Life in the clickstream*

Audiences are not just passive consumers brainwashed by media products, but are active participants who make their own meanings (O’Shaughnessy & Stadler, p. 105).

I chose this quote because I think there has been a shift in recent times due to the popularity of digital media.

The contemporary ‘audience’ is no longer passive but interactive.

The audience itself can inexpensively produce its own messages and communicate that globally with minimal technical knowledge in a matter of minutes. The audience can now literally create ‘the media’.

This has the potential to cause many complications in audience research as outlined in the Uses-and-gratifications model. I believe the parameters have widened considerably.

Information is now accessible through more mediums in many different formats. These mediums are also much more portable, widening the scope of distribution contexts.

How can one predict the effects of information communicated to an audience when the audience itself can influence others in the audience by creating their own messages that coincide with the text?

Mass communication is no longer a one sided affair. The ‘Letters to Ed’ have evolved into a global self publishing, user driven, multimedia cooperative.

In light of the recent media job cuts in Australia and around the world I would have to say this is a pertinent issue within the industry. The traditional mediums and technology journalists use to perform their role in communication have changed and are still continuing to evolve.

It would seem the media itself is changing to suit this new perception of the contemporary audience. The media-audience dynamic has become interchangeable in that the audience becomes the media and vice versa.

I believe this is why Fairfax called their recent culling the “business improvement program”. Times have changed, authorship has changed, the ‘audience’ has changed. The MEAA condemn the job cuts yet agree to the changes in their “Future of Journalism” summits. Welcome to life in the clickstream.


*Discussion Forum Activity posted on 11th February, 2009 by Maria Tan

CMNS6060 - eCulture and Audiences, The University of Newcastle