A Network Analytic Approach to Audience Behavior and Market Structure: The Case of China and the United States

This study adopts a network analytic approach to understand media audiences in relation to media markets, bridging the literature on audience behavior and media economics. Using audience data in the Chinese and U.S. markets, we apply multi-level measures to compare audience fragmentation patterns, a key indicator of market structure, across television channels. Drawing on McQuail's four–stage fragmentation model, we find the Chinese television market exhibits the Core-Peripheral model where a few channels dominate the marketplace and the rest are viewed by niche segments of the audience. In contrast, the U.S. market represents the Pluralism model with extremely high levels of audience duplication across channels, suggesting overlapping patterns of exposure throughout the market rather than isolated segments.     

The Duality of Structure in China's National Television Market: A Network Analysis of Audience Behavior

This study adapts Giddens' structuration theory to assess audience agency and its relationship with media structures. It employs network analysis to examine the co-evolution of audience duplication patterns and elements of media structure in China's national television market. The findings reveal that Chinese audiences tend to gravitate to channels with greater market share, higher household penetration rates, and more drama programming. Furthermore, channels tend to adjust their levels of drama programming relative to patterns of audience duplication in the long run. Finally, there was evidence of higher-order patterns of audience behavior, suggesting the existence of channel repertoires, and market concentration.     

Program audience duplication: A study of television inheritance effects

Inheritance effects, especially high levels of audience duplication between adjacent programs, are a widely observed but little understood feature of audience behavior. This study places inheritance effects within a theoretical model of television program choice that attributes the general phenomenon to underlying patterns of audience availability. The absolute level of audience duplication between adjacent programs broadcast on the same network is determined by the rating of each program, the structure of available program options, and similarities in program type.     

The status and future of audience duplication research: An assessment of ratings‐based theories of audience behavior

Audience duplication is recognized as a major component of program choice models and a fundamental aspect in understanding television viewing patterns. This study evaluates the utility of a specific set of ratings‐based audience theories developed over the past 25 years, and critiques their future relevance in an increasingly dynamic, complex media environment. An integrated model of audience duplication is presented as a way to assess the ability of current structural theories to explain audience behavior in the future. Recommendations are given for the direction of this research.     

The Evolving Audience Network during Media Environment Transition – A Longitudinal Study of Cross-Platform Use in China

ABSTRACT

Scholars disagree on whether the media environment has become more concentrated, fragmented, polarized or overlapped. By pooling data from a total of 250 audience surveys conducted over 9 years, we investigated the evolution of a cross-platform audience network during a time of transition in the media environment. We found that both the fragmentation and duplication of the media system changed in a curvilinear manner. More importantly, this study showed that the center of the cross-platform network was transferred from offline to online. This study emphasizes the dynamic of media choice at various stages of media technology development.     

Audience duplication and its determinants: a study in the multichannel and multiculture television market in Guangzhou,China

This study examines audience duplication, the extent to which the audience of one program also watches the other, and its determinants. Using peoplemeter data from Guangzhou, a multichannel and multicultural television market in China, the study tests the intertwining effects of media structural factors and audience preference factors on audience duplication levels of program pairs. The results show significant effects of the two types of factors. A regression model was established in which these two types of factors together explained 59% of the total variance in audience duplication.     

Predicting Audience Exposure to Television in Today's Media Environment: An Empirical Integration of Active-Audience and Structural Theories

Scholars have long advocated empirical integration of active-audience and structural theories to best explain audience exposure to television. This study incorporated both uses and gratifications and structural variables in an integrated model of audience exposure. Results indicated that seven statistically significant factors—ritualistic motivations, use of the Internet, audience availability, the cost of multi-channel service, age, instrumental motivations, and gender—combined to explain 30.3% of the variance in audience exposure to television. Findings suggest that no single theoretical construct explains the complexities that determine exposure to television. Future inquiry should continue to seek theoretical and empirical integration as a way to understand and explain media behavior.     

Reconceptualizing the role of habit: A new model of television audience activity

This paper explores the role played by habit in shaping audience behavior through an analysis of Nielsen audience data. Through the use of a structural equation model, comparisons, are made between individuals’ weekday and weekend viewing patterns to determine if similarities persist despite the structural and programmatic differences in those time periods. Results indicate that habit plays a significant role in viewing behavior.     

Cultural Proximity and Audience Behavior: The Role of Language in Patterns of Polarization and Multicultural Fluency

Cultural proximity is a multidimensional concept, most often used to explain media preferences across national boundaries. The present study extends the construct, revealing its power to explain audience formation within a multicultural society. Portable People Meter data from Arbitron, Inc., was used to compare patterns of television and radio use across Spanish-speaking Hispanics, English-speaking Hispanics, and non-Hispanics in Houston, Texas. The results indicate that language preferences play a powerful role in determining audience behavior. Furthermore, while English-speaking Hispanics exhibit multicultural fluency, the other two populations show evidence of cultural polarization.     

Developing Social Media to Engage and Connect at the University of Liverpool Library

ABSTRACT

This case study presents the Liverpool experience of using social media as an academic library to enhance audience engagement and create a community of users. It looks at the development of social media in the library, focusing on the concerted effort to grow followers and develop a meaningful use of these tools. It considers the value of taking a team approach, ensuring a diversity and breadth of output. Using social media effectively enables libraries to connect with users in a space they already occupy and bring added value to existing activities. A strong, well maintained social media presence enhances a library's national and international profile and ensures good on campus relationships with main stakeholders. This case study demonstrates the relevance of social media as a communication channel and the importance of selecting the correct platform depending on audience or aims. A literature review and recommendations based on experience are included.     

Sesame Street and the Reform of Children's Television

Television inheritance effects, inordinately high levels of audience duplication between programs scheduled back-to-back, have helped broadcasters manage audience flow for decades. This study uses 2004 national peoplemeter data collected by Nielsen to replicate a study of inheritance effects done 20 years earlier. It finds the same predictors explain either 96% or 58% of variance in the duplicated audience, depending upon the measure of duplication that is used. The research resolves discrepancies in the literature on inheritance effects and casts serious doubt on the common practice of inferring audience duplication from the strength of correlations between lead-in and lead-out program ratings.     

Audience Valuation in the New Media Era: Interactivity,Online Engagement,and Electronic Word-of-Mouth Value

This national survey of broadband users (N = 200) investigates people’s participatory behavior on Internet video websites by analyzing their use of interactive features. It seeks to identify a group of “interactive audiences” who take full advantage of web interactivity and may be most valuable to advertisers. This study defined audience interactivity based on people’s frequency in using interactive features and three groups were identified—non-interactive audience, average audience, and interactive audience. It compared three audience groups based on traditional audience valuation criteria such as demographics and media consumption levels, as well as newly proposed criteria including online engagement level and electronic word-of-mouth value. Results indicated that interactive audiences are younger, more engaged online, and have higher electronic word-of-mouth value than non-interactive audiences. Because audience interactivity is related to audience value, findings suggest that advertisers should invest more in this highly engaged and influential group online. The results also reveal the need for expanding audience valuation criteria, particularly in the online space, to include other variables such as online engagement level and electronic word-of-mouth influence. The study then offers practical implications for website managers and marketers.     

Audience Measurement and Media Fragmentation: Revisiting the Monopoly Question

Many studies have examined contests between audience measurement systems in media markets. These suggest that the audience measurement industry is a natural monopoly. This study revisits the question with a novel approach by investigating a market at a time when two measurement services provided data. Executives were interviewed in the Indian television market on how they used information available from two competing ratings services. Although market participants recognized only one system (TAM, which provided weekly ratings) as the currency for trading advertising time, many used the second system (aMAP, an overnight ratings service) selectively for improving network performance. Therefore, fragmented markets can support multiple systems if they serve distinct institutional interests.     

News in an Age of Competition: The Case of Sensationalism in Dutch Television News, 1995–2001

Recent years have seen changing and shifting technologies as well as an uncertain economic climate. This research focuses on how audiences have reacted to these shifts, using a number of different sources of data to test hypotheses related to spending time and money on media. We suggest that previous studies examining audience expenditures and diffusion of new technologies may have overlooked the stressful economic conditions surrounding diffusion of some of those technologies. We find an increase in entertainment technology purchases as well as time spent with new and traditional media during recession years, beyond that indicated by the longer term trends. While there is a general decrease in coviewing behavior in recent years, the recession years reversed the trend. Results are discussed in terms of the constancy hypothesis and our hypothesis that the media provide outlets for reducing stress during difficult economic times.     

网络舆情场中信息受众观点测度的机理及路径分析

[目的/意义]整合定性与定量的舆情研究视角,统一多模态研究对象,实现网络舆情信息受众的观点测度,可修复网络舆情分析与治理的理论与实践裂痕。[方法/过程]通过引入网络舆情场的概念,对网络舆情信息受众、受众观点测度的内涵进行诠释,就网络舆情场与信息受众观点测度的逻辑关系加以辩证讨论。[结果/结论]提出网络舆情场内舆情受众观点测度机理和具体测度路径,为后续网络舆情场中的网络舆情信息分析、多维度信息受众观点测度,受众认知规律发现,网络舆情监督和管控限制等层面的研究做相应铺垫。     

Accessing the Audience Community: How Newspapers Connect with Audience Communities in Finland,Japan, and Korea

The article contributes to the research on media management by approaching the audience as consisting of communities, instead of considering it a mass audience. By developing audience community as a concept in media management and audience research and investigating mainstream newspapers’ perceptions and practices of audience community relations, the study aims to provide a future outlook for the changing community nature of audiences. Newspaper organizations are starting to perceive the audience as a more concrete network of people, and journalistic processes can increasingly consist of generating platforms and practices for communication and communal activities with and among the audience. In the article, these processes are studied empirically by means of a qualitative study carried out in Finnish, Japanese, and Korean newspapers. Interestingly, the findings indicate that audience communities do not, after all, play an important role in the daily practices of the newspapers. The engagement with audience communities in social media is only occasional, intermittent, and by no means systematic. By contrast, interaction with offline communities seems to be more familiar and considered more valuable than connecting with audience communities in social media.     

A social media strategy for academic libraries

This study was carried out to analyse strategies regarding the use of social media for academic library services in Ghana. The research design was quantitative and adopted the survey approach. Questionnaires served as the main data collection instrument. The study population comprised of one hundred and ten library staff from public and private universities in Ghana. As indicated by the study results, the library staff agreed that there was a need for a well-formulated social media strategy to help academic libraries identify the most appropriate social media tools, establish contact with targeted audience, and increase engagement rates to enable an effective and efficient distribution of its resources and services. The results also indicated that the academic libraries, however, seem to neglect these strategies which could drive patrons' use of such platforms. Recommendations therefore suggest the need to implement social media plans and policies, user engagement, social media update, and dedicated staff with the requisite skills in the use of social media platforms for library services delivery.     

Revisiting Schramm's Radiotown: Media Displacement and Saturation

In 1959 Wilbur Schramm collected data on the media use behavior of children in what he believed was the last remaining town in North America to have radio as its only electronic mass media, and he concluded the primary impact of new media was the displacement of incumbent media. This research returns to Schramm's “Radiotown” for two follow-up studies to assess the validity of displacement as a mechanism for understanding long-term changes in media use. The first study is a qualitative data collection among a convenience sample (n = 28) of the now-adult participants of the 1959 study. The second study quantitatively tests the conclusions of the first study among the youth of Radiotown (n = 263). Among both adults and youth, radio remains a primary mass media device, with adults using more radio now than in 1959. Three principles of media use are proposed: the ubiquity of mass media devices in the household, the proximity of media devices, and the constancy of media use. Implications for the displacement hypothesis are discussed.     

Audience orientations toward new media

The proliferation of new communication technologies over the last 2 decades has increased opportunities for audience activity by offering more choices and greater control aver the communication process for media consumers. However, extant research on the degree of user activity with new media portrays conflicting views of audience members as more active or more passive. This study attempts to sort out this issue by exploring audience activity levels among users of new and traditional media, as indicated by instrumental or ritualized orientations toward media use. Results indicate that new communication technologies are motivated by both instrumental and ritualized motives, but are used more instrumentally than traditional channels, particularly among older users.     

移动社交媒体环境下用户信息焦虑行为研究进展

[目的/意义] 移动社交媒体在给用户带来极大便利和丰富体验的同时，其信息过载、重复、冗余等特点也使得用户倦怠、信息焦虑等负面情绪成为一个普遍现象。因此，对移动社交媒体环境下的用户信息焦虑行为进行探讨具有重要的实践意义和理论价值。[方法/过程] 对国内外相关研究文献进行梳理，从信息焦虑行为阐述、成因分析和研究对策等方面对移动社交媒体环境下的用户信息焦虑行为研究进展进行探讨。[结果/结论] 强迫使用、信息倦怠、抑郁情绪等都与信息焦虑行为相关，移动社交媒体下的用户信息焦虑行为表现为信息寻求焦虑、信息错失焦虑、信息安全焦虑、信息贮存焦虑。用户个体因素、信息资源因素、技术环境因素是其产生的主要原因。当前研究主要从构建信息焦虑行为量表（IAS）、开展实证研究、提出应对措施等方面进行，国内外在研究内容、研究对象和研究方法等方面存在不同之处。后续需要进一步开展实证研究、关注特殊群体的信息焦虑行为、为每一种类型的信息焦虑行为构建细化的量表、验证信息焦虑行为消解措施的有效性。