Understanding the Social Media Audiences of Radio Stations

This article investigates the online comments of news items posted on the Facebook pages of two popular Arabic-language radio channels: Radio Monte Carlo—France24 and Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW). This study examines over 184,000 comments with a special focus on the most liked posts in order to understand how audiences of regular radio interact on social media. The results indicate that audiences seem to be more engaged with posts that encourage participating in broad issues, interacting with clever quotes, and entering contests and less so with reading breaking news. With regards to news events and serious issues, this study also examined how social media users of these two Facebook “radio” sites responded to postings that differed from their own opinions, and seemingly actively engaged with contrasting or oppositional views or sentiments.     

Defining Identification: A Theoretical Look at the Identification of Audiences With Media Characters

In this article I argue that although the notion of identification with media characters is widely discussed in media research, it has not been carefully conceptualized or rigorously tested in empirical audience studies. This study presents a theoretical discussion of identification, including a definition of identification and a discussion of the consequences of identification with media characters for the development of identity and socialization processes. It is suggested that a useful distinction can be made between identification and other types of reactions that media audiences have to media characters. A critical look at media research involving identification exposes the inherent conceptual problems in this research and leads to hypotheses regarding the antecedents and consequences of identification with media characters. The importance of a theory of identification to media research and communication research, more broadly, is presented.     

新媒体时代主旋律电影与受众间的建构与解构关系

新媒体环境下,主旋律电影与受众间的关系受意识形态、资本市场、媒介技术的影响而发生诸多显著变化.一方面,主旋律电影在新的传播环境下,借助新的传播理念和媒介技术,从主体性和群体性两方面继续加强对受众的积极建构;另一方面,社会价值的多元化导向和信息来源的多样化方式使得受众群体对主旋律电影的解读呈现差异化特征,一定程度上反作用于主旋律电影的建构过程.传受双方试图在试探、协商、妥协的互动关系中建立新的共生模式,寻求新的创新之路.     

理解网络直播:媒介人性化逻辑的延伸

相较技术层面的优化,网络直播媒介在人性化层面的延伸更加明显,人性化逻辑成为牵引直播媒介进化的主要力量.基于媒介演进人性化趋势的视角,文章考察影响网络直播演进的人性需求,并探讨网络直播如何沿着深度适应人性需求的逻辑延伸.具体地说,网络直播的人性化逻辑是通过满足人实时同步的基础交流诉求,传播日常生活内容的物理诉求及情境化互动、分享的心理诉求,媒介向着消弭、延展、情境化的方向发展,即以去中介化的发展路径将网络直播空间延展至日常生活,构建更有温度的媒介情境,实现人的"感觉总体"回归.然而,网络直播在带来极致人性化体验的同时,也可能让人付出去社会化的代价,使人独立生存能力降低,出现"个体孤岛".     

Media Monopoly: Understanding Vertical and Horizontal Integration

Objectives: Students will understand the implications of media conglomeration. Students will also realize how difficult it is for independent media outlets to communicate as efficiently and broadly as large media conglomerates.

Courses: Mass Communication Theory, Mass Communication & Social Issues, Media Effects, Advertising, Public Relations, Media Literacy     

Representing Audiences: Audience Research,Public Knowledge,and Policy

This article explores some of the dilemmas and difficulties encountered by academic researchers (and specifically those who work on media audiences) in presenting their work in the public domain. It considers some examples of media coverage of debates about media audiences, raising questions about academic authority, research evidence and public knowledge. It points to the limitations of a view of such debates as “moral panics” and proposes a different approach based on social constructionist analyses of “social problems.” It concludes by considering some of the ambivalence and uncertainty that surrounds the increasingly common requirement for academics to become engaged with the public at large.     

Social Structure,Media System,and Audiences in China: Testing the Uses and Dependency Model

Much has been written about the structure and processes of China's mass media changes before and after the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping initiated the economic reform and open-door policies in the late 1970s. Many of them focused on the commercialization, depoliticalization, and internationalization of Chinese media as a result of the market economy and external openness. Little known, however, is how the audiences get caught up in the interplay between the fast changing social structure and the evolving media system in China. Using the uses and dependency model as a framework, this study seeks to determine the effects of the media transformation on the audiences and their media use in the new environment. In this article we argue that the uses and dependency perspective best helps explain why Chinese readers prefer a particular kind of news and why the Party organs are losing ground to other more market-oriented media.     

Finding Audiences for Our Research: Rethinking the Issue of Ethical Challenges

This essay is a fleshed-out version of a presentation to the 2011 COST Action workshop on the challenges of audience research. In it, I explore what I see as some overlooked problems in research ethics protocols, relating to the assumptions and models about our relations with research participants which resonate with wider “figures of the audience,” which occur widely. In place of these, I outline a notion of “trust” as the proper goal of researcher-participants relations.     

Interactive Multi-Media and Electronic Media in Academic Libraries:

Electronic information formats such as optical media or multi-media used in colleges and universities present challenges for academic library policy makers. Some policy areas that should be considered for electronic and interactive formats are familiar and some are new. This paper describes areas of policy and decision points for services involving new and emerging formats such as hypermedia, interactive multi-media and full-text electronic files. Topics include: planning, staffing, collection development, security, access and services. The areas discussed were encountered by librarians in the author's library during the process of installing a 20-work-station Interactive Media Center.     

Muderinos and Media Effects: How the My Favorite Murder Podcast and its Social Media Community May Promote Well-being in Audiences with Mental Illness

Since the inception of the My Favorite Murder podcast in January 2016, cohosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark have built an empowered fanbase that tunes in weekly to hear a true-crime/comedy mashup. The present study analyzed what draws MFM listeners with a mental illness diagnosis to the podcast and how they utilize related social media platforms to connect with others by employing both a uses and gratifications paradigm and concepts from the audience involvement literature. An online survey of users of the MFM Facebook group (N = 541) was conducted and the results are discussed.     

理解法兰克福学派传媒批判的钥匙:生成语境

法兰克福学派的传媒批判是传播研究批判学派的理论源头,其核心观点是,资本主义大众传媒是国家控制的意识形态机器,资本主义传媒文化是麻醉人们的精神鸦片,在资本主义大众传媒的包围和灌输下,人们成为了缺乏批判和否定之维的"单向度的人"。对大众传媒成为德国法西斯残暴统治的帮凶的记忆,以及目睹美国资产阶级利用大众传媒进行温柔统治的现实,是法兰克福学派传媒批判的生成语境。不理解这一点就不能正确理解和评价法兰克福学派的传媒批判。