CONTEXTUALISING AUTHOR-AUDIENCE CONVERGENCES

Abstract

New media discourses are often engulfed by a variety of claims that emphasize their specificity. We can find the formulation of strong claims of novelty and uniqueness, in combination with processes of forgetfulness in relation to the societal roles of old media technologies. This article starts with a discussion on (new) audience theory, mapping and structuring the diversity of audience articulations with a focus on two of its main dimensions: the active/passive and the interaction/participation dimension. This mapping will then be used to problematize and critique the strong claims of novelty and uniqueness that ‘new’ participatory technologies have generated. Moreover, this theoretical mapping will also show that audience theory turns out to be quite stable in its capacity to facilitate the understanding of the diversity of relations between humans and media technology. Three claims are scrutinized: the shift from one-to-many to many-to-many communication; the re-articulation of the audience into the ‘produser’; and the convergence of top-down business with bottom-up production and consumption practices. Each of these claims is critically evaluated, in combination with a case study discussion that shows the complexities and contradictions of these claims. These three case studies are the BBC's Video Nation project in the UK, a reception study of nine films on the Belgian online video-sharing platform 16plus, and formal participatory (alternative and community media) organizations.