Abstract
We write this article presenting frameworks and findings from an international network on audience research, as we stand 75 years from Herta Herzog’s classic investigation of radio listeners, published in Lazarsfeld and Stanton’s 1944 war edition of Radio Research. The article aims to contribute to and advance a rich strand of self-reflexive stock-taking and sorting of future research priorities within the transforming field of audience analysis, by drawing on the collective efforts of CEDAR – Consortium on Emerging Directions in Audience Research – a 14-country network (2015–2018) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, United Kingdom, which conducted a foresight analysis exercise on developing current trends and future scenarios for audiences and audience research in the year 2030. First, we wish to present the blueprint of what we did and how we did it – by discussing the questions, contexts and frameworks for our project. We hope this is useful for anyone considering a foresight analysis task, an approach we present as an innovative and rigorous tool for assessing and understanding the future of a field. Second, we present findings from our analysis of pivotal transformations in the field and the future scenarios we constructed for audiences, as media technologies rapidly change with the arrival of the Internet of Things and changes on many levels occur in audience practices. These findings not only make sense of a transformative decade that we have just lived through but they present possibilities for the future, outlining areas for individual and collective intellectual commitment.
Highlights
We write this article presenting frameworks and findings from an international network on audience research, as we stand 75 years from Herta Herzog’s classic investigation of radio listeners, published in Lazarsfeld and Stanton’s 1944 war edition of Radio Research
We present findings from our analysis of pivotal transformations in the field and the future scenarios we constructed for audiences, as media technologies rapidly change with the arrival of the Internet of Things and changes on many levels occur in audience practices
We write as directors of CEDAR – Consortium on Emerging Directions in Audience Research – a team of 29 audience researchers from 14 countries across Europe, funded (2015–2018) by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, United Kingdom, to conduct a foresight analysis exercise on developing current trends and future scenarios for audiences and audience research in the year 2030
Summary
We write this article presenting frameworks and findings from an international network on audience research, as we stand 75 years from Herta Herzog’s classic investigation of radio listeners, published in Lazarsfeld and Stanton’s 1944 war edition of Radio Research. Paying close attention to this long history meant listening to the interdisciplinarity that always lay at the heart of a field which received contributions from literary theory (Iser, 1974; Radway, 1984), mass communications and sociology (Katz et al, 1973) and critical-cultural theory (Ang, 1985; Hall, 1980; Morley, 1980), amongst others – and paying attention to how different strands of theory have been prioritized by different voices within the field It meant keeping in mind the premises behind active versus implied readers from film and print-mediated communication, and the attendant debates that these came with – around the over-celebration of divergence (Condit, 1989), or critiques about mis-readings of power from within political economy (Dahlgren, 1998), and carrying these critiques into newer interest in audiences and users. Between these and further different understandings, there have been tensions, and synergies and fruitful conversations, as made evident in the shorter history of audience research that we consider
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