at different levels of abstract. Furthermore, the study raises questions about the
normative legitimation of this, relatively independent arm of the state – indicating a form of
governance that although apparently located within a single institution nevertheless operates
across a dispersed range of connections which include publics, firms, government and civil
society bodies. These arrangements seriously challenge normative theories of the media, indeed,
theories of power grounded in the governmentality interpretation of Foucault’s work urge us to
move away from the normative traditions of critical theory and to embrace a theory of power
that seems more suited to late capitalism focused on the tactics and arts of government.
There are two broad implications of these ideas: that normative theories need revision
and that there is a major task ahead of researchers in media and communications to conduct
empirical studies of the mediatisation of politics (Couldry, 2010; Hepp, 2013; Halvard, 2013).
This work also illustrates an approach to producing academic work with social value since it
addresses a question of social significance from an academic perspective. The research was
conducted through an engagement with various stakeholders including the media regulator, civil
society bodies and members of the public. In other words, in parallel with the analysis of the
changing role of institutions, sits recognition of research in the field of media and
communications to develop in interaction with its user communities.
A third example of research by TATS COST Action researchers developing an interaction
with a user community focused on the role of alternative media in civic participation in Turkey
(Beybin Kejanlioglu’s individual report, 2013). Her individual report discussed a study with
bianet.org (an Independent Communication Network) including interviews with the producers
of bianet news and focus groups with users which are interpreted as demonstrating three
distinct forms of online interactivity:
“First, there are specific publics oriented towards specific policies and changes, their
different styles of protest and their non‐hierarchical media participation. Second,
there is the level of inter‐public relations or networks of different publics which
sometimes act as temporary elisions surrounding issues as, for example, situations
when women activists with different orientations come together to protest against
the Civil Code, or more enduring examples such as a news network. Third, there is
public participation in political decision‐making processes” (Beybin Kejanlioglu’s
individual report, 2012).
CONCLUSIONS
The broad background to the work of academics in media and communications
concerned with issues of public voice and mediated participation includes a sensitivity to the
ways that media and communications technologies are part of broader social, cultural, political
62
and economic changes on a global scale with a variety of implications for national and local
social order. Researchers aim to provide critical commentary and empirical evidence on the
changing opportunities for the public to have a say in decisions that affect their lives and to
engage in civil society and political activities. Much of our understanding of how media are
implicated in social and political processes is derived from mass media in nation states with, in
the European context, a focus on public media. These arrangements, in place for over 50 years in
the post second world war era, are all in transition, changing the established balance between
the state and commerce, providing new opportunities but also challenges to the articulation of
citizen interests and to our understanding of the roles of media in the broader political process.
At such times of transformation, academics have a responsibility to reflect and to
question the implications of changes; in our case, as media and communications researchers
interested in media and democracy, the task is to examine the implications for the possibilities
for public voice arising from the remediation of participation and deliberation in the digital
media landscape. The research reported here uses a variety of approaches to engagement with
stakeholders and user communities. There is a variety of work being done by members of WG2
and its Task Force on Public Voice and Mediated Participation that have implications for these
concerns; research provides both relevant evidence about changing uses of media and
reflections on the broader implications of these data for media policy, for industry, for civil
society and for the public. This article has identified a range of different approaches that
combine, in different ways, the development of theory, engagement with public debate,
empirical research with a social purpose, consultation and policy advice, action research and
interaction research. Evidently, academics in the field of media and communication have begun
the process of researching, analyzing and disseminating their ideas about how the convergent
media environment affects the links between civil society, audiences and politics.
REFERENCES
Calhoun, C. (ed.) (1992) Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Christians, G. C., Glasser, T. L., McQuail, D., Kaarle Nordenstreng D. and White, R. A. (2010)
Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press.
Couldry, N. (2010) Why Voice Matters: Culture and politics after neoliberalism. London: Sage.
Dahlgren, P. (2009) Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, communication, and democracy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dickens, L., Watkins, K. (1999) ‘Action research: Rethinking Lewin’, Management Learning,
30(2): 127‐140.
Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Habermas, J. (1989 [1962]) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Halvard, S. (2013) The Mediatization of Culture and Society. London: Routledge.
Held, D. (2006) Models of Democracy (3rd Edition). Cambridge: Polity.
Hepp, A. (2013) Cultures of Mediatization. Cambridge: Polity.
Keane, J. (1991) The Media and Democracy. Cambridge: Polity.
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Lichtenberg, J. (1990)(Ed.) Democracy and the Mass Media. Cambridge: Cambridge University
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services. Bristol: Policy Press.
Thompson, J. (1995) The Media and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
White, S. K. (2000) Sustaining Affirmation: The strengths of weak ontology in political theory.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Individual TATS COST Action reports
Aleknonis, Gintaras (2012) How my research has been useful, or could be useful, for which
stakeholders in the field? Some reflections. Lithuania, aleknonis@mruni.eu
Bergström,
Annika
(2012)
Audience
interactivity
and
participation.
Sweden,
annika.bergstrom@jmg.gu.se
Carpentier, Nico (2012) The significance of participatory research for social practice. Belgium,
nico.carpentier@vub.ac.be
Dahlgren,
Peter
(2012)
Individual
report:
The
relevance
of
my
research.
Sweden,
Peter.Dahlgren@mkj.lu.se
Dufrasne, Marie, Patriarche, Geoffroy (2012) The significance of our research on citizen participation
for social practice. Belgium, dufrasne@fusl.ac.be and patriarche@fusl.ac.be
Kejanlioglu, Beybin D. (2012) An Individual Report on “the significance of our research for social
practice”. Turkey, beybink@hotmail.com
Noguera Vivo, José‐Manuel (2012) The radical need of a better understanding about participation.
Spain, jmnoguera@ucam.edu
Radojković,
Miroljub
(2012)
Significance
of
my
research
to
social
practice.
Serbia,
miroljub.radojkovic@fpn.bg.ac.rs
Storsul, Tanja (2012) Individual report on “The significance of our research for social practice”.
Norway, tanja.storsul@media.uio.no
Väätäjä, Heli (2012) The significance of our research for social practice. Finland, heli.vaataja@tut.fi
Vesnic‐Alujevic, Lucia (2012) How my research has been useful, or could be useful, for which
stakeholders in the field? Italy, lucy.vessal@gmail.com
Villi, Mikko (2012) Mobile media and user‐distributed content in media management. Finland,
mikko.villi@aalto.fi
64
65
EMERGING TOPICS IN THE RESEARCH ON DIGITAL AUDIENCES AND PARTICIPATION:
AN AGENDA FOR INCREASING RESEARCH EFFORTS
Francesca Pasquali, Italy, francesca.pasquali@unibg.it
Leader of the Task Force 4 on “Cross‐media production and audience involvement” in Working Group
2 “Audience interactivity and participation”
José‐Manuel Noguera Vivo, Spain, jmnoguera@ucam.edu
Leader of the Task Force 4 on “Cross‐media production and audience involvement” in Working Group
2 “Audience interactivity and participation”
Mélanie Bourdaa, France, melaniebourdaa@yahoo.fr
Leader of the Task Force 4 on “Cross‐media production and audience involvement” in Working Group
2 “Audience interactivity and participation”
INTRODUCTION
One of the elements that is defining the (research on the) changing roles of audiences is a
series of new features in the media landscape, such as the diffusion of social media, locative
media, and apps. The media landscape is now in the process of becoming what we can call – from
a social and technological perspective – a new large technological system (Hughes, 1987) that
provides the infrastructure for mediated and interpersonal communication, and for social
interaction. This infrastructure for
“networked communication”
(Cardoso, 2008) is
characterised by 1) the connection of mass media and interpersonal communication; 2) a new
articulation of the time/space structure; 3) different dynamics of value creation; and 4) different
degrees of access, interactivity and participation both in media and through media (Carpentier,
2011: 67). It is a new communicative scenario full of “risky opportunities”, to quote Sonia
Livingstone’s (2008) catchy phrase in the title of a New Media & Society article.
The article discusses these changes, and the ways that they have been and need to be
thematised in academic research, from a slightly unusual perspective, as it is based on an
analysis of the individual reports21 produced by the members of Working Group 2 of the COST
Action Transforming Audiences Transforming Societies (TATS), which are dealing with the new
digital environment and the stakes of these transformations. The article is also grounded in the
work (and topical focus) of the “Cross‐media Production and Audience Involvement” Task Force
of Working Group 2.
These perspectives allow identifying a set of topics that deal with audience involvement
and participation and are seen to be originating from a series of tensions. In media and
communication studies, the idea of challenges as tensions can be described as a conflict between
concepts such as control and collaboration (Lewis, 2012), amateurism and professionalism, the
individual and the collective, or copyright and open licenses. Academic research on
participation, identifying these tensions, allows to show their multi‐layeredness and
21
The list of individual reports we referred to in this article can be found at the end.
66
complexities. Research can also suggest ways to alleviate these tensions. In particular, the
analysis of the COST TATS individual reports shows that three areas – media industry,
journalism and politics – are fields where these tensions play, making them relevant fields for
academic inquiry.
Arguably, the relevance of these research topics transcends the academic field. Here we
should keep in mind that the academic field is not the only field that has expressed interest (and
concerns) about the societal changes, and that has generated analyses of these changes. Still,
academic research, dealing with the topics mentioned in this article has a series of socially
relevant contributions to make, entering in intellectual dialogues with these other fields, and
connecting more with the other parts of contemporary societies, within an era where academic
work (including theory formation – as it is discussed in some of the other articles of this special
issue) is not always tremendously valued outside academia.
First, we think that the academic research on these topics can help policy makers and
many other stakeholders in their understanding what is at stake when dealing with changes and
challenges that they are confronted with, also in relation to digital audiences and participation.
What academia can do is showing the problematics (and tensions) behind the lived experiences
of technological and societal change. Second, we think that academic research can also help
shaping more specific approaches towards the dynamics of audience involvement, by firmly
rooting these dynamics in a broader and critical analysis of participation, and in participatory
theory. Following Ritzer’s definition of theory as a system of ideas for the systematisation of
knowledge (2007), we suggest that quality research, driven by participatory theory, can still be
transferred fairly easy and quickly to media companies, governments and almost any kind of
environment (on the condition that adequate translation is provided). There is also a need to do
this, because without the systematisation offered by participatory theory, and without the rigid
and systematic analytical procedures of academia, societal actors do not have the necessary
tools and strategies to comprehensively deal with the vastness, richness and complexities of
interactional and participatory processes.
This need for academic approaches appears especially relevant in the political sphere,
within media industries and in journalism, where utopian and dystopian discourses have tended
to paradoxically strengthen each other, combining the belief in the activation of citizens,
consumers and audiences with concerns about the functioning and sustainability of
(professional) political and media systems. Many issues have been raised here: amateurism
against professionalism is one broad tension to explain differences in production, consumption,
distribution and even hierarchy, especially when we talk about credibility or identity. The
debates on journalism as a practice (of audiences) or as a job (of journalists); the social
recommendation and distribution of music as a way of life (for emerging music groups) or as the
death of music (for music industries); or digital participation as a solution to develop utopian
systems of direct democracy or as the channel for anti‐system groups, are other examples.
PARTICIPATION AS TENSION IN THE MEDIA INDUSTRY
As we said at the very beginning of this article, some important structural
transformations are taking place within media as a large technological system and they will have
67
important consequences for the future of mediation and mediated interaction (in very different
fields, ranging from entertainment to civic participation). These changes produce particular
tensions within different fields of the social, of which the media industry is one.
The first emerging topic in this field is situated in the field of infrastructural policies,
both in terms of participatory design and in terms of emerging forms of participation within
social media platforms, as Storsul pointed out in her individual report. Indeed, researchers
within the TATS COST Action advocate better knowledge of social media use, of the connection
between online and offline information and education, and of audiences and their practices,
especially in their appropriation of new technologies.
More than the existence of new audiences, it is also useful to underline the importance of
new environments and routines of consumption. As Mikko Villi pointed out in his individual
report, mobile devices and a multiplatform scenario have added more roles for the audience to
play, which emerge as a big router for content of media companies: “The challenge for the
industry is how media companies can tap into the communicative dimensions of participatory
audience communities, in which, importantly, media content is increasingly consumed and
distributed by using mobile devices”. Thus, research on the mobile media scenario, and how
content is being distributed by audiences, is required in order to better understand the
processes that we are witnessing nowadays.
These changes in consumption routines and the creation of new environments such as
mobile media are some of the main trends that allow us to define emerging topics on digital
audiences and participation. This also raises questions, such as: Do media have explicit
strategies to manage processes like social recommendation or to adapt content for
multiplatform consumption? And are these strategies participatory themselves? Participation
reflects the growing tension between the possibilities of experimentation – as is, for instance,
happening with the personal social network accounts of journalists ‐ and the controlling
attempts of media companies to maintain the traditional monopoly on production and
distribution.
During the last years, the researches about media industry strategies have been
developed from the perspective of platform and newsroom convergence (Quandt and Singer,
2009). Here, a new approach is useful, focussing on the convergence of participations, where
media have to deal with audience‐driven processes such as user‐generated content (van Dijck,
2009), user‐distributed content (Napoli, 2009) and, even, with the consideration of participation
as a strategic commodity for the survival of media (Noguera et al, 2013).
Fans are a good example of these new audiences in a new media landscape. It is hardly
new to say that fans usually gather in communities of practices to materialise their sense of
belonging, and to discuss the shows they enjoy with fellow members (Jenkins, 1992; Bourdaa,
2012a). But they now also use new technologies such as the Internet to produce and share
contents, for instance paratexts (Gray, 2010) such as fan fictions, fan videos, or even sometimes
ARG (Alternate Reality Games). They also spread and discuss content using social networks such
as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Media industries ‐ and especially the audiovisual industries ‐
have to adapt to these new consumptions, in a more and more competitive ecosystem. In order
to make fans engage even more and explore the narrations, producers create what Jenkins
68
(2006) has coined strategies of “transmedia storytelling”. Producers of TV shows or movies use
the potentialities of media platforms to expand their universe and storylines in a movement that
can be defined as augmented storytelling (Bourdaa, 2012b); they scatter chunks of the stories or
backgrounds on characters on multiple media platforms for fans to find and share.
Another topic, related to the media industry in a broader sense, is that we are witnessing
a progressive commodification of participation in the media. Not only companies associated with
the sphere of social media (like Facebook or Twitter) benefit from the communication with
audience communities, but also traditional media companies can take advantage of a deeper
connection within the activities and usages that users are creating with their products. The key
point is here to understand participation as a systemic change in spheres formerly only
associated with professionals, where the result of all interactions with the audience is more than
the sum of each one. But processes of commodification still need to be taken into account as
well.
Finally, the social experience that surrounds and penetrates the consumption of
information and media content (sharing, voting, commenting, retweeting, …) is becoming as
important as the information itself. This information (user‐distributed content) is of course
relevant for the industry in terms of audience research, but also for developing cross‐media
strategies where the participation around the medium could be shown and sold as a product
itself (directly and in terms of data production). Jenkins et al. (2013) uses the term of
“spreadable media” in order to emphasise the importance of the circulation of official and non‐
official media content within communities of practice or in the public sphere. He also points to
the importance of social networks in this circulation.
PARTICIPATION AS TENSION IN JOURNALISM
If there is a field where the adjective “participatory” was embraced with enthusiasm, it
was journalism, with no doubt. Just a few years after the emergence of the so‐called web 2.0,
participatory journalism was a current practice, but also a trendy topic for researchers to
describe in a broad sense all the processes and/or platforms where the audience was
collaborating with professionals in the news process. It seems as if it was chosen as the
participatory (journalistic) flag in the digital age, although soon this concept epitomised a new
problem (or tension). Participatory journalism cannot be reduced (as often happened) to a
technology‐driven process (Singer et al, 2011), it also depends on the organisational media
culture and on the ways in which possibilities of technology are defined and understood.
The tension, between the kind of participation that technology allows and the
participation practised by people and/or media companies, is an emerging topic. One example is
the recent work of one of the authors of this article on Twitter (Noguera, 2013). This tension
requires a deeper understanding of the collaborative mechanisms at work in these kinds of
horizontal environments, and a deeper analysis of actual practises, combined with a serious
reflection on the new challenges emerging in the field, such as the new relations with sources, or
the changes within the sets of formal and informal rules that have shaped and regulated news‐
making (at least in terms of discursive construction and formal definition if not at the level of
concrete practises), as Sanchez Gonzales pointed out in her individual report. Moreover, the
69
centrality of amateur content production, and of content filtering and circulation, not only calls
for new regulations in the field of news‐making but also for new literacies, both from the
audiences and industries, as stated by Sirkku Kotilainen. In her report, she claims that it is
absolutely necessary to work on media literacies but also to enhance the media companies’
understanding of audience participation, as is also emphasised in the individual report of Torres
da Silva.
Finally, also the way audiences access information and news is changing, as Birgit Stark
emphasises in her individual report, which produces another emerging topic. She argues that
this is due to the fact that “the Web gives people more content choices, control, and the
opportunity to customize their news consumption […] Often media organizations lack a clear
strategy and one may get the impression that many of them merely offer new participation
features because others do so as well”. Besides this – apparent ‐ lack of strategy, media
companies are facing the challenge of “how to collect and treat the reactions of the audience”, as
Nóra Nyirő wrote in her individual report. The huge amount of data about communications in
several platforms, triggered by many actions – distributing, creating, commenting, sharing, … ‐
requires media companies to develop strategies to deal with this multitude of information.
PARTICIPATION AS TENSION IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
The new landscape, defined by cross‐media contents and mass self‐communication, that
is, “the communication organized around the internet and other horizontal digital
communication networks” (Castells, 2011: 779), is facilitating daily exchanges in the public
spheres between institutions, politicians and citizens, which are “not only technically possible
but also a healthy and a democratic practice”, as Zamora’s individual report mentions.
These different forms of participation have to be framed in a broad fashion and involve
citizen networks, NGOs, social movements, protest activities. While the last decades have
witnessed a decline in formal democratic participation (voting, trust in politics, … ), there are
intense “civil society activities and alternative political engagement” allowing that “audiences
are also rendered as citizens, that is, people who are or can become involved in the life of
democracy” (Peter Dahlgren’s individual report).
This means that new participatory genres are emerging (for example characterised by
new temporalities, in content production and sharing, as stated in the Patriarche and Dufrasne
individual report) within (exclusively or not) social media. These new genres need to be studied
by academics, both on the side of traditional policy participation design (given that networked
participation in some way challenges the processes based on the three steps: information,
consultation and deliberation) and on the side of public opinion analysis. On this very last point:
Just consider how Facebook’s likes or twitter conversations are more and more used, by political
parties and media organisations in an attempt to set the agenda, or in the campaigning activities
of political candidates (in very similar ways polls and surveys are used to track political
preferences).
Some authors have underlined the co‐occurrence of lower levels of participation within
the sphere of formal politics – especially among youth ‐ and the (limited) participatory ways
offered by political institutions (Bendit, 2000), while other ways of civic engagement have
70
become more popular, in many cases thanks to mobile media and the web. This idea is a central
point in Peter Dahlgren’s individual report: “While the last two decades have witnessed a
general decline in participation in the formal political system, the picture in the broader realm of
civil society activities and alternative political engagement is more mixed, with some areas of
intense activity”.
These “areas of intense activity” are redefining how the public sphere is considered and
how it is constructed. They are also changing the relations between voters and candidates, and
affecting political communication and campaigning, as Bergstrom noted in her report. And as
Rocío Zamora states in her individual report, the influence of audience interactivity and
participation in political contexts “is not only an academic research topic but, mainly, an issue
for reflection from its real practical development, in order to improve the relation between
media and democracy.”
CONCLUSION
Emerging topics in research on digital audiences and participation can be traced if we
look for unresolved problems and tension. In other words, research is about the analysis of the
tensions which are behind the obvious challenges. In this article, a number of tensions were
identified (by analysing the 26 TATS COST Action essays), leading to questions such as:
‐ Do media industries have convincing strategies to deal with user‐led processes? Will
they survive without these strategies?
‐ Do the journalists/media have the organisational culture to promote a kind of
journalism with higher levels of participation? Would it still be journalism?
‐Why is the informal political participation through social networks more accepted than
the ones proposed by the institutions?
These questions are being raised using concepts such as authorship, identity,
distribution, credibility, collaboration and professionalism. For instance, wiki‐platforms allow
collective authorships, copyleft licenses are dealing with products made from the remix, and
transmedia storytelling is highly based on the social distribution and production by audiences.
In this scenario, the position of professional authors (including journalists) is under threat but at
the same time their presence within the web becomes (and remains) prominent, with
considerable levels of interaction with audiences and the increased importance of personal
branding in many fields (journalism, politics, cultural industries, …).
As far as the challenges are concerned, academic research needs to assume that the
bipolarity between production and reception is not enough to explain the complex processes of
participation, especially “in a media environment where the boundaries between commerce,
content and information are currently being redrawn” (van Dijck, 2009: 42). Media industries
and journalists are facing an ongoing flow of relations and data which are related to many
tensions around the above‐mentioned concepts (authorship, identity, distribution, credibility,
collaboration and professionalism). The social distribution of content is amplifying the
importance of audiences in economic, political and media terms. Research about digital
audiences and participation should be focused on this kind of tensions, offering specific answers
to problems that media industry and other institutions have difficulties in solving.
71
At the same time, academic research needs to remember the tension of audience
research itself, which needs to find a balance between the necessary and contextualised claims
for a new notion of audience and the “hyperbolic discourse of the new” (Livingstone, 2004: 77).
One particular challenge in audience and participation research is about trying to avoid
succumbing to these pessimistic/optimistic discourses about the new. In conclusion, we also
want to mention the issue that academia itself is responding to the many challenges in this new
ambiguous participatory scenario, also in relation to its own functioning. Academia is “becoming
more concerned with the technological and practical application of their results” (Henriques’
individual report). This tendency becomes particularly manifest in the increasing scientific
interest in the role media play in fostering creativity, promoting entrepreneurship and new
forms of social innovation (Manuel José Damásio’s individual report). And this change in
professional aims and practical functions also needs to be further analysed.
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Individual TATS COST Action reports
Bergström, Annika (2012) Individual report. Sweden, annika.bergstrom@jmg.gu.se
Dahlgren, Peter (2012) The relevance of my research. Sweden, Peter.Dahlgren@mkj.lu.se
Damásio, Manuel José (2012) Individual report. Portugal, mjdamasio@ulusofona.pt
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RZamora@pdi.ucam.edu
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STAKEHOLDERS AND ACADEMIA: DIFFERENT MODES OF INTERACTION
Manuel José Damásio, Portugal, mjdamasio@ulusofona.pt
Vice chair of Working Group 2 “Audience interactivity and participation” and leader of the Task Force
3 “Networked belonging and networks of belonging” in WG2
Paula Cordeiro, Portugal, pcordeiro@iscsp.utl.pt
Leader of the Task Force 3 “Networked belonging and networks of belonging” in Working Group 2
“Audience interactivity and participation”
THE FORMULATION OF STAKEHOLDER THEORY
Stakeholder theory moves organizational life and existence beyond the mere persecution
of economic goals. The core idea of (the original formulation) of stakeholder theory is that
business is (and should be) expected to serve society in ways that goes beyond economic
objectives. If this is true for commercially oriented companies, the more it is for those
organizations, such as universities, that pursue the common public good.
Our main objective in this article is to evaluate the relevance stakeholders have for
academia today, more specifically for the field of media and audience studies, and to describe
how, and with what consequences, relations between academia and stakeholders are being
reshaped. Moreover, the article aims to critically evaluate who is (and can be seen as)
stakeholder of universities. The article is based on a general reflection on academia’s role and
stakeholder theory, but also draws from 26 individual essays written by the members of
Working Group 2 of the COST Action Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies,
discussing their self‐assessment of the societal relevance and impact of the work of academics in
the area of media and audience studies. These short contributions were collected from scholars
working within the COST Action, and we will depart from some of the points brought forward in
those essays to problematize and discuss the relations between academia and stakeholders and
the different modes of interaction at stake. We are grateful to all original authors for their
contributions.
In 1998, UNESCO pointed out at the World Higher Education Conference held in Paris
(UNESCO, 1998) that higher education was facing great challenges and had to implement several
changes, including involving its stakeholders ‐ namely teachers, students, parents, public
institutions, businesses (including media) and society more in general ‐ in its governance.
Fifteen years have passed and the stakeholders’ active participation in universities’
organizational and management structure has increased in most European countries. Teachers
and researchers, and sometimes students, who had already obtained a foothold in the
universities ‐ as higher education and research providers and active participants in the
organizational life of higher education institutions ‐ were joined by many different other groups
and organizations in society.
The active participation of several stakeholders in higher education and research
institutions’ governance has generated a context that shapes today’s interactions between
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academia and its stakeholders. These interactions can be structured in two ways: “one‐to‐one”
between the institution and its different stakeholders, who are organized into categories or
profiles (i.e. the teachers; the NGO representatives, ...) and “many‐to‐many” relations, where
relations exist also between each of the stakeholders, either within its group or within the larger
structure. For the purpose of this article, we will first focus on the one‐to‐one relational model
(and return later to many‐to‐many relations) as these one‐to‐one relations are the more
traditional form of interaction where the institution meets (to some degree) the value
expectations of its external (and internal) stakeholders. Of course, we should keep in mind that
these value expectations may vary in accordance with the institution’s general objectives and
mission statement, and the stakeholders’ positions.
We propose that these one‐to‐one relations are characterized by three modes of
interaction that vary in accordance with their objectives: scrutiny, dependency and conflict. All
these three are framed by the core of what defines the relation between an organization and its
stakeholders – the creation of value – and the existing context that can hinder or ease the
relationships focussed on that purpose. The modes of interaction we have just listed might
assume different configurations: communicative and managerial actions that intend to capture
stakeholders’ value needs and expectations; secondly, the co‐operative creation of value in order
to make full use of available stakeholders’ resources; third, the satisfaction and realization of
value needs of stakeholders by academia to enhance stakeholders’ recognition and involvement
in higher education organizational life.
Each mode of interaction will vary in accordance with the positive or negative outcomes
of these relations. We consider a positive or negative outcome of those relations to be defined by
each group of stakeholders’ subjective degree of satisfaction. Also, the considered outcomes will
vary in accordance to the considered relational structure. For instance, in a scrutiny type of
relation between academics and government bodies, the outcome will be negative for the
academics since they feel themselves constrained by ever more bureaucracy. In contrast, for
government bodies, it will be positive, since they feel they have more control and a better
perspective on spending and results. From what has been said follows that any stakeholder
theory in this area should focus on the identification of the variables that position the different
stakeholders in face of these (potential) relations and establish a network of relationships with
which academics have to cope.
In the following parts of the article we will discuss who these different stakeholders
might be and how their identity and position within the structure we have just described pose a
challenge to individual teachers and researchers working in the area of media and audiences
studies. We will also evaluate how different formulations of the theory have an effect on how we
can conceive those teachers and researchers’ future roles and responsibilities, and the value
their work has for the organizations they are part of.
WHO ARE THE STAKEHOLDERS?
Freeman (1984: 29) defines stakeholders in the commercial arena as “any group or
individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organisation’s objectives”,
showing congruence with Bryson (2005: 22) who talks of “persons, groups or organisations that
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must be taken into account…”. Stakeholders are all those actors who may gain or lose from an
organization’s activities. Stakeholders can be divided into two groups: internal and external
stakeholders. As the terms suggest, internal stakeholders come from within the organization and
external stakeholders are those outside the organization but with a vested interest in it. In this
sense, individual academics are themselves academia’s primary stakeholders, since their
interests are closely dependable on their institutions’ performance. But as higher education and
research institutions must account for their activities to a large number of people and wider
society, external stakeholders have gained preponderance in academia in the past decades. Most
commonly, the group of external stakeholders includes funders or investors, but regulators,
policy makers and legislators are also included.
This brings us to one of the main dilemmas when formulating a stakeholder theory in
relation to academia: Are we considering these teachers and researchers as stakeholders of the
universities or as a crucial facet of the relation between the university, as an institution, and its
other stakeholders? This gets further complicated when taking power positions into account.
Benneworth and Jongbloed (2009) actually suggest that the distinction between internal and
external stakeholders is less relevant when compared with the ability one has, independently of
its position, to influence the organizational decision‐making process. Focusing on the particular
case of the humanities and social sciences, these authors proposed that stakeholders in these
areas, namely non‐governmental regulators, communities and other NGOs, are less relevant
today for institutions because they have failed to prove their power – to produce value for the
institutions – their legitimacy – societal impact of the results of their work ‐ and their urgency – a
call for immediate actions. An additional reason for this seems to be that in many cases,
individual actors, while acting as stakeholders, also fail to confirm the need of recognition of
their own area of performance.
In order to find an adequate answer to these dilemmas, we suggest firstly to focus our
attention on the kinds of value that are produced by universities and academia, trying to
understand if they are homogenous and on which type of valorisation are they grounded. When
talking about a commercial firm, this is a relatively simple issue since this value is defined in
financial terms, but when talking of a university and its individual stakeholders, the question
becomes much more complex. For the universities this value mostly concerns the promotion of
activities that will generate results that will in the long term assure the institution’s
sustainability. This can either be defined in economic terms (i.e. the revenue generated from
intellectual propriety produced by faculty), in branding terms (i.e. the degree of public
recognition of the university’s brand measured by its degree of attractiveness for foreign
students) or in political terms (i.e. the level of services it provides to local authorities measured
in accordance with the volume of local acquired funding). For academia the issue is completely
different. Although sometimes individual objectives are aligned with institutional ones, in many
other cases, academics define their notion of value following the information resulting from
many‐to‐many relations. This means that their notion of value is mostly oriented towards peer
recognition and individual compensation. This allows us to better understand that, if we
consider academics as a specific group of stakeholders, their relational mode with the institution
will vary in function of the value expectations in question. If, for instance, they are not
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equivalent, we will have a conflicting relation. But that is seldom the case since in most cases
what we have is a situation in which either academics and institutions are dependent on others,
for example in funding terms, and, as a consequence of that dependency, can develop stronger
scrutiny mechanisms, an interaction mode that seems to have become dominant (Chapleo &
Simms, 2010).
The previous propositions are in line with stakeholder theory’s assumption that the
value that stakeholders get (from working with stakeholder‐friendly organizations) may not be
exclusively captured in economic measures. While economic returns are often fundamental to
the core stakeholders of an organization, most stakeholders want other things as well (Bosse,
Phillips & Harrison, 2009). In this sense, stakeholders are both beneficiaries and risk‐bearers of
any organization’s policies and actions. In the academic context, valorisation encompasses all
activities that contribute to ensuring that the outcomes of scientific knowledge add value
beyond the scientific domain. It includes making the results originating from academic research
available or more easily accessible in order to increase the chances of others—outside
academia—to make use of it, as well as the co‐production of knowledge with non‐academic
groups (Bryson, 2005). Valorisation is therefore broader than ‘commercialisation’ and points to
the larger societal contributions universities should be responsible for (OECD, 2007).
When one seeks to identify academia’s stakeholders, we are ‐ as a consequence of the
previous argument and at least at this stage ‐ including all those that might see their activities
being valorised by academia. These external stakeholders include government and private
companies, suppliers and administration, competitors and employees, but also regulators and
potential partners in new ventures. Their relationships with academics (and of academics with
their institutions) are complicated, as academics constantly have to prove their power and
legitimacy to generate value, which results in two modes of interaction – dependency and
conflict. Dependency, since the fact that they are internal stakeholders makes them highly
dependable of the institutions in financial terms, and conflict, because the challenges one faces in
order to affirm the value of its activities for the overall valorisation of the organization, results in
a permanent conflict to acquire more power and legitimacy. Considering the specific
characteristics of higher education institutions, we may suppose that the starting dilemma ‐
teachers and researchers as stakeholders of the universities or as a crucial facet of the relation
between the university, as an institution, and its other stakeholders ‐ could be better formulated
through a more nuanced and ambiguous conceptualization, where academics are considered as
internal stakeholders that find power and legitimacy in becoming (and proving to be) crucial
mediators of the relation between the university, as an institution, and its other stakeholders.
THE “OTHER” STAKEHOLDERS
We would now like to propose that there is a third set of stakeholders that is highly
relevant for communication and media scholars, namely media users. Focusing on this type of
stakeholder allows us to return to the third mode of interaction: scrutiny. In fact, communication
and media scholars, the internal stakeholders of academia, deal with media users on an almost
daily basis, rendering them their objects of scrutiny. In addition, several public bodies are also
concerned about influence media consumption trends are exerting on their own activities and
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interests, and the sectors in their societies they are responsible for. But also media companies
scrutinise their audiences, for instance, as they too do research on them. For media companies, it
is essential to understand and follow their audiences’ journey between different contents and
platforms. In today’s media landscape, where content production is fairly stable but channels
and timing may be substituted according to viewer preference, the quality of content and the
presence of well‐established community spaces may help content producers to be heard by
audiences. Within the flow of the viewers through content and platforms, broadcasters (and
other professional content providers) may develop strategies to monitor, manage and exploit
(better) the new audiences’ behaviour. For them, it is always relevant to understand what users
need, value, expect and look for, so that the industry and the market can offer better services in
those areas.
Academic research in this area has always been concerned with the type of services most
commonly used by users as well as new and original forms of usage. This information is, of
course, relevant for the industry and for the development of new services and new features.
Frequently, data from the industry or from the market focus mainly on quantitative results
based mostly on frequencies regarding the use of certain technologies or services. Therefore,
academic research can add value and help in deepening the interpretation of stakeholder data,
by considering, for instance, more qualitative and theory‐driven analyses. But this form of
institutional research is still imprisoned in the one‐to‐one relationships that mould the
instrumental view of stakeholders we have been describing. By opposition, we can consider a
non‐instrumental view framed by many‐to‐many relationships, making them less dependable on
the modes of interaction we have described before.
Today’s media landscape helped to create several spaces for public discussion, such as
online forums, blogs or readers’ comments in the news. Additionally, the rise of new modes of
audience participation can be linked to accounts of the increased role of the public in producing
material that previously have been the exclusive domain of professional journalists, blurring the
frontiers of news producers and consumers (Bruns, 2005). This process marks the rise of the
prosumer or produser, or if one prefers, of a diffuse mass of individuals, that are also
contributing, via their participation in media production.
But these audiences’ position as citizens ‐ that is, as people who are (or can become
involved) in the everyday life of democracy ‐ could still be strengthened. Through this process, a
wider view of democracy could potentially take shape beyond the formal electoral system and
within the participatory terrain of our heterogeneous civil societies (Ridell, 2012; Schrøder,
2012). Participation can take many forms and be embedded in a broad array of settings:
enduring associations, single issue organisations, loose collectivities, temporary issue publics,
lobbying outfits, NGO’s, social movements, protest activists, citizen networks and other
formations – active at local, regional, national and global levels. While the last two decades have
witnessed a general decline in participation in the formal political system, the picture in the
broader realm of civil society activities and alternative political engagement is more mixed, with
some areas of intense political activity, but also with sometimes strong counter‐strategies, for
instance, driven by commodification processes. These stakeholders and their uses of digital
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media play an important role in this regard – and it is at this point where the question about
their status as stakeholder comes up (Starkey & Madan, 2001; Crilly, 2011; Chiu, 2009).
These media users can be seen as a vast array of individuals or organisations, informal
networks, and movements who traditionally had no relevance for the academia, at least not as
stakeholders. But their constant level of activity makes them highly relevant for academia
because it points to the possibility of engaging with community stakeholders who are actually
contributing to the transformation of society and can benefit by the knowledge produced by
academic research. That democracy is facing an array of very serious dilemmas has become an
established and engaging theme within academic and public discussions in the past two decades;
foundations are ear‐marking ever greater sums to study the issues; NGOs are trying to tackle
them in diverse ways; journalistic pundits analyse the difficulties, while political parties and
governments are obviously troubled by these non‐institutional forms of politics (Bermam,
Wicks, Kotha, & Jones, 1999; Hayibor, 2012). Although the concept of democracy is routinely
invoked, we must keep in mind that within Europe and the EU, differences and even tensions in
regard to political traditions, notions of citizenship, assumptions about openness and access,
conceptions of what constitutes civil society, and so on, are noteworthy. At the same time, the
traditional nationalist frame for politics is problematized by globalized forces and regional
structures, most notably that of the EU (with all its dilemmas, for instance, the distance between
citizens and their democratic deficit in decision‐making). Growing worries about trust,
belonging, individualism, legitimacy, and other issues make difficult for government to devise
policies to simply promote a generic notion of citizenship as an all‐purpose panacea for society’s
ills (Schrøder, 2012). Many citizens feel an estrangement from – and often a growing cynicism
towards – governments and the political process (Franklin, van der Eijk & Marsh, 1995). All
these tensions within the social and political arena affect the different modes of interaction
between academia and stakeholders. More importantly, they are shaking the balance between
one‐to‐one and many‐to‐many relationships by questioning established positions of both
organizations and individuals.
In response to these developments, we see a range of efforts, emanating from different
official levels, as well as from civic sectors. Not surprisingly, media technology is often given a
(sometimes disturbingly) primary place in these contexts. Discussions about media literacy, for
example, have become frequent at the policy level. There have been many government‐funded
projects to enhance media access and skills. The difficulty is that while media certainly can be
highly relevant here, low levels of participation do not have their origin in the scarcity of media
access and skills. Such horizons can lead us down the simplistic techno‐determinist routes or
direct us towards solutionist approaches (Morozov, 2013). Participation is a far more
complicated question; it must be understood as forms of practice that take place under specific
circumstances, shaped by concrete conditions – of which media are a part (Carpentier, 2011)
(see also the individual reports of Carpentier, and of Dufrasne and Patriarche).
The overall task for communication and media scholars then becomes to clarify in which
terms and conditions these new audience's positions can have an impact on democracy. The
challenge is to analytically weave together aspects of social structures, institutions with media
technologies, the socio‐cultural parameters of media environments with concrete organizations
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and collectivities – and to make this available to those civil society actors that are aiming at
contributing to social change. The issue is that while digital media can make participation easier,
they also create conditions for one to bowl alone, and to engage in moral reasoning without
much attention to others.
THE FOURTH MODE OF INTERACTION: NETWORKING
Scrutiny, as a mode of interaction, brought forward the relevance that other stakeholders
have for the audience and media studies and allowed us to move past the conflict and
dependency‐based nature of the one‐to‐one relations with internal and external stakeholders
that are informed by an instrumental view of these relations. In contrast, many‐to‐many
relations are those that occur in an increasingly mediatised society, where people have to
perform diverse “modes of action” (Ridell, 2012) with/through media and ICTs – for instance,
they should be able to act as audiences, publics and communities, and they should be able to
move from one mode of action to another, depending on the aim of (and their role in) their
activities. Such networking activities that happen in many‐to‐many relations actually represent a
fourth mode of interaction. Today one’s mode of action within its social networks has gained
increased significance. By “social network” we do not specifically mean social networking sites,
although these are technical tools that indeed provide new opportunities for media practices.
The notion of social network encapsulates (at least) six key dimensions that specify typical
practices: 1) building and maintaining relations, 2) bypassing intermediaries, 3) co‐producing
contents, technologies and organisations, 4) sharing and circulating materials and knowledge, 5)
cutting across spaces and 6) blurring temporalities (Patriarche and Dufrasne, in print). These
modes of action in social networks challenge traditional relations with stakeholders – most often
based on information, consultation and retribution – and point to normative ones, namely that
stakeholders are not solely identified by their interest in the affairs of the network but also for
the intrinsic value their interest has for the network. This normative view implies that this
fourth form of interaction, based on networking, is more able to enforce stakeholders’ claims
than the previous ones, since these actors are now part of the environment whilst their main
stakes still reside outside the organization, a fact which makes them more salient and less
dependable.
LINKING THE TATS COST ACTION WITH STAKEHOLDERS – THE RELEVANCE STAKEHOLDERS ASSUME
FOR RESEARCHERS
In this part of this article we will examine how the different modes of interaction with
stakeholders that we have been describing are present in the research and activities of some of
the TATS COST Action members who, in the case of Working Group 2, have written the 26
individual reports that have inspired our work. The aim is to illustrate how some of the
problems we have been discussing, namely the ones related with the tension that the different
modes of interaction generate between stakeholders and academia, are present in the research
and work of these academics.
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We can, on the one side, find researchers for whom stakeholders are first of all regarded
as an object of study. Beybin Kejanlioglu for instance, affirms in her individual report that, in her
research on alternative media, she identified a large number of stakeholders that correspond to
her own objects of study:
“Civil society, especially feminist circles and community media/alternative
journalists can be regarded as stakeholders here (…) Another stakeholder can be
mainstream media.”
Others, like Sirkku Kotilainen, recognize in their individual reports the existence of one‐
to‐one relations, strongly based on dependency:
“My professorship covers media literacy education which means mainly audience
research among younger generations and, continually discussions with public
stakeholders and media companies on the educational perspectives of research
results. My own interests lie on comparative settings of research. (…) My
professorship has been established by outside stakeholders (…)”
A similar insistence on the value that their work has for stakeholders ‐ because they can
instrumentally use the results of their research ‐ is mentioned by Rocio Zamora Medina, who
states that:
“my research’s results have a great social value and significance, mainly in a time of
political disaffection and crisis of political representation. (Because they) need to
practice crossmedia (the same message adapted to different platforms), and
transmedia (a coordinated entertainment experience through different media) and
multiplatform strategies.”
Dependency relations are also mentioned directly in association with funding and the
need for recognition, namely by Nurçay Türkoglu, who mentions in her individual report three
core outputs related to stakeholders: funding from the state; recognition from peers and funding
from commercial companies.
The scrutiny of modes of interaction also clearly appears in some of the individual
reports. Paula Cordeiro for instance mentions in her individual report that:
“I had presented, in another conference, ‘Terrestrial Radio And Digital Platforms:
How Multimedia Is Changing Radio’ a in‐depth analysis of digital and on line radio
trends, developing a reflection on how the integration of new expressive models and
multivariate apparatus change the message of the radio, and tracing paths and forms
for emerging new radio models. One main objective was to understand the way on‐
line broadcasting, (…) can change radio as we used to know it and how the market
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has shifted the balance of power away from radio as taste maker toward consumers'
ability to select, hoard and arrange his own music”.
But we can also see in the individual reports that networking modes of interaction are
emerging as relevant for the academics. Lawrie Hallett, for instance, noticeably affirms this when
considering his involvement in COST TATS:
“The provision of enhanced academic exchange and networking opportunities for
collaboration with colleagues elsewhere in the UK and across Europe (was
particularly useful). This was particularly the case at COST Action events, which I
attended in person (…). I am certainly of the view that I would not have been able to
take advantage of such exchanges without involvement in the COST Action Audiences
programme. Some of the areas debated have fed directly into my on‐going PhD
research into Community Media and elements of the COST Action Audiences
research are also likely to be of use to Community Media organisations seeking to
better understand their audiences”.
The above statements show an awareness of the different modes of interaction between
academia and stakeholders. Moreover, they mostly depict a specific relational mode that we will
discuss in our conclusion.
CONCLUSIONS
We started by characterizing the relation between stakeholders and academia in the area
of audiences and media studies as essentially a one‐to‐one relation based on three distinctive
modes of interaction: scrutiny, dependency and conflict. We then moved on to verify that the
instrumental formulation of stakeholders’ theory around the notion of value and, in particular in
the case of universities, around the valorisation of outcomes, results in a process whereby only
those stakeholders that can affirm their contribution to the value‐making process that informs
the organization are considered relevant. That relevance becomes verifiable via the evaluation of
their power, legitimacy and urgency in the context of the relation between academia and its
external stakeholders. By further evaluating the third mode of interaction – scrutiny – we
verified that a relevant set of stakeholders with no clear interest in academia are emerging via
new uses of media technologies. These groups of stakeholders inform a many‐to‐many
relationship with the academia that we made equivalent to a fourth mode of interaction:
networking.
Our main conclusion is that the relation between stakeholders and academia in the area
of media and audiences studies is essentially a normative one and not an instrumental one. By a
normative relation we refer to the balance between stakeholders’ intrinsic individual interests
and organizational ones. This is opposed to an instrumental relation, whereby stakeholders, as a
group, focus on the organization’s interests. Stakeholder theory, in this context, has been mostly
applied from an instrumental perspective (Donaldson & Preston, 1995), but stakeholder theory
is descriptive, instrumental and more importantly, normative (Donaldson & Preston, 1995). All
83
these dimensions are relevant. Valorisation has been often regarded from a pure instrumental
point of view and it should also be regarded as normative.
Our proposal is that this relation must be represented as containing a number of nested
levels. At a macro‐level, there are various systems framing the hierarchy of universities’ external
stakeholders. At the meso‐level, there are relationships between key institutional actors (such as
funding bodies) and academia, in which the system is funded in return for the delivery of
outputs – the instrumental type of valorisation. At the micro‐level, there are academics in
specific contexts working to exploit new knowledge around the networked community
stakeholders we have identified. It is important ‐ when undertaking stakeholder research ‐ to be
clear which system level is being talked about. However, it is also important to respect the
relationships between these levels, seeing them as part of a multi‐level relationship system, and
accept that a normative non‐deterministic process is occurring while the relationships are being
addressed by the different actors involved.
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Activities on the Public Platforms of Wikipedia and YouTube” in The Social Use of Media.
Cultural and Social Scientific Perspectives on Audience Research, edited by Helena
Bilandzic, Geoffroy Patriarche and Paul J. Traudt. Bristol: Intellect, pp. 17–35.
OECD (2007) Higher education and regions: globally competitive, regionally engaged. Paris:
Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development/Institutional Management of
Higher
Education.
Available
online
at:
http://oecd.org/document/33/0,3746,en_21571361_50115957_39378401_1_1_1_1,00.h
tml.
Schrøder, K. (2012) “From Semiotic Resistance to Civic Agency: Viewing Citizenship through the
Lens of Reception Research 1973‐2010” in The Social Use of Media. Cultural and Social
Scientific Perspectives on Audience Research, edited by Helena Bilandzic, Geoffroy
Patriarche and Paul J. Traudt. Bristol: Intellect, pp. 179–200.
Starkey, K., Madan, P. (2001) “Bridging the Relevance Gap: Aligning Stakeholders in the Future of
Management Research”, British Journal of Management, 12 (Supplement s1): S3–S26.
UNESCO (1998) The World Conference on Higher Education World Declaration on Higher
Education in the Twenty‐first Century Vision and Action Adopted by the World
Conference
on
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Education.
Paris:
UNESCO.
Available
at:
www.unescoorg/education/educprog/wche/declaration_eng.htm.
Individual TATS COST Action reports
Carpentier, Nico (2012) The significance of participatory research for social practice. Belgium,
nico.carpentier@vub.ac.be
Dufrasne, Marie, Patriarche, Geoffroy (2012) The significance of our research on citizen participation
for social practice. Belgium, dufrasne@fusl.ac.be and patriarche@fusl.ac.be
Hallett, Lawrie (2012) Individual report. UK, lawrie@terella.com
Türkoglu, Nurçay (2012) Scholarly research and the stakeholders in the field. Turkey,
nurcay.turkoglu@gmail.com
Kejanlioglu, Beybin (2012) How my research has been useful, or could be useful, for which
stakeholders in the field? Turkey, beybink@hotmail.com
85
Kotilainen, Sirkku (2012) The usefulness of m y research for the stakeholders in the field. Finland,
sirkku.kotilainen@uta.fi
86
BUILDING BRIDGES ON MEDIA, INTERACTION AND AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION
Igor Vobič, Slovenia, igor.vobic@fdv.uni‐lj.si
Liaison Officer for Working Group 2 “Audience interactivity and participation”
This report from Working Group 2 “Audience interactivity and participation” is based on
the round table session with governmental, civil society and community media sector
representatives held during the COST IS0906 Belgrade Meeting on 19 September 2013. The
round table was focused on the issue of how important the academia as a critical and semi‐
autonomous field is for the development of ideas on media and participation in different fields.
Due to the complexity of these social processes the speakers at the round table could
only touch the surface of academia’s multifaceted relationship with other social sectors. In order
to structure the debate, the following questions were used: What roles do you see academics
take in particular fields? How are tensions between different actors and agents within particular
fields played out? How can academic research help to deal better with these tensions? How can
the audience/citizens, as stakeholder, become more involved in particular societal arenas?
Around these and other issues, the chair of the roundtable Nico Carpentier, from the Free
University of Brussels and Charles University, engaged the following speakers in the dialogue:
•
•
Francesco Diasio, General Secretary AMARC‐Europe
Stefan Lazarević, State Secretary for Communication, Information Society within the
Serbian Ministry for Telecommunications
•
Gabriela Velics, Board Member of Community Media Forum Europe and
Communication, and Media and Journalism Teacher at the University of West
Hungary
•
Julie Uldam, Assistant Professor at Copenhagen Business School and Chair of the
Network for Social Innovation and Civic Engagement
WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF ACADEMIA?
The question of the importance of academia as a field was approached by the speakers in
different ways, reflecting their societal roles embedded in the fields of community media,
activism and government. Yet, they agreed that the dialogue is “useful”, but should be framed on
the long‐term, and not limited to spontaneous “engagement” or “usage”.
From the community media perspective, Francesco Diasio, General Secretary AMARC‐
Europe, stressed that the dialogue between broadcasters and academics differs according to
specific social contexts within the “diverse movement of community radio” in Europe, “We
have some particular cases where there is dialogue – for instance, media literacy which is one of
the topics that is very important for us.”
In this context, Gabriela Velics, Board Member of Community Media Forum Europe,
explicated instances of fruitful relationships among academia and community media, where
scholarly attention was labelled as “useful”. “[P]ractitioners at community television stations who
are focused on their tasks are often surprised that their job is interesting for research by highly
87
academic people. /…/ When they are presented with results they are happy and proud by the
process, by being part of it. They also use the results for focusing and pushing the strengths of their
operation and for adjusting and correcting the weaknesses.”
However, Diasio stressed that in some cases “this dialogue is nonexistent” or that
“academic processes are often too late”, because “The dialogue should be smoother, following
the fast changes in the community radio sector. /…/ At the same time, we talk about experience on
the grassroots level and activism where sometimes people are more focused on doing things rather
than reflecting on a wider concept of what they are doing.”
In the context of civil society activities, Julie Uldam, who positions herself as “an
academic but also as an activist” (with all the difficulties this combined identity entails),
acknowledged that activists can find “sympathy and understanding” in their attempts to engage
in politics differently, “Academia helps to shed light on nuances and show that activist are not
always villains. Academia can ask questions what kind of democracy we are defending and what
kind of democracy we are envisioning.”
Focussing on institutionalized politics Stefan Lazarević, State Secretary from the
Serbian Ministry for Telecommunications, said “the dialogue with academia is very
important”, particularly in the processes of shaping policies and legislature, “This year I will try
hard to establish such a dialogue. When I ask them to help me in the shortterm projects, they really
help me. It is a good help. But I would like to have a longterm help – to help me shape the future
and to establish paths for future state secretaries and ministers that will come and deal with
similar issues. I have a lot of questions for them, but I do not get the answers I am looking for.” At
the same time, Lazarević stressed that the absence of the dialogue between the government and
academics can result in “collapses” of larger projects, such was the state’s attempt to sell the
Serbian telecommunications company, due to the academia’s critical voices in the public and
their influences of the public opinion.
HOW TO ESTABLISH THE DIALOGUE?
The second salient topic of the discussion was the question of how to establish and
maintain the dialogue between academia and community media, civil society activists, and the
government institutions. Through the discussion different barriers that limit these dialogue
bonds were identified – “reluctance” of academics to engage in politics (in the narrow sense of
the word), difficulties of shaping “common interests” with the community media, and troubles
of finding compatible “standpoints” in striving for democracy.
First, Stefan Lazarević stressed that academics often share their opinion in the media,
but at the same time believe that their engagement would hardly change anything. “Sometimes it
appears that they think they are losing time and that nothing will change if they act.” Lazarević
also acknowledged that the academics are often “reluctant” to cooperate with either the
government or the opposition as they fear of being politically abused. Therefore he personally
visited different departments in order to establish the dialogue for the policy making processes.
“They think that the government’s invitations to establish the dialogue are not trustworthy and
only rarely there is initiative from their [academics’] side. Therefore, I will push for the dialogue.”
88
Second, Francesco Diasio emphasised that the community media sector “should be
more active in building a dialogue”. Diasio particularly mentioned the “European Agenda” in
respect to initiatives from the European Union, the Council of Europe and the European Platform
of Regulatory Authorities as a potential field of “common interests” of community media and
academia. “We should find a way to cooperate and should work together. Sometimes we have our
own view, but sometimes general view by the academics can frame the argument better. /…/ Let’s
do it together.” In this context, Gabriela Velics stressed that academia should think how to
prove its “usefulness” also through the dialogue with community media. According to Velics this
appears rather difficult during the current economic crisis where profit is the imperative,
“Because the government is focusing on the economy, the university without ties to the economic
world can hardly been portrayed as useful.”
Third, Julie Uldam said that different models of cooperation exist between academia and
activism, thus there are different ways of building this dialogue. She stressed that “standpoints”
when thinking about the society are often not compatible which makes the establishment of the
connection difficult. At the same time, scepticism toward academic research can be observed
within activist groups, “When people from the academia research activism there is scepticism –
they are sometimes seen as consultants for the cops.”
HOW TO INCORPORATE THE AUDIENCE INTO THE DIALOGUE?
The final focal point of the roundtable discussion was tied to the question how the
audience as stakeholder can become more involved in particular societal arenas – not only
through institutionalized forms. Again, the particular societal positions of the representatives at
the roundtable defined the way they understand the notion of political participation and see the
ways citizens (could) get incorporated into the dialogue.
For instance, Francesco Diasio emphasised the “difficulties to involve the audience”.
However, he identified audience members’ engagement within the community radio stations on
two levels. On the one hand, the audience can engage in the phases of the production process
inside the newsroom: “radios are open to such participation”. On the other hand, the audience
can become involved also through the station in other fields, stimulating their civic engagement.
“Many community radio stations have the capacity to involve people in particular struggles, to
reinforce the call for public demonstrations or petitions. In some sense they can amplify the voice of
the people or the audience. The level of participation is less conceptual but more practical. /…/
That is something significant.”
In this regard, Gabriela Velics exemplified the research she conducted in a small
Hungarian community. This research showed that citizens are rather indifferent to the model of
the local radio. “They want one radio. If it is commercial, public, or community local radio is not
really an issue. They want to listen to good music and local information.”
Further, according to Julie Uldam, the best way to bring in audience would be through
close and frequent interactions. On the daily basis, stressed Uldam, the role of activists (who also
represent the citizens) is mostly tied to the question how to get people understand the issues
that are central to the activists. “And through that we can reach wider audiences.”
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From the government perspective, Stefan Lazarević acknowledged that the Serbian
Ministry for Telecommunications favours “the public debate”. “When it is difficult to understand
the law we always organize roundtables, explain it to the particular group that is most interested
in it and help them understand the law that is being proposed.” At the same time, Lazarević said
that they engage with citizens not only offline, but also online, “We are publishing everything on
our webpage – all the comments people sent. We also communicate with them through Twitter and
Facebook and giving them answers to the questions they are interested in. We sometimes even
organize a meeting on the issues they are mostly interested in online.”
***
The round table indicated the depth of the discussion on the roles of academia as a
critical and semi‐autonomous field in the development of ideas of interactivity and participation
in its relations with the community media, civil society institutions and the government. The
representatives of different institutions agreed that the dialogue with the academia is important,
but not strong enough as it is often framed only on a short‐term. Therefore they propose that the
dialogue should overcome the limitations of spontaneous engagement of academics or usage of
their conduct in different societal sectors. In order to build stronger bonds, institutional actors
should approach academia differently, that is, in accordance with the roles in societal life taken
by civil society organizations, media and the governement. The reluctance of academics to
engage in everyday politics should be reduced and common goals with civil society, and, for
instance, community media should be established. Also the differences with activists in
understanding cooperation among people in the strive for democracy should be overcome.
Additionally, the round table participants also understand the audience as an important
stakeholder, not only within their particular agendas, but also in facilitating public participation
and in building citizenship.
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PART III.
The Role of Media and ICT Use
for Evolving Social Relationships
91
‘OLD’ & ‘NEW’ MEDIA: THEORETICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
J. Ignacio Gallego, Spain, jigalleg@hum.uc3m.es
Leader of the Task Force 1 on ‘“Old” and “New” Media: Theoretical and Technological Perspectives’
in Working Group 3 ‘The role of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships’
Brian O'Neill, Ireland, brian.oneill@dit.ie
Leader of the Task Force 1 on ‘“Old” and “New” Media: Theoretical and Technological Perspectives’
in Working Group 3 ‘The role of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships’
INTRODUCTION
The overall theme of Working Group 3, ‘The role of media and ICT use for evolving social
relationships’, investigates how evolving patterns of use by audiences of diverse media, old and
new, contribute to new modes of social interaction. Our focus in this Task Force is on the
relationship – and frequently tension – between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media forms, particularly how
the transition to a fully converged media environment is managed and experienced by both
consumers and producers. The purpose of this short essay is to discuss some of the principal
ways in which the work of the Task Force may be significant for external stakeholders.
Researchers participating in the Task Force have experience across a wide range of topics,
including public service broadcasting, online virtual communities, radio and new media,
language usage and communication patterns in and through digital media, political participation
via new media and young people’s use of the internet. In our individual research, we have
contributed in a variety of ways to policy, professional practice and civil society. As the work of
the Task Force develops we have pooled our experience to focus specifically on the media
industry perspective on audiences, examining sources of industry knowledge about audiences,
how this is facilitated by new kinds of data and what expectations today’s media producers have
regarding their viewers’ and listeners’ media skills and habits.
MAKING RESEARCH ACCESSIBLE
There is a consensus among participants in the Task Force that research should have
relevance for society. As active researchers in the field of digital communication, we are
conscious of the extraordinary range of developments brought about by the digital revolution
and the way in which contemporary social, cultural, economic and political life has been
transformed by new media technologies. The need for communication scholars to formulate
research in ways that engage more directly with society as well as to better communicate their
own involvement in socially‐relevant research have recently been topics of some debate in the
academy.22 Engagement necessitates, in part, a better understanding of societal needs, improved
opportunities for dialogue between researchers and stakeholders, and developing the
appropriate kinds of interdisciplinary research required to meet the fast‐evolving challenges of
today’s communications landscape.
22
(2013). Communication Scholars Need to Communicate. Retrieved August 4, 2013, from
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/07/29/essay‐state‐communications‐scholarship.
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Our Task Force builds on a substantial body of experience of working with diverse
stakeholders.
Firstly, as academics within a predominantly publicly‐funded university system our
research contributes to theoretical and practical knowledge made available for a variety of social
purposes. This is most evident through participation in programmes for research such as EU
Framework 6 and 7 which typically bring together publicly funded research and education
institutions, policy makers, as well as small and medium sized enterprises to address a range of
issues relevant to social and economic development in Europe. Involvement in such Framework
research projects dedicated to understanding the evolving digital ecosystem is vital for citizens
in general and through large‐scale international projects, scientific knowledge is made
accessible to a wider audience.
Secondly, researchers on an individual level have been active in promoting wider
understanding of research through active participation in professional, civil society and various
non‐governmental organisations. Members of the Task Force have served on boards of public
media authorities, advisory committees for media regulatory authorities, leaders in community
media organisations, etc.
Thirdly, the Task Force has also been proactive in identifying relevant stakeholder
groups to whom research can be presented. Through participation in some of the COST Action‐
supported research initiatives such as ‘E‐Audiences – A comparative study of European media
audiences’, ‘Global protests: Active audiences’ voices and their alternative multimedia’ and ‘Old
media institutions – New media strategies’, Task Force members have identified specific
stakeholder groups for whom research will be significant and have modelled their research
priorities in such a way as to maximise impact and relevance.
WHICH STAKEHOLDERS?
Task Force participants have identified the following stakeholder groups as particularly
relevant for its research:
1) Government and policy makers: Our general approach is to support policy making
relating to media through provision of a robust evidence base. Our research deals with new
media trends, uses, problems encountered, and identifies gaps where new research needs to be
undertaken. In the most general sense, government and media regulatory agencies are thus one
of the primary groups for our research whereby we can advise on new media developments and
audience needs.
2) Representative media organisations: Given the focus of our research around
existing media institutions and organisations, their experiences of convergence and strategies
for future development, we feel it is important to fully engage with professional media
organisations to disseminate research and bring findings from comparative studies to wider
attention among professional media networks. Examples of organisations with whom we have
interacted in the past include the European Broadcasting Union, the International Federation of
Journalists, and at national level representative media organisations in Spain, Ireland, Poland,
Slovenia, Germany and Israel.
93
3) Professional media workers/producers: The Task Force project, ‘Old media
institutions ‐ New media strategies’, entails interviewing media professionals in a number of
different European countries and in different media forms. While the primary purpose is to
collect data on media organisations’ perspectives on audiences and audience transformation, the
research process itself is also a dialogue with a key stakeholder group, namely professional
media workers, and a valuable opportunity to critically reflect on professional media processes.
4) NGOs and civil society: With particular interests in fostering understanding and use
of new media technologies to enhance democratic participation, Task Force members envisage
research being of value to organisations in the public sphere. For instance, questions being
studied include: Why in some countries direct democracy works better than in others? What are
the pros and cons of political e‐participation? How can ICT contribute, so that decisions of the
state bodies are more congruent with those of citizens? Agency 23 and activism are core concerns
and in this context researchers are involved in providing a means for personal and collective
empowerment, national public opinion change, and government policy change.
THE TASK FORCE PROJECT
In order to focus the research effort of the Task Force, we decided to combine our efforts
on a single comparative research project that would illustrate in different countries and in
different media forms, how media organisations are adapting their strategies to take account of
audience transformations. The project ‘Old media institutions ‐ New media strategies’ revises in
a different context a set of research questions posed by communications scholar Ien Ang in her
classic 1990s study Desperately Seeking the Audience 24 which investigated how institutionally‐
produced knowledge of the audience (through ratings systems, commercial television audience
segmentation etc.) stood in marked contrast to the ‘real world of audiences’. Our focus in this
project is to take into account the dramatically different and substantially more powerful
techniques of gathering data from audiences, asking how these might contribute to an altered
institutional understanding of audiences, their identities and associated capacities or media
literacies. Leading US audience researcher, Philip Napoli, has characterised the contemporary
technologies of data analytics and metrics as powerful tools for redefining how media industries
relate to their audiences.25 We set out to investigate this further by looking at three sectors –
press, radio and television – in a number of European countries and to gather information
directly from media executives about the data that informs their understanding and
conceptualisation of their audience. Acknowledging that media industries operate in distinct
markets and respond to particular needs, we take the national context as the primary unit of
comparison and further seek to explore how different parts of the media industry respond,
comparing quality newspapers with the more popular press; public broadcasting versus private,
commercial forms, and so on.
23
Agency, in a social sciences context, refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to
make their own free choices.
24
Ien, A. (1991). Desperately seeking the audience. London: Routledge.
Napoli, P. M. (2011). Audience evolution: New technologies and the transformation of media audiences.
Columbia University Press.
25
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The study design involves interviews with representative media executives or leaders in
each of the three media industry sectors drawn respectively from the elite/quality/public
service end of the market and with representatives from the popular and commercial end. The
research seeks to balance both so‐called ‘highbrow media’ with its emphasis on journalistic
quality with so‐called ‘lowbrow media’ with its corresponding emphasis on the business side of
the media enterprise. The assumption here is that while both sections of the industry have
access to similar techniques of audience data collection, there are different drivers or market
pressures on their respective operations leading potentially to a differing emphasis and
conceptualisation of their target audience groups. The key distinction here is not so much
between ‘high’ and ‘low’ ends of the market but rather the reason why the outlet concerned is
primarily trying to reach its audiences.
The framework of the analysis is divided into four main sections.
1) Conceptualisation of the audience: Our interest here is to probe and investigate
further how media organisations understand their audience. Under this heading, we ask media
executives to describe how they define their typical core audience or readership. We ask about
the kinds of information available relating to audiences’ consumption habits available to media
leaders and how this has informed a view of when and how audience behaviours have changed
or evolved. Importantly, we also try to understand how companies or organisations have
adapted to take account of a shift from ‘old’ to ‘new’ media.
2) Uses of audience measurement: Here, we ask if audience measurement methods
used by so‐called traditional media organisations are sufficiently adapted to the new media
paradigm. If so, do the techniques of tracking audience behaviours provide valuable information
from the perspective of producing media content. Has it been useful, for instance, in adapting
approaches to editorial or audience targeting strategies or how has it resulted in the
development of new offerings? Furthermore, we enquire also about the limitations of currently
available audience measurement systems. While large volumes of data are available, the
techniques for extracting useful knowledge are still very much in development. There is also the
gap that Ang so pointedly referred to, between institutionally constructed knowledge and the
‘real world of audiences’, however knowable that may be.
3) Promoting audience participation: A widely recognised feature of the new media
landscape is the fact that it facilitates ever greater levels of participation and input on the part of
audiences. Fundamentally different to the mass communication paradigm based on a linear
transmission model of ‘one to many’, new media are characterised by interactivity and
networked connectivity. While a fundamental transformation from completely passive to a fully
active audiencehood may be overstated, the degree to which traditional media institutions have
incorporated new opportunities to foster audience participation is highly significant. We ask,
therefore, how companies have gone about the task of promoting new modes of audience
participation. What, from their perspective, are the most important ways in which audiences
now participate and with what effect? Importantly, have there any attempts from a media
industry perspective to evaluate the nature of new patterns of audience contribution to media
content production and if this has had consequent impact on engagement and affiliation on the
part of audiences?
95
4) Strategies to engage younger audiences and promote media literacy: Finally, in
the context of an evolving new media audience paradigm, we enquire if companies have adopted
any particular strategies to attract and to engage younger audiences, often the presumed early
adopters of new platforms and new technologies. We ask if companies have adopted any formal
involvement in sector‐wide efforts to educate audiences, raise awareness of new media
opportunities (and risks) and to contribute in any particular to efforts to stimulate media
literacy. Media literacy is a multifaceted concept involving varying elements of practical and
cognitive skill and the ability on the part of audiences to use those skills creatively and
critically.26 Given the prominence of debates about media literacy within regulatory discourse
for the new media sphere, we have used this as an opportunity to gauge the extent to which
companies themselves have adopted particular strategies around the concept.
In order to ensure comparability, this core set of issues is used as a guide for interviews
for each sector and in each country participating in the study. Clearly, there will be significant
differences between media industries and between the contrasting cultural contexts, leading to
potentially striking differences. However, our aim is to attempt to understand the common
trends evident across the media as it grapples with the challenges of transformation in modes of
delivery and modes of consumption in a converging media system.
HOW THIS KNOWLEDGE CAN BE USEFUL
The objective of this particular research project is to produce knowledge that may be
useful not just for the participants but which through wider dissemination and knowledge
exchange can be the basis for insights into the evolving nature of convergence and identification
of new priorities for research. It is intended that the process of research, through interviews
with leaders of media industries in a range of countries, can be a genuine exchange of
information and experiences. Researchers and media executives inhabit very different worlds
but the dialogue which this research involves can be a basis for learning in both directions: for
researchers about the real contexts and drivers within a fast‐moving industry; for media
executives about the significance that analysis and detailed investigation can bring to issues that
might not otherwise attract attention.
Previous experiences for similar research projects suggest that topics that industry
might take for granted can be hugely important for researchers. Under COST A20, a COST Action
on the impact of the Internet on mass media business processes27, we looked at the diverse
perspectives on digitalisation among leaders in the radio industry. The project culminated in
developing a map of possible future scenarios for radio development that proved invaluable for
policy planning and strategy.28 While on an individual level, industry participants may not have
26
See the definition of media literacy offered by Ofcom as ‘the ability to use, understand and create media
and communications’. (2005). Ofcom | Media Literacy. Retrieved August 4, 2013, from
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/.
27
ISCH COST Action A20. The Impact of the Internet on the Mass Media in Europe. 2011. Retrieved August
5, 2013, from http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/isch/Actions/A20.
28
Ala‐Fossi, M., Lax, S., O'Neill, B., Jauert, P., & Shaw, H. (2008). The future of radio is still digital—but
which one? Expert perspectives and future scenarios for radio media in 2015. Journal of Radio & Audio
96
regarded the topic as particularly noteworthy, the value of collecting data in a comparative way
allowed for an exchange of information across branches of the industry and between countries
in a format that highlighted the state of development and future options.
A crucial outcome of this process of research is also to bring matters of industry concern
to the attention of researchers. Relying exclusively on theoretical assumptions about the nature
of technological convergence or processes of audience participation in the new media
environment fails to capture the unique issues and challenges from the perspective on media
producers. Our approach to the audience in this context is to study the operationalised, practical
version as perceived from the producer’s standpoint. Rather than a theoretical construction, this
is to introduce the very real concerns, which media planners have to contend with into an
academic field that is sometimes dismissive, or at least distant, from the business processes of
producing media. This is not to exclude a critical standpoint or to reduce objectivity: rather it is
to make the study of audiences perhaps more complex by introducing a range of local, transient
and day to day concerns about the challenge of meeting audience expectations and needs.
A further area in which outcomes from the research may be useful is in the practical
application of sharing good practices. Our focus on strategies adopted by industries to
encourage media literacy and foster public understanding of media systems and processes
comes at a time when media industries are being asked to play a more active role in supporting
media literacy. The European Commission’s ‘Strategy for a Better Internet’ for instance calls for
industry to actively support both through their own efforts and through partnerships with
education and with NGOs programmes in media literacy that work to inform and educate
audiences.29 Media literacy first became an important political topic in the context of discussions
of the switchover to digital television and was conceived as an important means of empowering
audiences to understand some of the fundamental changes taking place in the media industry. 30
Sharing best practice in media literacy education is recognised as particularly important. It is
frequently an area in which media industries have little experience and can benefit from
identifying what works in other markets or sectors. For this project, we can compare what has
been attempted and what has proved effective across radio, television and the press and identify
where relevant how different country experiences can provide insights for future development.
CONCLUSION
In seeking to make our research relevant and to communicate it to a wider industry
readership, we have sought to ensure that it responds to topics and challenges that industry
practitioners have cited as important. In the past, communications scholarship has sometimes
struggled with or resisted calls to become more relevant, fearing that it involves losing
Media, 15(1), 4‐25. See also the website for the project: Digital Radio Cultures in Europe ‐ DRACE. 2004.
Retrieved August 5, 2013, from http://www.drace.org/.
29
European Commission. (2012). Communication on The European Strategy for a Better Internet for
Children. Brussels: European Commission.
30
Leaning, M. (2009). Issues in Information and Media Literacy (M. Leaning) (Vol. 1). Informing Science.
Santa Rosa, California: Informing Science Press. See also: O'Neill, B., & Barnes, C. (2008). Media literacy and
the public sphere: a contextual study for public media literacy promotion in Ireland Dublin: Broadcasting
Commission of Ireland.
97
objectivity and rigour. On the contrary, we believe that greater precision and rigour can be a
result of focusing efforts on emergent challenges in the digital ecosystem and that precisely
because of the multifaceted nature of the challenges involved, communications researchers with
their traditional commitment to multidisciplinarity are well‐positioned to make a contribution.
The subject of the Task Force – the transition from old to new media – is an ongoing and
enduring process of evolution and industry change where there are fewer certainties and a
greater reliance on creativity and innovation. It is in this context that diverse perspectives –
from both an industry and an academic standpoint – need to be more widely understood,
assessed and evaluated.
This chapter is based on individual reports by:
Miri Gal‐Ezer, Israel, miri‐gal@012.net.il
Nacho Gallego Perez, Spain, jigalleg@hum.uc3m.es
Stanislaw Jedrzejewski, Poland, stjedrzejewski@gmail.com
Barbara Lewandowska‐ Tomaszczyk, Poland, blt@uni.lodz.pl
Boris Mance, Slovenia, Boris.Mance@fdv.uni‐lj.si
Brian O’Neill, Ireland, brian.oneill@dit.ie
Frauke Zeller, UK & Germany, fraukezeller@gmail.com
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METHODS AND SOFTWARE FOR STUDYING SOCIAL MEDIA AND SOCIAL NETWORK
SITES
Jakob Linaa Jensen, Denmark, linaa@imv.au.dk
Leader of Task Force 2 on ‘New media, new methodological approaches: Methodological horizons of
social relationships and ICT’ in Working Group 3 ‘The role of media and ICT use for evolving social
relationships’
INTRODUCTION
This report is compiling the useful insights from around Working Group 3 of use and
relevance from the perspective of Task Force 2, addressing research methods and software for
studying social media in general, specifically social network sites.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND SOCIETAL IMPACT
Social media are the most prominent example of what Jenkins (2006) has called a
participatory media culture, which has evolved due to the establishment of new information and
communication technologies. Users consider themselves as experts and share their experiences
and tips in forums and blogs. With the possibilities of social media to provide text, photo, audio
and video, new opportunities of social participation arise. Digital media and web technology
enable to form new networks and communities, allowing for an increase in distribution of
information and communication between the individuals who use this technology. These low‐
threshold structures of communication cause that an exchange on private and intimate issues
takes place online.
A highly relevant aspect when focusing on social media methods and approaches is that
of convergence. The concept of convergence addresses three main areas related to this Task
Force. These areas are targeted at all levels of society—micro, meso, and macro:
•
Microlevel: Convergence of user and producer: The focus is on civic practices
with social media, e.g. research directions such as produsage31 (Bruns, 2009) and
the new forms of media production and reception.
•
Mesolevel: Convergence within organizations: The focus is on organisations as
meaning‐making communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). How do they adapt new
technologies within their local and global community borders?
•
Macrolevel: Convergence within society: The focus is on monitoring processes
and digital media adoption on a societal level. Have the main actors of society
changed? What is the (new) role of traditional media outlets, political actors and
industries? And how, in turn, have the expectations of citizens changed?
31
By ‘produsage’, Bruns refers to the changing and converging roles of media users which are now often
users and producers at the same time.
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WHAT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED SO FAR, SEEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THIS TASK FORCE?
For the specific benefits of the members of the Task Force, this COST Action has been a
tool for networking with researchers across Europe who are interested in social media, not at
least in identifying and evaluating available research methods and software. It has been
interesting to summarize what is going on, and it has been highly useful to learn from
experiences, from those using methods and techniques as well as from those developing new
software and methods. The aim of the Task Force, which is to create a concerted European
research agenda within the field, is on its way to be fulfilled, so we in the future might be able to
cooperate in bigger teams rather than in isolated groups who all try to invent ‘the deep plate’ on
their own.
As part of this, the members of the Task Force, lead by Jakob Linaa Jensen, have tried to
establish a map of relevant social media research environments, in Europe and beyond. This
mapping is highly relevant, not only for researchers, but also for external stakeholders
interested in knowing what is going on in which research environments, and where to get the
necessary expertise or advice if encountering a given problem.
In that respect, various of the identified research environments are active in developing
and testing new technologies for analysing social media data, for compiling and analyzing big
data. Examples include:
• Digital Humanities Lab, Denmark, directed by Aarhus University: national
Danish center of excellence aimed at facilitating and developing software‐aided
research within the humanities. Software is tested and sometimes developed, also
within the field of social media and social network analysis. Key persons are Niels
Brügger and Niels Ole Finnemann.
• University of Ghent, Belgium: research unit with Cédric Courtois, Peter Mechant,
Pieter Verdegeem and others, focusing on using APIs as research tools and on
developing new methods for applied research. APIs are technologies inherent in
Internet services that can be used for retrieving and analyzing data.
• University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Richard Rogers is leading The
Digital Methods Initiative. Other names are Sabine Niederer and Esther
Weltevrede. It is basically a collaboration including several outside institutions as
well. The aim is to study and develop digital methods for social sciences. One of the
best examples is Richard Rogers’ IssueCrawler, which is an easy‐to‐use program
for mapping link structures and relations between websites, for instance very
appropriate for web sphere analysis.
• Universities of Urbino and Bologna, Italy: special interest group on social
network analysis, lead by Luca Rossi and Matteo Magnani who are developing
network analysis software as well as using it for applied research.
WRITTEN OUTPUTS RELEVANT TO THE TASK FORCE AND RELATED STAKEHOLDERS
The work so far has resulted in a special double issue of the Journal of Technology in
Human Services, which has been published as a book as well (Bredl, Hünniger & Linaa Jensen,
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2013) (http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415818322/). 12 researchers from
Europe and the wider world have discussed various research methodologies, from the very
general framework approach to the very specific new software. These articles are highly
relevant, not only for academics but also for corporations (not at least for those within the field
of media advisory, strategic communication and marketing). Further, government and non‐
government organisations might benefit from the insights, for understanding social media and
selecting appropriate strategies for their use.
Furthermore, several colleagues from WG3 and especially this Task Force contributed to
the COST Action edited book Audience Research Methodologies. Between Innovation and
Consolidation
(Patriarche,
Bilandzic,
Linaa
Jensen
&
Jurisic,
2013)
(http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415827355/). The topics included everything
from specific technical approaches, for example, to study Twitter, to more general accounts of
setting up frameworks for analyzing user practices on social network sites like Facebook.
Both publications address ethical implications for online research. This is important for
policy makers in the area of media. Especially regulatory bodies, legislative and executive, are
confronted with these issues. There is also an interest of the general public to get insight in the
mechanisms of online communication. It is important for journalists to get insight into the state
of the art of online research and to access scientific results of studies on new media in order to
provide a reflective and up‐to‐date coverage of social media phenomena and their societal
consequences.
In general, the articles from the COST Action books and the special journal issues,
organised by this and other Task Forces, will be highly relevant to a range of stakeholders,
especially companies operating within the field of social media research and marketing. The
articles provides solidly funded and ground‐breaking analyses which might add to the insights
already achieved by social media corporations.
BUILDING BRIDGES – GENERATING NEW FORMS OF COOPERATION
Besides mapping and writing, an essential outcome of the COST Action from the
perspective of the Task Force, is the bridging of knowledge, critical perspectives on different
levels of society, and the methods of diverse disciplines. The dynamic landscape of emerging
digital media is motivated, catalyzed and shaped by the exigencies of social communication and
language, as evidenced in the increasing relevance of social networks and the interdependence
of this evolving communication paradigm with mobile digital technology infrastructures.
Likewise, given the centrality of information communication technologies to Europe’s
economic future, informed perspectives in technology studies, e‐business and the socio‐
economics of a digitized civic culture are the necessary pillars of a holistic approach to digital
media and communication research.
The COST Action has achieved building these kinds of bridges, first and foremost
between various European research environments within the field of social media research, a
bridge‐building which is highly needed in order to form a concerted European research agenda –
and not invent something brand new twice. We expect many interesting future co‐operations
emerging from this more collective research agenda. Our catalogue of available research
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methods and software is being constantly updated and is one of our dedicated efforts to reach
external stakeholders, corporate or governmental.
WHAT STAKEHOLDERS MIGHT NEED TO KNOW
One key insight of the Action is that research and policy should refocus attention – from
media as entities to communication as processes. While it remains easy to exaggerate the
empowering potentials of new media for users beyond established interests, it is the case that
the digital media environment is challenging common conceptions of ‘media’ and raising
important questions concerning the flow of communication in society across both media and
non‐media organisations.
One way of approaching this situation is to think of communication in terms of a three
step flow (Jensen, 2009, 2010). Communication occurs one‐to‐one, one‐to‐many, as well as
many‐to‐many in new patterns that research is only beginning to uncover. Further research,
including culturally comparative studies, is needed in this regard. Within multi‐step flows of
communication, a key issue that continues to receive too little attention in research is face‐to‐
face communication (f2f). F2f is a central moment in the distribution of essential information in
society; f2f is increasingly integrated with ICTs in everyday contexts of work as well as leisure,
as exemplified by mobile media.
Below are some more specific questions, which we think are relevant to various groups
of stakeholders:
Politicians and policy makers:
‐ What is the potential of social media for political communication?
‐ How can the politicians and policy makers involve the citizens in political decisions
using social media?
‐ How should they interact with journalists and individual citizens using social media?
Journalists:
‐ What are the dynamics between social media and traditional media?
‐ How can journalists develop new work forms by the approaches and information
available through social media?
‐ How should they interact with politicians/policy makers and individual citizens using
social media?
Civil Society:
‐ How can social media facilitate public involvement and (potentially) influence?
‐ Do social media have the potential to serve as a public sphere?
Market:
‐ What are the flows of communication in society?
‐ Understanding social media and thereby getting a more balanced approach to new
technologies as the solution for purposes of marketing, branding, public relations, etc.
SPECIFIC EXAMPLES WHERE STAKEHOLDERS HAVE ALREADY BENEFITED
1) Industry sources and content providers: While industry commissions also conduct
their own research, the value of academically‐focused, independently produced audience
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research is appreciated and on occasion can exert important influence. The European research
project ‘EU Kids Online’ (http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/Home.aspx) has
produced extensive empirical work for policy makers but it has also been useful – and is widely
cited – by leading industry players.
2) News media and opinion formers: Another relevant and important audience for
research and for whom data is always useful are the news media themselves. By interactions
between researchers and media the latter might be better equipped to distinguish between
robust, scientifically‐conducted research and some of the less solid founded, often hyped,
findings which sometimes find their way onto the news. This form of dissemination operates
both at the European level (in conjunction with major events or announcements) but even more
so at the national level where individual researchers draw on their own contacts and local
knowledge of the issues and gaps in public discourse. In Denmark, the COST‐based project ‘E‐
Audiences – A comparative study of European media audiences’ includes participation from,
among others, the main Danish public service broadcaster, DR, which bears witness to the
relevance of studies comparing audiences – across media and across cultures – for key players in
the current media environment. Within the ‘E‐Audiences’ project, some scholars are also
affiliated with private web development and analysis companies for whom the design is of
interest and value.
3) Civil society and NGOs: Co‐producers as well as users of research are various NGO
groups operating at the forefront of applied research, identifying new issues or problems and
highlighting needs long before other policy actors. NGOs have been important partners in
facilitating research, supporting access and underlining the relevance and the significance of the
project for wider audiences.
SPECIFIC FUTURE AREAS WHERE EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS CAN BENEFIT FROM THE WORK DONE
Here we will emphasize three areas:
1) Market research and user studies: Social scientists, and particularly audience and
reception researchers, have the necessary skills to contribute to the technological development
of Internet infrastructures with the necessary user studies’ data. Particularly when it comes to
designing and programming new digital environments for business transactions, our inputs
might be useful for programmers and the computer scientists: How to design the interfaces,
what are the users’ expectations and how do they receive these new environments? Above all,
research departments of media companies will benefit from the presented research and the new
methodologies developed in this context for analyzing the phenomena related to the use of new
media in connection with mass or ‘old’ media.
2) Policy making and governance: Our research results are also being used by policy
and decision makers regarding the structuring and governance of these new digital
environments. A big advantage of the COST Action is, for example, its broad scope in terms of
participating nations. Developing policies and governance issues on the European level is an
intricate and complex process, which needs to be enriched by concrete results that take into
account the different member states’ legal and societal frameworks.
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3) Schools and other agencies working with young people: The insights achieved by
developing and discussing research methods and software also tell us something about the
nature of social media, social network sites and their users and can be used to provide guidelines
for designing pro‐social media content. This is particularly relevant for schools, all kinds of
educators and for the police and others operating in an environment of youth culture, where
social media might be facilitators for education, non‐violence and mutual respect.
REFERENCES
Bredl, K., Hünniger, J. & Linaa Jensen, J. (eds.). 2013. Methods for Analyzing Social Media. London:
Routledge.
Bruns, A. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond. From Production to Produsage. New
York: Peter Lang.
Jenkins, H. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York
University Press.
Jensen, K. B. 2009. “Three‐step flow”. Journalism, 10 (3), 335‐337.
Jensen, K. B. 2010. Media convergence: The three degrees of network, mass and interpersonal
communication. London: Routledge.
Patriarche, G., Bilandzic, H., Linaa Jensen, J. & Jurisic, J. (eds.). 2013. Audience Research
Methodologies: Between Innovation and Consolidation. London: Routledge.
Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
This chapter is based on individual reports by:
Klaus Bredl, Germany, bredl@phil.uni‐augsburg.de
Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Denmark, kbj@hum.ku.dk
Pieter Verdegem, Belgium, Pieter.Verdegem@UGent.be
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MEDIA AND GENERATIONS: AN OVERVIEW OF THE MAIN TOPICS AND OF THEIR
RELEVANCE FOR THE STAKEHOLDERS
Andra Siibak, Estonia, andras@ut.ee
Leader of the Task Force 3 on ‘Generations and mediated relationships’ in Working Group 3 ‘The role
of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships’
Nicoletta Vittadini, Italy, nicoletta.vittadini@unicatt.it
Leader of the Task Force 3 on ‘Generations and mediated relationships’ in Working Group 3 ‘The role
of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships’
INTRODUCTION
The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the main topics of research the
members of the Task Force on ‘Media and generations’ (WG3) have been engaged with as well as
to highlight their main relevance to the stakeholders. The chapter is based on eight individual
reports provided by the members of WG3 who deal with the concept of generations from
different angles and in different cultural contexts (in particular Germany, Ireland, Israel, Estonia,
Norway, Turkey, Czech Republic).
The concept of generation in those individual reports refers both to a demographic
perspective, which sees generations as age cohorts of people who were born and happen to live
at about the same time, and to a cultural definition of generation, which stresses that
generations are constituted on the basis of shared experience of the same formative events and
collective memory. According to the latter approach, each generation has its own so‐called
‘generational identity’. The way generation members experience media and technologies in their
formative years shapes some features of their audience practices, and influences their evolution
in the course of the whole lifecycle. The cultural approach, in other words, stresses the
relationship between generations and media audiences.
OVERVIEW OF THE TASK FORCE ON ‘MEDIA AND GENERATIONS’
The work of several scholars from WG3 (O’Neill, Vinter & Siibak, Hagen, Yumlu) has dealt
with the role of new media technology and the Internet in young people’s lives, focusing both on
the opportunities related to new media use (digital literacy, content creation, entertainment and
communication, civic engagement) as well as possible risks involved (cyber bullying, online
harassment, commercial risks). All of these studies help to provide greater insight into the
processes of adoption of new media technologies (computers, mobile phones) and the possible
consequences of making use of these applications.
Some WG3 scholars (Hagen, Kvale Sørenssen) have also been studying topics around the
commercialization of childhood, e.g. media and consumer competence, commercial and peer
pressure towards children online, the use of media and children’s social networks to create
brand loyalty.
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Studies on older adults’ ICT use and its possible effects on the lives of the elderly
(Reifova, Gal‐Ezer) as well as studies regarding differences between generations and their
adoption of digital technologies have also been carried out (see Vittadini et al., 2013).
Studies on the effects of traditional media (e.g. television use, the mass media’s potential
for social norm‐setting) have been a bit less common among the WG3 scholars working in the
field of media and generations (Bilandzic).
In the next few pages, we will give an overview of the main sub‐topics that have emerged
from the studies that highlight the aspects in which research could reach out for social practice.
We will start by highlighting studies related to children and young people and then we will
propose some insights regarding different generations (for example older people) and the
differences between generations.
CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE
1. Education
The first area scholars working on the topic of generations in general and young people
and children in particular are interested in is education. In fact, research done in this field can be
integrated in educational contexts in several ways:
•
Various media resources could be used for carrying out prosocial
interventions. For instance, fictional books, TV series or films could be
successfully used to stimulate specific target groups to reflect on their behaviour
(e.g. young offenders) (Bilandzic).
•
Educators could collaborate with students in developing new genres and
content creation procedures. Educational assignments could be compiled in
order to engage young people in new creative ways in content creation both for
offline and online mediums, e.g. creating content for cross‐media formats.
Furthermore, these new genres and content creation procedures can also serve the
(unprivileged) adult population in need of social assistance – e.g. the poor, the
disabled, elderly citizens, new immigrants and other disempowered members of
the public – by providing them with additional opportunities for self‐
empowerment (Gal‐Ezer).
2. Policy
The second area in which researchers from WG3 have made an impact while carrying out
studies about young people and children is policy. Several of the scholars working in the field of
media and generations emphasized the need for evidence‐based policy making, especially
relating to regulation and awareness‐raising issues related to risks and opportunities of digital
technologies.
•
A need for evidencebased policy making: Constant and detailed research is
needed about new media trends, uses and problems encountered to fill the gaps in
the evidence base. Thus, government departments need to liaise closely with
researchers so as to produce independent authoritative research (O’Neill).
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•
Curriculum reform on the level of preschools and primary schools: Scholars
report that there is a growing need to include media education in the curricula of
pre‐schools and primary schools as in several countries (e.g. Estonia) present
teacher education system does not support awareness‐raising among teachers on
the topic of media education. It is proposed that media education in pre‐schools
could include a variety of tasks, for example, interpreting media messages with
children, do‐it‐yourself tasks, expressing oneself through the means of media, and
learning about technical means. Furthermore, media education, computer training
and didactics of media education should be included in the teacher training
courses of pre‐schools teachers (Vinter & Siibak).
3. Opinion leaders
Studies on younger generations, especially about new media, also have high relevance to
opinion leaders.
•
Awarenessraising regarding risks and opportunities for youth engagement
with
online
technologies:
Politicians,
policy
makers,
NGOs,
teachers
psychologists, family councillors, etc. need to be better informed about the
potential benefits (e.g. content creation, civic activism, self presentation, etc.)
children and young people can gain from the use of media and ICT, as well as the
potential risks of media and Internet use (e.g. being exposed to paedophiles,
meeting extremists and fanatics, risk to be bullied or harassed online, commercial
pressures, etc), hence, such topics should be part of their training (Hagen, Yumlu).
Researchers may provide helpful information to the media and journalists about
the distinction between robust, scientifically conducted research and the poorly
constructed, sensationalist data that are frequently distributed to journalists
(O’Neill). All the above‐mentioned parties could then help to inform the general
public and thereby create a more complex understanding of young people as
consumers and users of new media and their relationship with peers, parents,
school, and the media (Kvale Sørenssen).
4. Civil society
The fourth area where studies about younger generations should have a greater impact
is civil society. In particular:
•
Establishing partnerships with NGOs: Various NGOs that are operating at the
forefront of applied research should be more often viewed as co‐producers as well
as users of research. In case of the former, the ideal way would be to find a way to
combine the applied interest with a theoretical question (Bilandzic). In case of the
latter, partnership with NGOs would enable the researchers to identify new issues
or problems and highlight the needs long before other policy actors (O’Neill).
Furthermore, NGOs could also be engaged in helping to provide a more complex
understanding of young people as consumers amongst the general public (Kvale
Sørenssen).
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5. Industry and content providers
Generation studies about children and young people should also provide valuable input
to the industry and content providers.
•
Creating media content for educational purposes, i.e. making use of
entertainmenteducation approaches: Content providers could be more active
in creating content (TV or radio shows, etc.) with specific education goals in mind.
Such content could be used for promoting various attitudes and behaviours, e.g.
individual responsibility, good governance, tolerance for other ethnic and religious
groups, relationships between generations (youth and their parents) as well as
respectful gender relationships (Bilandzic).
DIFFERENT GENERATIONS AND DIGITAL AUDIENCES
Despite the social and cultural relevance of children and young people and the interest
that these studies have for different stakeholders (as stated in the previous paragraph), other
generations (for example the so‐called ‘Boomers’ or ‘Millennials’) and the relationships between
different generations are equally socially and culturally relevant.
In many European countries the generation of Boomers, the so‐called Generation X and
the Millennials are more numerous than the younger. And in different countries the generations
who use the Internet, social network sites and mobile devices the most are members of
Generation X or Boomers. Obviously demographics and the lifecycle position of those people
contribute to this. These generations at present are made of people who work (i.e. who are
neither students or retired) and have the opportunity to use digital technologies at work and the
economic resources to buy smart‐phones. At the same time, this trend suggests that besides
young people and children, there are three (and more, including the ‘Silver Surfers’) different
generations engaged in using the same digital technologies and applications. Besides children
and young people – often called the digital natives – there are generations of so‐called digital
immigrants and late adopters who however also use digital technologies. The coexistence of
different generations (and not only age groups) is, then, a core aspect of contemporary digital
audiences (or users).
This aspect raises an important issue: the difference between generations. On the one
hand, these differences can be described through national and European surveys, which aim to
document which applications, devices or software the members of each generation use. On the
other hand, a qualitative or cultural analysis of the differences between generations (or the
specificity of each generation) is crucial to illustrate which values and meaning each generation
attributes to digital technologies. Each generation – on the cultural level – is characterized by a
so‐called generational identity, which includes shared historical, cultural and media experiences.
Thus we can say that the above‐mentioned generations are also ‘media generations’, which
could be defined as ‘collectively produced, shared and processed responses to the availability or
pervasiveness of particular technology, which becomes an element of generational identity’
(Vittadini et al., 2013, p. 66). We can argue that each generation uses digital technologies
according to their media habits (or ‘habitus’, according to the French sociologist Bourdieu), in
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accordance to the representation of the media landscape that they developed during their
formative years, and the technologies and the rituals of the everyday life that characterize them.
Therefore, each generation has a different image and different expectations regarding digital
technologies.
The study of these differences between generations, however, can be useful on different
levels:
On the level of marketing and content production:
•
First, such a study can provide a whole comprehension not only of specific targets
(age groups for example) but also of the complex and interrelated landscape of
digital users including both differences in uses and behaviours, and differences in
incorporation processes and values of digital technologies.
•
Second, this comprehension can be useful to projects and promote applications
and services coherent with the digital technologies imagination and needs of
different generations. Content producers can make use of academically produced
independent audience research to create online content for different generations.
For instance, there is a need for additional initiatives in line with the aims of the
CEO Coalition of Internet companies, which was designed by the European
Commission to make the Internet a better place for different generations (O’Neill).
On the policy level:
•
First, in order to base digital inclusion policies on strategies that are coherent with
the practices, imagination and values that each generation attributes to digital
technologies. Thus the digital inclusion strategies targeted at young people, adults
or elderly people who do not use digital technologies should be different according
to differences between generations.
•
Second, in order to base the debate on privacy and on the strategies to overcome
the privacy paradox (i.e. people are aware of the risks and of the issues related to
privacy but do not use the tools which could help them to better safeguard their
privacy) on a deeper understanding of the perceived need of privacy of different
generations. The culture of younger generations, for example, is deeply rooted in
communication practices aimed at obtaining sociality or other advantages in
return for the transfer of personal information or in return for the transfer of the
control over their activities. Young people are indeed especially worried about
their expressive privacy (i.e. the right to control their online identity building, for
example deleting a friend’s post that can damage their reputation). On the opposite
side, members of older generations tend to be worried about the commercial use
of their personal data and do not perceive sociality or the opportunity to increase
the number of ‘friends’ or contacts as a sufficient motivation to transfer their
personal data. At the same time, they do not worry about their expressive privacy
and they are open to reduce it in order to protect their personal data.
On the level of digital literacy diffusion:
•
First the study of the relationships between generations is a relevant resource in
order to diffuse digital literacy and promote not only the technological inclusion of
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people (reducing the divide between have’s and have not’s) but also their cultural
inclusion (reducing the divide between people who can use profitably digital
technology and people who can’t). The relationships between younger and older
generations (also on the family level) can be the place where the diffusion of digital
literacy takes place (besides schools and other institutions) and the study of those
relationships and how digital technologies are involved in sustaining them can be
very useful.
•
Second, the study of the cultures of different generations can be useful in
supporting the life‐long learning activities of schools and in the context of family
life experiences, by spreading know‐how and supporting parents in child‐rearing
in a technology‐saturated environment (Vinter & Siibak).
•
Third, the study of digital cultures of older generations can be useful in planning
and implementing new courses in the context of senior education. For example, a
course entitled Critical Digital Literacy could be implemented into the curricula of
the universities of the third age in Europe. The aim of the course could be to
provide social‐scientific analysis of the uses of new media in the period of ageing. It
would focus on the risk and the positive effects of new media in the life of the
elderly, as well as on the absence of orientation in the world and on ontological
security (Reifova, Gal‐Ezer).
CONCLUSIONS
Based on the synthesis of the reports by the scholars of WG3 who work in the field of
generation studies (from the view points of both the demographic and the cultural perspectives)
we believe that the concept of generation can be useful both in helping to form an understanding
about contemporary digital media audiences and in helping to shape new projects and activities
on different levels.
In our synthesis we emphasized the relevance of the study of children and young
generations who are representatives of a new digital and media culture and are at the same time
the object of various educational and protection policies. We suggested that evidence‐based
research on young generations can be useful in education to carry out pro‐social interventions
and in planning curriculum reforms especially on the level of pre‐schools and primary schools.
Moreover we suggested that studies on the topic can be useful to raise people’s
awareness regarding risks and opportunities about youth engagement with online technologies,
and for creating digital media content for educational purposes.
We also emphasized the relevance of the study of different generations and of the
differences between generations, considering that besides young people and children there are
three (and more, including the ‘Silver Surfers’) different generations who are currently making
use of the same digital technologies and applications. We proposed that these studies can prove
to be useful on the marketing and content production level in order to have a whole
comprehension of digital audiences and to propose applications that take into account
generational differences. We also suggested that these studies can be useful on the policy level,
for example, regarding the issues of privacy and digital inclusion. Finally we suggested that also
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literacy and life‐long education to digital technologies can be supported by studies on
generations.
We believe there are different kinds of stakeholders that can be interested in these kinds
of studies: various institutions (for example in education), policy makers, content producers,
opinion leaders, newsmakers (for example regarding literacy and the awareness of risks and
opportunities) and NGOs, which can function as both co‐producers and users of such academic
studies.
REFERENCE
Vittadini, N., Siibak, A., Reifova, I., and Bilandzic, H. (2013). Generations and Media: The Social
Construction of Generational Identity and Differences. In N. Carpentier, K. C. Schrøder
and L. Hallett (Ed.), Audience Transformations. Shifting Audience Positions in Late
Modernity (pp. 65‐88). London: Routledge.
This chapter is based on individual reports by:
Helena Bilandzic, Germany, helena.bilandzic@phil.uni‐augsburg.de
Miri Gal‐Ezer, Israel, miri‐gal@012.net.il
Ingunn Hagen, Norway, Ingunn.Hagen@svt.ntnu.no
Ingvild Kvale Sørenssen, Norway, ingvild.sorenssen@svt.ntnu.no
Brian O’Neill, Ireland, brian.oneill@dit.ie
Irena Reifova, Czech Republic, reifova@seznam.cz
Kristi Vinter, Estonia, kristi.vinter@tps.edu.ee, and Andra Siibak, Estonia, andras@ut.ee
Konca Yumlu, Turkey, konca.yumlu@ege.edu.tr
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THE ROLE OF MEDIA AND ICT USE FOR EVOLVING SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS: WG3
REPORT BASED ON THE
‘BUILDING BRIDGES’ DISCUSSION IN BELGRADE,
19.09.2013
Frauke Zeller, Canada, fraukezeller@gmail.com
Chair of Working Group 3 ‘The role of media and ICT use for evolving social relationships’
Guest Speakers:
•
•
Andreea M. Costache, Association of Consumers of Audiovisual Media in Catalonia/TAC
Muriel Hanot, Studies & Research, High Authority for Audiovisual Media/CSA (French‐
speaking Belgian regulatory authority)
•
Karol Malcuzynski, independent journalist and former TVP News Executive (public
television)
•
Marius Dragomir, Senior Manager/Publications Editor, Open Society Foundations, London
Session Chair: Stanislaw Jedrzejewski
The discussion started with presentations from each WG3 Task Force leader, introducing
their Task Force reports. Then, the guest speakers gave presentations, referring to three
preparatory questions which had been sent in advance by the session chair, Stanislaw
Jedrzejewski:
1) What aspects of media research (reception and consumption) would you as journalists, media
regulators, NGOs or regulatory bodies find useful?
2) Where, in your view, are the gaps that this research results should fill?
3) What do you see as areas of productive collaboration between academia and various non‐
academic groups and communities in the area of studies of media audiences?
The following report will provide a summarised account of the Building Bridges session
including the key points of each guest’s presentation, followed by a summary of the WG3 plenary
discussion with the non‐academic stakeholders.
MURIEL HANOT
1) What aspects of media research (reception and consumption) would you as
journalists, media regulators, NGOs or regulatory bodies find useful?
We need to take general interest into account when it comes to audiovisual regulation.
For instance audiovisual legal frameworks have to allow everyone the freedom of expression or
to protect consumers, etc. – all these values are the background of these regulations.
When looking at new media, one sees that new media creates a fragmentation of the
audience. It is important in a sense of social cohesion that could be of general interest in a
regulatory point of view.
In terms of research this means a lot of potential questions:
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‐ If we take into account the questions of diversity, then more media allows more
people/interests to appear in the media.
But what is the place of underrepresented
communities in general media, can they have a place in a public debate if they only appear in
specific community media?
‐ Social TV, social networks (SN): How can SN take part in a debate if all consumers and
citizens cannot use them because they are not able to use them or have not the financial means
to buy the media/tools.
‐ Public Broadcasters have special remits of social cohesion. And if they are targeting
special groups/audiences, are they fulfilling their mandate?
‐ Pluralism, or the right to be informed: New platforms on a commercial basis offer all
kinds of programmes, but if they don't do so, don't we have to fear that these platform, these
commercial offers are meant to be a second class access to a lower type of programmes?
This is important in terms of social cohesion: New questions of regulation need to be
combined with a new question of audience.
2) Where, in your view, are the gaps that this research results should fill?
The main gap is the traditional orientation of research. It is in the way how we question
(new) media.
What does it mean when saying that research must be relevant for society? For a
regulatory body it is to encounter values : regulation is an exception to freedom of speech and
it’s justified through social/cultural values. Our questions must be relevant to take into account
values.
Are those rules/limitations understood, necessary in that manner/subject, are the new
rules necessary to complete the regulation? And so is social cohesion necessary to regulate
media?
Those are questions that we refer to audience. And these questions of social values that
are founding regulation represent a gap between researchers and regulators.
3) What do you see as areas of productive collaboration between academia and
various non-academic groups and communities in the area of studies of media
audiences?
In the context of Public Relations: New uses demand a new form of regulation.
Through regulation, audio‐visual players will need to take into account the questions of
self‐accountability. It is a question of trust: What is the trust the audience puts into the media,
and vice versa?
Secondly, the question of media literacy is very important regarding the users.
This question brings a different scope of interest: How can we study the competences of
the viewers/listeners? How can we match the viewing habits with a way to understand the
media?
These are old and new questions (media literacy is old and new), but we need a new
approach. The best perspective on regulation of information is that both viewers and producers
need information. We need not commercial audience information, rather information on users’
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habits, and on the way they are using media. We need to understand the way how audiences
understand media.
ANDREEA M. COSTACHE
1) What aspects of media research (reception and consumption) would you as
journalists, media regulators, NGOs and regulatory bodies find useful?
2) Where, in your view, are the gaps that this research results should fill?
Our answer starts from a consensus the Working Group 3 has been presenting in a
previous work that “research should have relevance for society”. The Association of Consumers
of Audiovisual Media in Catalonia (TAC) is paying attention to media education as a matter of
great social relevance. And we are referring to children, parents and educators altogether.
First, increased attention is given in media research to the new media and the
consumption habits. Nevertheless, the television still occupies one of the most influential places
in the lives of audiences and we found that more research needs to be directed to the
consumption habits of the parents in relation with the influence it has on the consumption
habits of the children. This observation comes from our own difficulties with the Audiovisual
Educational Program “Learning to Watch” in actually reaching the parents with our conferences
and seminars. Therefore, a small attendance from the part of the parents to our Audiovisual
Educational Program leaves us with some questions related with their actual consumption
habits, interests and dedication time towards the consumption habits of the children.
Therefore, we would like to learn more about the influence of the TV consumption habits
of parents on the consumption habits of the children. And we would like to learn how we can use
this relation for a better formation of the adult media user (the parent) and of the future adult
media user (the child), a user that can critically reflect on the media content and the
consumption habits.
In the Audiovisual Educational Program “Learning to Watch” the conferences with
parents are directed to teach them the dangers and opportunities of the screens and of the new
media. But what about the dangers and the opportunities of their own consumption habits on
the consumption habits of their children? How can we better educate the parents in relation
with the television content and later looking to the consumption habits related to the mobile
devices and the Internet, the new media?
We have here two generations that are facing the advent of the new technologies in
different stages of their lives and one has an educational duty to the other. The parents are
adapting to the use of the new technologies and sometimes, as we discovered, at a slower pace
than the youngsters, when we talk about the new media use and access. But when it comes to
media content the parents should be better prepared on what social values they want to
transmit to their children when evaluating a new television program, video‐game or website
content.
Therefore we have some challenges regarding both media content on one side and use
and access on the other side.
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Second, the audits on consumption habits are studies that need a permanent application
and adaptation to the new technologies, the new media entering very quickly in the lives of
minors but not so fast perceived by the parents and educators. In addition, the safe use of the
Internet is a recurrent and increasingly concern of the parents and educators.
We would like to learn how school performance can be influenced while growing up with
the new technologies, with the access to Internet on so many platforms.
Should this translate into the dangers presented by the increased consume of the new
media and on the increased hours spent on the Internet social networks? Or should this
translate into technological educational opportunities that new media presents and the
programs that can be created to further educate in the critical media consumer, the minor, like
the “Contraste App” for the evaluation of different programs and movies on TV, cinema or DVD.
The objective here would be to take the academic input and translate it into practical answers
and actually try to be “the forefront of applied science” as it has been mentioned in the previous
work of WG3.
3) What do you see as areas of productive collaboration between academia and
various non-academic groups and communities in the area of studies of media
audiences?
On one side, in the “Learning to Watch” Audiovisual Educational Program the academia
has an important role with the implications in the conferences and teachers training conducted
by media experts and academics. Therefore we rely heavily on the studies of the academia.
When we look at the work of COST and the research promoted from the academics from
different countries we would like to bring the new theoretical developments to be used for the
interest of media consumer. We are open to improve and apply the newest methodological
techniques and approaches in audience research and media consumption to our Audiovisual
Educational Program. The evolution of our Audiovisual Educational Program depends on the
rapid technological developments and the changes on the consumption habits of the audiences
but the end result depends on applying the newest research techniques.
Our main point here is to have a permanent access to your newest work and this could
be based on a permanent channel of dialogue. Learning about the work of the academia gives us
a better application of our objectives and we can have a rapid answer to different changes
mentioned before.
On the other side, the collaboration between the academia and organizations for the
protection of the consumer like TAC needs to be strengthened when it comes to the work for
new media policies for the protection of minor and promotion of media literacy. And we have
the example of the work that we can use on a definition of children's programs which does not
exist in the Audiovisual Media Service Directive.
We, as a consumer association of the audio‐visual media, we don't represent a big voice
when it comes to the EU construction of media policy for the constant protection of the
consumer and we can find a stronger voice in this direction while bringing along the academic
evidence.
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The final message is that we do not want to be confined to the Catalan and Spanish
territory with our Audiovisual Educational Program. We want to learn and apply the latest
academic advancements from all the researchers involved in audience research and media
education to our program while sharing our framework of the “Learning to Watch” Audiovisual
Educational Program to other countries that could apply it according to their cultural
particularities and needs.
MARIUS DRAGOMIR
[Answers the first two questions by means of presenting some of the findings of his
institution.]
“The Mapping Digital Media project examines the progress of digitization and its impact
on the values and principles that underpin the Open Society Foundations’ work in media and
communications. Active in more than 50 countries worldwide, involving several hundred
researchers and activists, Mapping Digital Media is the most extensive investigation of today’s
media landscapes undertaken by any nongovernmental organization.”32
Mapping Digital Media is a research project that was started 4 years ago. It includes 5
regional editors, covers all continents (with a focus on Europe). The work is mainly done with
local researchers, applying the same method in order to have comparable results.
Why do we do this research? We want to offer some tools for media society, results for
policy makers.
The project covers 7 diverse focal areas. The first area is media consumption, and related
to this we would be interested in adding a specific additional area: the migration from
traditional to online media. So far, we have indicators but that is an area we would like to
collaborate with academic to further investigate and measure. Questions would be: Who
migrated why and where and how in the past years?
Another area is public services: Here, models of funding vary a lot across the globe. Other
relevant questions are how have social networks and social media hindered journalists to do
their work? One core finding that came out of our work refers to the increasing relevance of
news consumption in/through social media. Who is actually consuming news from social media
how and when?
Finally, what are the threats that social media pose on traditional journalism? Here,
plagiarism represents a pivotal aspect. We want to look more into election norms and regulation
and how they extent or not to new media.
3) What do you see as areas of productive collaboration between academia and
various non-academic groups and communities in the area of studies of media
audiences?
Why do we collaborate? Why do we do these reports? First, we want to have a more
informed public. Secondly, we believe in informed policy making, which is why we also
collaborate with governments.
32
http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/projects/mapping‐digital‐media/background
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Hence, before starting research, it is important to ask the questions who is this for, and
who is going to work with it?
Two aspects are vital in this respect: First of all, targeting the various target groups. For
example, policy makers don't read a lot, so one should write condensed policy papers. Secondly,
we try to come up with targeted recommendations, on different levels.
Furthermore, one should recognise the importance of local languages. In many countries
one has to translate the results in order to get them through.
KAROL MALCUZYNSKI
[Addresses the three questions indirectly through is account of his work.]
I worked as a journalist in broadcasting and print for over 30 years, and I know little
about media research, apart from market research. I am talking about commercial driven
research, Website metrics, etc., but now I know there is a lot of other research done. There is a
Tsunami of research all over the world.
How often do newsmakers hear about the outcome of these studies? Not often, but I’d
say often enough. We hear from researchers when we are needed as a sample, either individual
sample when researchers do qualitative studies and need quotes for their conclusions, or
sometimes in groups when they conduct surveys.
I think also we don’t hear enough about the outcomes of these studies and how they are
supposed to help us in our work and better understand our audiences. We want to know what
our audience is but we also want to shape it to a large extent – the role of public services.
So answering perhaps the first or third question would be that we need to find ways to
talk to each other. Your community needs to find ways to let journalists know your findings.
Sometimes you send long documents written in language that only you understand. Journalists
tend to think we are too busy.
My first point is we need to put the results in front of us, the results have to speak our
language.
Second, we need to work out how the data are relevant to us. What are you learning form
audiences that we need to hear? How can we respond? And not just in terms of catering to the
lowest common denominator.
I think also in the end we need to be consulted about some of the designs of the research
before it begins.
I’ve noticed that there are a large number of endless media conferences around the
world. But these meetings seem to be gatherings of various sub groups. It seems that very
seldom these groups work together/talk.
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PART IV.
Audience Transformations
and Social Integration
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MEDIA, CITIZENSHIP AND SOCIAL DIVERSITY
Alexander Dhoest, Belgium, alexander.dhoest@ua.ac.be
Leader of the Task Force 1 on ‘Media, citizenship and social diversity’ in Working Group 4 ‘Audience
transformations and social integration’
INTRODUCTION
This report synthesises the input provided by members of Working Group 4 on issues
relevant to Task Force 1 on ‘Media, citizenship and social diversity’. In this report, first a brief
summary is given of the concrete research topics addressed by the contributors of this overview.
This is necessary to better understand and situate the observations and recommendations that
follow. Second, the different relevant stakeholders are introduced and shortly discussed. Third, a
selection of relevant findings is listed, which is not in any way exhaustive for the research done
in the Working Group let alone in the broader field of research. However, these are examples of
the kinds of insights we could provide, as well as some recommendations based on these insights.
Fourth, some examples are given of concrete ways in which our own research has been helpful
for stakeholders in the past. This helps us to discuss, finally, future ways in which our research
could be (more) useful to stakeholders. Here, it is necessary to first reflect on the specificities of
academic research, on its connections to society and on opportunities and constraints arising in
this context. Based on this, we conclude by listing a number of ways in which future interactions
between academic research and stakeholders could be improved.
RESEARCH TOPICS
Although not all contributing authors are formal members of Task Force 1, all the
research discussed below deals with issues relevant to Task Force 1. As defined in the Working
Group’s work plan, the focus of this Task Force is on issues of citizenship and social diversity.
This Task Force considers inclusion in the public sphere and research on the media uses of diverse
social groups. In a globalised society where national and cultural borders are continuously
questioned, which social groups do we include in our research and how do we define these
groups? Who belongs to the conceived and actual audiences of public and private media? Beside
more traditional factors of social diversity such as age and gender, other sources of difference
such as sexual orientation and ethnicity beg our attention, but how to include this diversity in
our research in a satisfying, non‐essentialist way? This Task Force tries to tackle these issues,
focusing in particular (but not exclusively) on the ethnic and cultural diversity and (diasporic)
hybridity of audiences as opposed to their assumed (national) homogeneity. In essence, the
challenge is for audience research to do justice to the actual complexity of audiences and to find
accurate methods to grasp media uses in our increasingly diverse societies.
Within this broad field, the authors work on different groups and media, using diverse
methods and approaches. Reflecting the diverse national origins and contexts of the contributing
researchers, a wide range of ethnic and cultural minority and/or socially disadvantaged groups
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are studied. Young audiences are often, but not always, the research subjects. The focus is
always on their media uses and/or representations, including both ‘old’, mass media (such as
television, film, radio) and ‘new’ media (particularly the Internet). The approaches are mostly
qualitative and often use mixed methods. The issues addressed are generally related to
migration and media use, including themes such as inclusion, identification, representation,
participation, and social and cultural integration.
STAKEHOLDERS
In research on such matters, there are different kinds of stakeholders to be considered,
each in different potential relations to academic research.
1. State
In this context, governments, policy makers and regulatory bodies at different levels are
relevant: national, international and transnational (e.g. EU), but also regional and local (e.g.
cities). In many European countries, policies and governments concerning minorities and media
are situated not only in different institutions, but also on different regional levels (e.g. in
Belgium: federal and regional; in Switzerland: federal, cantonal and municipal). This multiplicity
of ‘official’ stakeholders with often overlapping jurisdiction complicates the targeting of research
on these matters. These stakeholders are generally the ones we as academics want to inform and
influence (e.g. in relation to broadcasting policies, social and minority policies, etc.).
These state stakeholders can not only devise and implement policies in the fields we
discuss, but also directly commission and pay for academic research on these topics, which is a
more direct way for academic researchers to have an impact.
2. Civil society
If we understand this as non‐governmental and non‐commercial associations
representing citizens, there are many local (e.g. community centers) and more large‐scale
organisations (e.g. NGOs) working on the topics and groups relevant to our research. Key
stakeholders here are organisations working on media and diversity such as community media
and community services (at the local level) or media watchdogs and consumer associations (at
the regional or national level). However, other relevant stakeholders here are, on the one hand,
minority associations of all kinds (e.g. representing particular ethnic groups), and media
associations of all kinds (e.g. professional organisations of journalists, etc.).
Minority associations are usually the stakeholders academic research explicitly or
implicitly takes side with, protecting their interests and drawing attention to their needs and
those of the people they represent. As we will elaborate below, academic research may also
support these civil society organisations by advising and collaborating with them. On the other
hand, media associations are usually the stakeholders academic research aims to inform and
advise on better ways to deal with and cater for minority audiences.
One key group of civil society stakeholders, who are often – ironically – forgotten in
thinking about audience research, is the public at large including the diverse audiences we
research. Giving feedback about our research to these audiences, either directly or through the
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civil society organisations representing them, is one of the key yet most difficult challenges in
research on media, citizenship and diversity.
Another group of civil society stakeholders, partly overlapping with the above, are
teachers and educators of all kinds (media educators, adult educators, also including parents,
etc.). They are crucial in spreading insights on media and diversity to the broader public, for
instance through media literacy programs, in particular dealing with media representations of
social and cultural diversity.
3. Market
Here, media and communication companies and professionals are the obvious
stakeholders, but in relation to inclusion and diversity they are generally not addressed by nor
very interested in academic research. As most media and communication companies have
commercial purposes, research which would help to understand, target and make a profit out of
minority audiences would be most interesting to them. As this is not the purpose of academic
research, the connection with those stakeholders is generally limited.
The main exception, here, are public media, primarily public service broadcasting as one
of the main media players in most European countries. These usually have the explicit obligation
to address and cater for the current diverse, multi‐ethnic and multicultural society, social
inclusion being one of their key remits. This is often the media stakeholder that is most open to
academic research and input.
Journalists and editors constitute a particular category of stakeholders, both in public and
commercial media, which can be interested in and addressed by academic research. They are
gatekeepers, allowing communicating our findings with wider audiences (see below) but also
independently reporting on the groups and topics we research. They can provide representation
in, as well as access to, the public sphere for the minority groups we are studying.
FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
One key finding, relevant to all stakeholders, is that media do matter for the inclusion of
(ethnic and cultural) minority groups in the public sphere. Media are both a resource to construct
and negotiate identities, and a source of information and representations for both majority and
minority audiences. Academic research on the ways minority audiences use and consume media,
as well as on the ways they are represented and addressed by the media, is instrumental for a
better understanding and appreciation of this important social role of the media. It can support
government actions and policies aiming to work on social inclusion and cohesion, providing a
better understanding of different ethnic and cultural communities and their needs and media
uses. As most research in this field is qualitative, it may complement the generally quantitative,
statistical approach of minority groups in government research. Research on minority media
audiences may also help to better reach them through appropriate channels.
From this, some related, more specific findings follow.
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1. Media representations
Cultural and ethnic minorities are generally not included sufficiently nor accurately in
media representation. Therefore, a general recommendation to all commercial and public media
stakeholders is to be more diverse (quantitatively) but also (qualitatively) more culturally
sensitive in reporting about diversity. Quality information and balanced representations are
crucial in creating an inclusive public sphere.
2. Diversity in media research
Minority audiences are generally not included in mainstream media research. Therefore,
a recommendation to all academic and non‐academic researchers is to not limit research on
these groups to specific 'minority' research, but to make sure all research is inclusive of, and
therefore representative of, the actual diversity in society.
3. Media in diversity research
Media are generally only marginally considered in policies and actions in relation to
ethnic and cultural minorities, where socio‐economic issues (such as housing, education,
employment etc.) are often prioritised. Therefore, a recommendation to the different
stakeholders working on or representing ethnic and cultural minorities is to be more aware of,
and to actively exploit, the power of the media as a source to inform, emancipate and include
their target groups.
It is impossible in this context to summarize the multitude of concrete research findings
in relation to the media uses of minority audiences. However, reflecting on the field there is one
overarching finding which is relevant to all stakeholders. To simplify – and to paraphrase
Facebook – we may say: it's complicated. On the one hand, we have a multitude of media which
all have different uses and dynamics, and which are continuously evolving. Digitization, in
particular, has uprooted the traditional national boundaries of media production and
consumption, and provides new opportunities for communication and identification. On the
other hand, we have a multitude of social groups and minorities, whose boundaries are generally
unstable and who are also continuously evolving. They use media in different ways to negotiate
multiple, hybrid identities.
As a result, any generalisation is problematic, so the recommendation is to be cautious.
For instance, different media may play different roles for minorities, may be governed by
different logics and dynamics, etc. Similarly, it is important not to generalise too easily across or
within minority groups. It is also wise not to assume that ethnicity or cultural identities are of
continuous and primary importance in media use. It is equally important to avoid taking a
purely Western, Eurocentric and ethnocentric approach in talking to and about non‐Western
minorities, setting them apart as radically and essentially 'other'. The overall aim should be to be
as inclusive as possible, both in mainstream (audience) research and in mainstream media
representations.
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HOW HAS OUR RESEARCH BEEN HELPFUL TO STAKEHOLDERS?
Considering the different ways in which academic research by the contributing authors
has been useful to stakeholders in the past, may help us to better devise future strategies.
1. Research commissioned by and effectuated for stakeholders
This is the most direct way to contribute to the field one studies. In particular, state
stakeholders and other policy‐making institutions are willing and able to fund such research,
which is perhaps less validated academically but which is certainly stimulated by universities
looking for outside funding. Some contributors effectuated such ‘contract research’ (e.g. for the
EU, for national and regional authorities, …) which has the highest chance of being used to
evaluate and develop policies.
2. Research presented to stakeholders
Presenting research to stakeholders of different kinds is a good way to have an impact:
presenting it at non‐academic conferences, meetings and debates, for governing bodies, media
representatives or civil society organisations, in publications in the national language(s) and/or
with a broader non‐academic audience. Some contributors presented their research on such
occasions (e.g. to Senate, to public broadcasters, …).
Mass media, in particular, are a good way to reach a broad audience, not only to
communicate about one's findings but also to weigh on the public agenda. Several Task Force
members had good experiences with contributions to TV programmes, radio interviews,
interviews and opinion pieces in newspapers, etc.
3. Advising stakeholders
It is sometimes possible to be actively involved in organisations, as a member of advisory
boards or as an outside specialist. Policy makers, media as well as civil society organisations are
often looking for specialised input, particularly from university specialists. Some contributors
are members of such formal or informal advising bodies (e.g. for public broadcasting diversity
policies).
4. Collaborating with stakeholders
Finally, actually working together is perhaps one of the most gratifying ways for research
to be useful to stakeholders, jointly setting up and/or executing research, sharing resources and
insights, collaborating with organisations or particular audiences during the research process.
This is most clearly the case in the participatory action research done by some contributors,
working together with socially disadvantaged communities and youth centres, involving them
not only as study objects but also aiming to help them develop personal and social identities and
competencies, through media creation (e.g. photography and radio). This is particularly valuable
when working with young and marginalised audiences, who can feel more included through the
very process of research.
More generally, working with minority audiences, ethical considerations are of particular
importance, not only talking about them but also with them, putting their needs and interests
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central stage. Giving feedback about the results of the research to the research participants or
their communities is another way of contributing to social inclusion and participation.
HOW COULD OUR RESEARCH BE MORE HELPFUL TO STAKEHOLDERS?
Before we address this point, it is important to reflect on the question whether academic
research can and should always be relevant to stakeholders outside university. Of course it is
important for researchers to also play an active role in society, particularly when they work on
such crucial social themes as diversity and inclusion. However, this is not the prime purpose of
academic research, which has some particular characteristic properties and objectives.
Academic audience research has the possibility and duty to take a step back from concrete,
pressing issues to look at more abstract and long‐term patterns. It should also address issues
nobody else is thinking about, taking a critical distance from the taken for granted, everyday
concerns in media and policy making. Academic research does not always have to be
immediately applicable and instrumental, let alone profitable. In its choice of topics and
methods, therefore, it should not always and completely be guided by the needs and interests of
stakeholders.
This being said, beside academic impact, the social relevance of our research is without
doubt important. In what follows, building upon previous experiences as well as un‐ or
underexplored possibilities, we list a number of ways to make our research more significant for
stakeholders.
1. Contact with stakeholders
Even before starting research, it is important to know and get in touch with the different
relevant stakeholders in the field. It helps to know about the problems and questions they are
dealing with, the kinds of research they do themselves and the data they have, the kinds or
research, data and insights they miss, etc. As mentioned earlier, the aim is not to always and only
cater for stakeholders needs, but some degree of mutual understanding and coordination is
advisable.
Contact with stakeholders may also help to better understand the ways they think and
operate (as policy makers, as media, as minority organisations, etc.), their possibilities and
constraints, to better focus and calibrate advice or critique.
2. Communicating with stakeholders
Our usual ways of communicating about and disseminating our findings (such as
academic papers and conference presentations, usually in English) have very little impact
outside university. Spreading these papers more widely is not the key issue, as their language
and approach is generally not very accessible to people outside academia. Instead, a translation
to more accessible, practical outputs in the national language is required, such as:
‐ popular publications (newspaper reports, opinion pieces, ...);
‐ toolkits, lists of recommendations and best practices (how to represent and address
minority audiences, ...);
‐ training, workshops and educational activities.
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3. Advice and feedback
As mentioned earlier, it is possible to be involved in an advisory role before policies or
actions are devised. It is also possible to provide feedback and information on the impact or
effect of such policies and actions, and to make suggestions for improvement.
Advice can also be useful for civil society stakeholders, who can learn from academic
research, for instance about the strategies, challenges and opportunities of their counterparts in
other countries, about practical tools they can use and strategies to reach wider audiences as
well as governing bodies, etc.
4. Involving audiences
Finally, in the current media landscape and particularly in relation to minority audiences,
it is important for academics to stimulate the active involvement of the groups they study in the
media they study. Reacting and talking back, seeking representation and creating user generated
content, minority audiences can be (co)creators of media, thus participating in the public sphere,
making it more diverse. In this way, they can not only feel but also actually be included.
Particularly useful, again, are the more ethnographic, participatory methods described above,
where the researcher not only does research but also develops a methodological guide and tools
to further implement such research in other contexts.
This chapter is based on individual reports by:
Maria José Brites, Portugal, britesmariajose@gmail.com
Marta Cola, Switzerland, colam@lu.unisi.ch
Alexander Dhoest, Belgium, alexander.dhoest@ua.ac.bez
Şirin Dilli, Turkey, sirindilli@hotmail.com
Nelly Elias and Dafna Lemish, Israel, enelly@bgu.ac.il and dafnalemish@siu.edu
Brigitte Hipfl, Austria, brigitte.hipfl@uni‐klu.ac.at
Ragne Kõuts, Estonia, ragne.kouts@neti.ee
Marijana Matovic, Serbia, marijana.matovic@gmail.com
Daniel Meirinho, Portugal, danielmeirinho@hotmail.com
Liliana Pacheco, Portugal, Liliana.Teresa.Pacheco@iscte.pt
José Carlos Sendín, Spain, josecarlos.sendin@urjc.es
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TRANSFORMING SOCIETIES – TRANSFORMING FAMILIES
Sascha Trültzsch‐Wijnen, Austria, sascha.trueltzsch‐wijnen@sbg.ac.at
Leader of the Task Force 2 on ‘Transforming societies, transforming families’ in Working Group 4
‘Audience transformations and social integration’
FIELDS OF RESEARCH
Research in Working Group 4 is focused on social integration and families as audiences
of both the more traditional and the so‐called new media (i.e. the internet and the social web).
The diverse interests of Task Force 2 on ‘Transforming societies, transforming families’ evolve
around media usage and youth, families, and generations. The research within the Task Force
can be described in three clusters:
Cluster 1: Children, Youth and TV
Children and youth as audiences are subject to research in various dimensions. While
some research evaluates youth programming (for example in Austria) other works are more
specific and examine the motivations and gratifications of young people when they watch reality
TV shows. But also the question of diversity and the representation of children’s rights in the
media are subject to research. Results are relevant for programmers as well as for educators
discussing the program with young people.
Cluster 2: Children and the news
The second cluster includes research on children as an audience of news in general and
addresses questions such as how children are represented in the news media and how their
lifeworld33, specific problems and sometimes problematic neighborhood are represented.
Additionally specific news programs for children are subject to research in the UK, Portugal and
Israel. Studying these programs and their audiences requires several methods, which all
together aim to evaluate the acceptance and appropriateness of such TV news for kids. Some
studies go beyond this point and discuss the programs with children to explore alternatives in
content and presentation. The existing cooperation between researchers and program makers
on different levels so far turned out to be not as productive as the researchers wish it could be.
As one example from the UK shows, program makers often find it hard to make use of research
results and are not so much open to the researchers’ suggestions or refuse to discuss
implications of research for specific elements of their programs.
Cluster 3: New Media and Generations
Since the so‐called new media became part of everyday life – especially of young people –
another group of research is focusing on the Internet and the social web. New possibilities came
33
‘Lifeworld’ is understood here as the children’s everyday life in their specific social situation, with
particular resources and chances, etc.
126
up, such as staying in touch with family members living abroad (which leads to new forms of
virtualized families), for older people to communicate about the issues that matter to them in
online communities and also for learning (during school and spare time) with social web tools
such as Wikis. Additionally the research in the area addresses various media and social
transformations such as general changes in the mediascapes across generations (sometimes
excluding older or less wealthy people), changing language in the media (such as Anglicisms,
Neologisms, technical terms, etc.) related to media innovations and changes in concepts such as
privacy in relation to social web usage – including the disclosure of private information. The
research results often include recommendations for educators, program makers and journalists.
HOW THE RESEARCH OF OUR TASK FORCE COULD BE USEFUL?
The research of the WG4 members in Task Force 2 could be and has been useful on
several levels and in different fields. First of all it is essential to get in touch and into productive
discussion with stakeholders and their representatives. From our point of view the discussion
should start with questions arising from the practice of stakeholders. However, since so far this
is the case only in very few examples, we can only assume what questions actually come up in
their work and in their respective fields. Therefore the present report intends to focus on the
stakeholder’s point of view and to address their interests by asking how academic audience
research could be useful for stakeholders in the field?
As a key element we want to point out the advantages of academic research in
comparison to (commercial) market research. The latter is mostly based on short‐term results
and on standardized quantitative data, such as telephone interviews (CATI). The design of such
research limits its results to an overall perspective for a general population – accordingly it is
based on representative samples. The audience is asked to answer specific questions the
researcher wants to explore. According to the nature of (commercial) market research, it focuses
on commercial aspects, such as advertisements, favorite (existing) programs, etc., and it is
possibly influenced by the research funding companies.
In turn, academic research faces the problem of time lag, since it sometimes takes several
years from the very beginning of a research project to the publication of the results. On the other
hand academics use a range of methods – most often qualitative methods such as interviews –
that do not predominantly aim to provide short‐term results, but rather to gain in‐depth insights
into specific groups. Such results do not necessarily need to be representative, but should give a
sense of the motivations, benefits, needs, etc. of audiences. For example the research question in
academic terms is more often: ‘How would be your ideal TV program?’ or ‘How would you wish
that people like you would be presented in the news?’ instead of the market research
perspective that asks ‘What is your favorite TV program?’ or ‘What news channel do you prefer?’
Thus academic audience research can provide insights about the needs, perspectives and
motivations of specific audiences. In our Task Force such results are available, e.g. concerning
the elderly, young people and migrant families, with a focus on one or more countries where
research has been conducted.
Moreover, detailed information and recommendations can be given with regard to
mediation (conflict management) and media education. Especially media skills and questions of
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media literacy have been addressed and typologies of specific skills and needs have been
developed. Thus the research carried out within the Task Force could serve as a motor for
educational innovations, such as including internet and social web resources in educational
programs, with best practice examples from different European countries. Integrating such new
technologies into educational contexts can empower both young and older people to participate
in educational and civic matters.
Audience research could also help media agencies to improve and reshape their
programming in order to better meet the needs and wishes of their audience. This includes the
audience’s perspectives on how a balanced program, sensitive to representations of specific
groups in the media should look like. These kinds of results could be interesting for journalists
as well as TV program makers.
Additionally, research facilitates the perspective of successful participation of different
groups in different types of media. Examples show ways of integrating different society groups
into the processes of media production and advisory comities for media agencies.
HOW OUR RESEARCH COULD BE USEFUL FOR WHICH STAKEHOLDERS?
1. State
The results of our research could be useful for regulatory bodies and policy makers
regarding the representation in the media and the needs of specific societal groups, especially
young people, the elderly and those with a migration/minority background. Additionally
education agencies and authorities could benefit from results regarding media use in several
ways, such as enhancing their understanding of representations of several societal groups in
media products and online media – with specific focus on biased images, stereotypes, etc. This
awareness may also empower online communication, based on recommendations for media
literacy, technical skills and civic engagement.
2. Civil Society
Public service broadcasters and their program makers could make use of our research in
order to better meet the needs of specific audiences such as children, elderly and those with a
migration/ethnic minority background. From the point of view of many agencies in civil society,
our research results often do not seem to be useful or are considered too specific. Therefore
researchers should better meet the needs of, and improve their communication with
stakeholders in this field.
So far it seems that community media are more open to the academia’s input and may be
more easily addressed by academics. The cooperation between academics and civic agencies in
actions such as the Safer Internet Day has shown that our research can be useful. Similarly, our
research results could also be useful for NGOs in the fields of education, gender (including the
policy on gender mainstreaming) and diversity. Not only educators and social workers, but also
journalists and program makers could make use of our research – therefore it is necessary to
better communicate with such specific agencies and NGOs.
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3. Market
Cooperation with market stakeholders in our field is particularly difficult since it is not
easy for academics and academic research to meet the needs and expectations of private
companies. It seems that there are different languages, which result from different orientations
addressed above.
The two groups also have to face different challenges. Funding by market organizations
and companies is often useful to realize specific academic research in times of decreasing public
funding. Yet companies have very specific questions related to commercial interests and
normally want short‐term results for representative samples, covering the whole society or at
least large groups. These interests are in contrast to the orientation and logic of the academic
field. At the moment, academic research seems to be too specific, too complex and not enough up
to date for market organisations. To improve cooperation, a common basis between these two
different logics needs to be found. This applies also to organisations such as PR agencies,
journalist organisations (also see above NGOs) and commercial broadcasters.
EXAMPLES OF HOW OUR RESEARCH HAS BEEN USEFUL
In order to give further inspiration of how our research could be useful for stakeholders
outside the academia, examples of successful cooperation and integration of results into
different fields will illustrate what has been done so far.
The cooperation with public service broadcasters often consists in providing
evaluations of and recommendations for children’s programs. Beside the evaluation of the TV
programming for children in general, specific news programs have been subject to particular
research. Some Task Force members have been involved in such kind of research. The results
did help the journalists to better meet the young audience’s needs, especially how they want to
be addressed and what aspects of daily news are of particular importance to them. However, in
some cases, the cooperation with public service broadcasters has not been without difficulties,
since the program makers did not really want to revise their concepts and had already planned
to re‐design the news reel prior to the researchers’ input. Additionally, the scientific evaluation
of TV programs has not been often used by those responsible in the media industry, except in
the context of the advertising‐oriented market research.
Task Force members have also developed and discussed recommendations with
stakeholders such as program makers and journalists regarding the elderly and families as
represented in the media and as audiences of media. This cooperation has worked much better
on a regional or local level and with respective organisations than with public service
broadcasters on a national level. It is on the local and regional levels that the best practice
examples for participation of audiences with migration background turned out to be fruitful for
both academics and journalists. The most positive cooperation examples from our Task Force
are located on an individual level, i.e. involving journalists, community media members and
other individuals open to academic research. For instance, the community media were keen to
learn lessons from our research results for their production and programming strategies, and
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were even open to discussions with researchers on air – which is related to their specific aims
and audiences.
Guidelines and related materials have been developed with and (partly) implemented by
educational stakeholders. In the field of media education, some Task Force members have been
engaged in studies of media usage and in analyses of media images and their appropriateness,
with a view to encourage more active and participative media usage (especially the Internet) by
young audiences, families and migrants. This kind of cooperation takes place at different levels,
from regional schools and educational authorities to student projects, classes and specific
individual educators.
In this context it has proved to be useful to focus on one very specific topic or question,
thus reducing the complexity of academic research in order to increase the accessibility for
stakeholders. Additionally research has been useful for mediation and counseling guidelines for
both professional educators and parents.
Related to the Insafe program34, academic audience research has entered schools and
students’ everyday life, as results have been presented in an easily accessible way for example at
Safer Internet workshops.
With regard to public presentation of research results and recommendations, the
experience of the Task Force members shows that especially on local and community levels
there is an interest in cooperating with academics that has been underestimated so far. This
cooperation should be activated prior to those with stakeholders on a higher level. In terms of
civic responsibility researchers should aim to increase their impact on local and community
levels while not forgetting the national and European levels.
This chapter is based on individual reports by:
Michal Alon‐Tirosh and Dafna Lemish, Israel, dafnalemish@siu.edu
Piermarco Aroldi, Italy, piermarco.aroldi@unicatt.it
Mariyan Dimitrov Tomov, Bulgaria, mdttm@mail.bg
Andrea Dürager, Austria, andrea.duerager@sbg.ac.at
Ana Jorge, Portugal, anaratojorge@gmail.com
Jasmin Kulterer, Austria, Jasmin.Kulterer@sbg.ac.at
Barbara Lewandowska‐Tomaszczyk and Jerzy Tomaszczyk, Poland, tomas@uni.lodz.pl
Lidia Marôpo, Portugal, lidiamaropo@gmail.com
Marijana Matovic, Serbia, marijana.matovic@gmail.com
Galit Nimrod, Israel, gnimrod@bgu.ac.il
Ingrid Paus‐Hasebrink, Austria, ingrid.paus‐hasebrink@sbg.ac.at
Cristina Ponte, Portugal, Cristina.ponte@fcsh.unl.pt
Sascha Trültzsch‐Wijnen, Austria, sascha.trueltzsch‐wijnen@sbg.ac.at
34
‘Insafe is a European network of Awareness Centres promoting safe, responsible use of the Internet and
mobile devices to young people.’ http://www.saferinternet.org/
130
AUDIENCE TRANSFORMATIONS AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION: BUILDING BRIDGES
AND MAKING A REAL DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD – REPORT OF WG4 DIALOGUE
TH
WITH STAKEHOLDERS, BELGRADE, SEPTEMBER 19
, 2013
Dafna Lemish, United States, dafnalemish@siu.edu
Member of Working Group 4 “Audience Transformations and Social Integration”
Twenty years ago, a leading scholar of children and media, Ellen Wartella made a call for
action: “The recent history of public controversies about children and television issues suggest
that there is ample opportunity for communication research to have a visible influence in
shaping public debates, but this happens far too rarely. My suggestion, then, for going beyond
agendas is to review our commitment to public scholarship and to reinvigorate the public face of
our field” (Wartella, 1993, p. 147). Since that time we have expanded our focus from children to
entire families, and from television to all media. Nevertheless, the call for public scholarship and
for researchers to become engaged academics in the wider society is as relevant and pressing as
ever.
Twenty‐five individual contributions from members of WG4 formed the basis for two
Task Force reports on “Building Bridges with Stakeholders.” The first, authored by Alexander
Dhoest, which focused on “Media, Citizenship and Social Diversity,” integrated the reports on the
role of media in the lives of immigrants and minorities. The second report, authored by Sascha
Trültzsch‐Wijnen, focused on “Transforming Families,” and integrated the reports on children
and their rights as audiences, children’s news consumption and needs, and the more general
discussion of new media integration across generations.
Both of these topical areas lend themselves remarkably well to applied aspects: the
potential of media for making a significant difference in the wellbeing of children and in the
integration of minorities and immigrants in the host societies while maintaining their cultural
and personal connections to their homelands. Both are heavily invested in issues of identity and
diversity – gender, ethnicity, class, religion and generation. Both are also strongly related to the
many efforts at using media for development and for promotion of human rights in Europe and
beyond.
Members of WG4 met in Belgrade on September 19, 2013 for a dialogue session with
stakeholders’ representatives, in order to receive feedback from the group’s reports and engage
in constructive exchange of ideas.
STAKEHOLDERS AND HABITAT TYPES
We can distinguish, conceptually, among four types of stakeholders for whom research
on audiences has immediate relevancy:
•
State – Governments, policy makers and regulatory bodies at different levels:
regional, national, international and transnational. This stakeholder was
represented in the WG4 dialogue meeting by the UN Fund for children’s rights,
131
UNICEF. This meeting was attended by Jadranka Milanovic, from UNICEF Belgrade,
who is responsible for the Media and Children's Rights field in Serbia and was also
able to introduce the national context.
•
Civil society – Non‐governmental and non‐profit organizations representing
citizens, including, for example, media watchdog organizations, community
services, consumer groups, minority associations, teachers and educators. Dragan
Kremer, the Media Program Coordinator for the Open Society Foundation in
Serbia, represented this type of stakeholder at the meeting.
•
Market – Media and communication companies and professionals, most of which
are commercial enterprises, including industries related to broadcast, journalists,
movies, gaming, computers, mobile phones, and other communication technologies
and services. This type of stakeholder was represented by Michele Arlotta who is
Head of Strategy, Marketing & Sales ‐ TV Channels of DeAgostini in Italy.
•
The public at large – for which our research is highly relevant and can contribute
to their quality of life, includes the audiences we study, children, families,
caregivers, minority and immigrant groups, and ways of reaching them through all
forms of traditional and new media.
Each group of stakeholders, as well as academia, occupies a different “habitat” with its
own mindset, priorities, goals, professional norms and expectations, language and jargon, as well
as different work‐styles. One critical difference emerging from the discussion is the framing of
the mission of academia as creator of knowledge. As such, it is heavily process oriented,
appreciating knowledge for the sake of knowledge. In contrast, other stakeholders are more goal
and product oriented – e.g., they have a program to put on the air, a policy paper to draft, an
advertisement to put on line. The tension resulting from the differences in habitats of the
academic world and many of the stakeholders creates many challenges in attempting to build
constructive and collaborative relationships among them. “For us” explained Piermarco Aroldi,
“knowledge is an end in itself… and I don’t know how this knowledge might be used in the
company I am providing it to… I worry about it. It is hard to understand where our role ends and
where the stakeholder’s role begins, where the boundary between the researcher and the
stakeholder is…”
Some of the differences discussed included:
•
Differences in timetable expectations: Academics take a much longer time to
design a study, seek funding, execute the study, write it up and finally publish it.
The process usually takes several years. Goal‐oriented stakeholders have strict
deadlines that require information to become available immediately, if it is to be
implemented in the next “product” they are working on. As Michele Arlotta put it:
“We are in two different worlds, academic research is just too slow, and for us it is
a problem, and honestly, it is not easy…” And, Marta Cola added: “For the company,
time is money.”
•
The existence of inherent distrust/misunderstandings between academia
and market stakeholders: Scholars are often perceived by the media industries
as being detached from the reality of the market, particularly its financial
132
constraints. Market organizations are being perceived by scholars as being only
concerned about profit, as lacking a social consciousness and thus manipulating
and exploiting audiences. Representatives of both sides are often called upon to
participate in panels, symposiums, and news coverage, their views being pitted
against each other so they are entrenched in seemingly opposing sides (e.g., on the
effects of violence in the media, obesity, or racial stereotypes).
•
Differing uses of language: Academic language is often difficult to understand, as
it uses jargon and inaccessible terminology. Attempts at “translation” to layman
language often fail to interpret results and implications appropriately and may
present misleading conclusions. Academics also find it hard to adjust their
reporting to journalistic requirements that expect clarity, simplicity and more
“sound bite” language that highlights the unique, the new, the relevant – and often
times – the negative. Journalists also have a preference for quantitative results that
can be expressed in numbers and percentages. “The challenge is how to
communicate. As academics, we have to think in a different way,” said Cristina
Ponte: “What are journalists’ interests in our topics of research? We have good
stories to tell… what is my story? How can I tell it to the journalist? How can I build
relationships with journalists?”
•
The interdisciplinary nature of our field: This often results in multiple voices
within academia, with scholars focusing on internal disagreements on research
traditions and theoretical backgrounds and thus not communicating effectively
with stakeholders. The latter are looking for unified conclusions and clear
recommendations that can be based on them.
•
Funding: A thorny concern for both academia as well as stakeholders, as everyone
is competing for limited resources for conducting research.
POSSIBLE RELATIONSHIP MODELS
The differences among the various stakeholders and the many challenges faced in
attempts to cultivate constructive collaborations with academia lend themselves to different
types of possible relationships – one is required to communicate differently to a foundation, a
corporation, an educational system, or a journalist. Indeed, Jadranka Milanovic pointed out the
need to address different audiences with research findings. “It has to be different for policy
makers; and different when sharing results with the media, because the state pays attention to
what the media say in debates; and then different implications of the findings for training needs,
or for policymaking; and of course – articles for scientific and professional outlets.”
These relationships can take the form of one of several possibilities, depending to a large
degree on the “power balance” between them: who is funding the research, who formalizes the
research questions and methods, and who owns the data and is responsible for disseminating it.
•
Research sponsored by the stakeholder and thus aimed to serve its goals and
interest.
For example, Michele Arlotta reported on the strong relationship his station had
with a member of WG4, Piermarco Aroldi in Milan: “For us it is a very important
133
relationship and the best opportunity to link the company with academic
research.” However, he also pointed out that “the relationship between the
company and the academic is like between a sponsor and a supplier.” Examples are
many: an advertising company/political party hiring an academic to perform a
marketing survey/political poll; a production company piloting a new program for
language learning; a policy‐maker sponsoring a study on immigrants’ use of
governmental websites.
•
Research presented to stakeholders by a researcher(s) who initiates contact
with the stakeholders and calls their attention to results of a study that may be
relevant to their mission (e.g., after discovering that minority youth make heavy
use of on‐line websites for news consumption, suggesting to educators to engage
more with on‐line resources; advising media producers that sexualized images of
girls have been documented to negatively affect self‐image and promote
legitimization of sexual violence).
•
Research partnership between the stakeholder and academics in which the two
collaborate in all aspects of the research project, from inception to diffusion of
results and application in the relevant ways. Such collaborations, for example,
were noted by Jadranka Milanovic in UNICEF, where all interventions on behalf of
children are designed in full collaboration with academics. Similarly, Dragan
Kremer argued that the Open Society Foundation employs academics as part of
their permanent team through representation on different boards. “We work
together, academics are part of drafting the strategies, the whole concept of having
as many academics on boards and introducing them to different activities and
research we are doing.”
•
No relationship – in many cases there is no relationship between academics and
stakeholders despite their shared interests and the fact that stakeholders find
value in academic research as a source of credibility for their decision‐making
processes. While the purpose of this report is to “build bridges” between them, it is
also necessary to recognize that working separately and sustaining independence,
also has value. As pointed out by Myria Georgiou: “This is the case because critical
scholarship that keeps a distance from stakeholders can critique media and
communication practices in ways that industries and policy makers might find
unwelcoming at a particular historical moment. But such research can have a long
term impact for media and policy.” She illustrated that argument by pointing out
that research on representations and stereotypes in the media that were held
independently in academia contributed to the growing debates within the media
about fair representation of gender, as well as ethnic and sexual minorities.
Advancing true partnerships, institutionalized or ad‐hoc, seems to be the most effective
way to overcome some of the challenges, as such collaborations can form newly shared habitats,
where language, timetables, goals, and funding can be jointly shared. Such partnerships can be
advanced by the following strategies:
134
•
Both stakeholders and academics need to be involved in the project from the start,
so they have equal say in designing the research project and responsibility for
carrying it through.
•
Academics should take the initiative to reach out to stakeholders with respect and
trust and to advance an atmosphere of deep listening to stakeholders’ concerns
and needs.
•
Institutions of higher education should prepare their graduate students to also be
employed within various stakeholder‐organizations, not only in traditional
academia.
•
Academics should learn to communicate more effectively with the public through
journalists and other media professionals, as well as offer accessible information
about their research through blogging.
For example, Myria Georgiou reported on the introduction of a required course in
communicating to the media and other stakeholders for graduate students at the
London School of Economics and Political Science as well as practices of research‐
blogging and dissemination of short research reports. Dafna Lemish reported on a
planned
pre‐conference
for
the
2014
conference
of
the
International
Communication Association that is designed to teach such skills.
•
Creating multiple‐relationships – perhaps more rare and complicated, but the
possibility of several stakeholders joining forces to advance research and its
application can enhance the value of the research and provide more solid funding
opportunities, a key concern for all.
For example, Dragan Kremer reported: “Our situation in Serbia is that we have
very little funding resources so we sit together with other stakeholders and define
the problems and try to think together how we can collaborate in finding funding.
We often include commercial agencies and I have no illusion about their interests,
but as long as we are getting what we need and we are reducing the price we are
willing to negotiate in collaborative manner… and then we share the same set of
results and data base as we believe that there should be liberal use of the results
for public presentations, trainings, academics, and so on.” Similarly, even Michele
Arlotta, representing the market, echoed similar sentiments when he suggested:
“we need to share this kind of research with different stakeholders… Even with the
competing corporation, we have to work together.” Another example, presented
earlier to the group, was of a resource package developed for UNICEF on
communicating with children, particularly the most marginalized and vulnerable,
that was based on work created through the collaboration of multiple stakeholders
(Kolucki & Lemish, 2011).
In summary, the dialogue reconfirmed the important role that engaged academics can
have for society and the value of creating collaborations with stakeholders in a joined attempt to
make a difference in the world. It is clear that today, perhaps more than ever before, and despite
the multiple challenges, the ground is ripe for everyone to roll up their sleeves and make sure
that media are used to better the lives of people world‐wide.
135
REFERENCES
Kolucki, B. & Lemish, D. (2011). Communicating with Children: Principles and Practices to
Nurture, Inspire, Excite, Educate and Heal. NY: UNICEF. http://www.unicef.org/cwc/
Wartella, Ellen (1993). Communication research on children and public policy. In P. Gaunt (Ed.),
Beyond Agendas: New Directions in Communication Research (pp. 137‐148). Westport, CT
& London: Greenwood Press.
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