Audience labour, discourse dynamics and challenges for analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper theorises and exemplifies the place of audience labour in the propagation of Discourse and discourses. Audience labour is simply the work of people engaged in mediation processes as they gather themselves into groups defined by specific media events (sport, music, news, movies and so on). It compares the environments and practices of the mass media era and those of the current era to show that the most economically valuable work in media is done by audiences, and that that work is becoming more direct in its orientation and effects, even as it gets cheaper for advertisers and more immersive for audience members. A social media view of audience labour shows up the intensely intimate nature of personal commodification: feelings, attitudes, opinions, outrages, general states of mind and being are all grist for the digital economy mill. Outrage systems are especially profitable. They provide grounds for what I call ‘discourse industrial sectors’, or, those groups of people making a living and sometimes a fortune fighting on one side or another of the so-called culture wars. I argue for a conception of rhetorical purpose as a guide for analysing current media environments that depend on social media.