Audience Heterogeneity Research Articles

Why, how and to whom is the European Union signalling in the Indo-Pacific? Understanding the European Union’s strategy in the Indo-Pacific in the epicentre of multipolar competition

In September 2021, the European Union officially launched its Indo-Pacific strategy. Its announcement raised a series of questions over the nature, objectives, and audience of the European Union’s strategic communication. In addition, there were some doubts over whether the European Union could credibly and effectively signal as an autonomous actor in a distant geopolitical region. This article aims to address these questions by building on theoretical insights from the foreign policy signalling literature. This article offers an analysis of the European Union’s Indo-Pacific strategy and related documents, as well as its follow-up presence and actions in the region since 2021. We conclude that the European Union deliberately opted for ambiguous signalling in a context of heightened audience heterogeneity. Furthermore, the European Union has both used its signalling strategy to position itself as a credible alternative to the United States and China, but also to mobilise and coordinate member states’ actions in this pivotal region.

Global perceptions of plastic pollution: The contours and limits of debate

AbstractPlastic pollution is central to policy and public debates about anthropogenic damage to the environment. Negotiations for an international binding treaty to end plastic pollution provide a timely opportunity to analyse peer-reviewed papers concerning public perceptions of plastic pollution (n = 39). These focused on the impact of plastic pollution solely on the marine ecosystem, single-use plastics, barriers to recycling and risks of microplastics. Research studies explored public perceptions of ‘plastic pollution’, ‘marine plastic litter’, ‘marine plastic pollution’ and ‘plastic marine debris’. These terms are not interchangeable and frame the problem. Awareness links to media representations and personal ‘choices’ are limited by lack of options (extended producer responsibility schemes). There was limited discussion of reducing the aggregate global volume of plastics produced. Future research could explore perceptions of risk (toxic chemicals, bioplastics) plastics and climate change or plastics and global biodiversity loss (beyond turtles). The social meaning of plastics, the heterogeneity of audiences and the role of media in framing risks can help inform plastics-related policy. Social Sciences and media scholars are well placed to unpack the socio-cultural context in which plastics are intertwined in people’s everyday lives and how social meanings of plastics may change in response to global crises.

Looking into the past: Audience heterogeneity and the inconsistency of market signals

Prior literature has emphasized that inconsistency of market signals leads to evaluation penalty. However, limited attention has been paid to the heterogeneity of audiences who deal with inconsistency. I argue that audiences differ in the extent to which they process different market signals, which may largely shape the effect of signal inconsistency. When audiences fail to process all signals, they may not perceive signal inconsistency, thereby weakening its effect on product evaluation. It is hence important to investigate audience heterogeneity in theorizing signal inconsistency. In this study, I focus on the distinction between two important audience groups: professional critics and end consumers. Specifically, I argue that signal inconsistency exerts a stronger effect on critics’ evaluations than on consumers’ evaluations, because critics are more likely than consumers to process various market signals. I argue further that critics can act as an important intermediary to bridge the effect of signal inconsistency on consumers, even though consumers may not process all signals themselves. I test these ideas in a sample of video games released between 2001 and 2016 and find general support.

Start with “Why,” but only if you have to: The strategic framing of novel ideas across different audiences

AbstractResearch SummaryBuilding on social psychology research and entrepreneurship work on linguistic framing, we argue that the appreciation of novel ideas varies with the mental construal that members of different audiences use to evaluate them. Specifically, we theorize that the congruency between idea framing and audiences' mental construals depends on audiences' level of expertise in evaluating novel ideas. In four experiments, we found that innovators benefit from deploying framing strategies congruent with audiences' mental construals: novices (e.g., lay people, crowdfunders) appreciate more novel ideas framed in abstract why terms, while experts (e.g., professional investors, innovation managers) novel ideas framed in concrete how terms. Integrating the strategic framing of novel ideas with construal level theory and audience heterogeneity contributes to research on entrepreneurship, innovation, and impression management.Managerial SummaryOne of the critical challenges that innovators (e.g., entrepreneurs) face is to persuade relevant audiences (e.g., users, crowdfunders, professional investors, and innovation managers) to support their novel ideas. This article integrates various literatures concerned with the evaluation of novelty to examine the impact of different framing strategies on the reception of novel ideas by different audiences. By demonstrating that the framing of a novel business idea affects audience members' evaluation, and that the effectiveness of different frames (why vs. how) varies with the target audiences (novices vs. experts), we offer actionable insights into how innovators can strategically use linguistic framing to increase the likelihood of eliciting favorable evaluations and resource commitment for their ideas.

Income or education?Community‐levelantecedents of firms'category‐spanningactivities

AbstractResearch SummaryThis study investigates the relationships between consumer income, consumer education, and firms' propensities to span multiple market categories. Despite their positive correlation, I theorize contrasting effects of income and education on firms' variety‐enhancing spanning. Specifically, I propose that the strong purchasing power of high‐income communities should reduce the need for firms to operate in multiple categories, but culturally omnivorous preferences among educated elites should encourage firms' spanning. Analyses of 6,072 restaurants in a metropolitan area and a large‐scale survey offer support for these predictions. Education, though not income, has a further positive effect on firms' atypicality‐enhancing spanning. This study contributes to category and management research by focusing on audience heterogeneity as important antecedents of firms' action and explicating the multifaceted nature of spanning.Managerial SummaryThis study examines how restaurants decide their culinary categories and menus depending on residents' income and education levels of a city they are located in. I find restaurants in higher‐income communities tend to be more specialized in a single or fewer categories while those in lower‐income communities are more likely to diversify into multiple categories to reach a broader customer base. By comparison, restaurants in more educated communities tend to diversify into multiple categories and provide fusion food because educated cultural omnivores like to explore novelty. These findings imply that retail firms should consider the separate effects of income and education levels of target consumers in determining their business scope and product portfolio.

Scandal, Ideology, and Stigma

This study focuses on event-based organizational stigma during scandals through an inductive, multiple-case research design. Focusing empirically on the stigmatization by newspapers during scandals that occurred in the US, we theorize that event-based organizational stigma is an outcome of a competition between the newspapers to stigmatize or destigmatize an organization. Stigmatization of organizations does not take place primarily because of their culpability but rather due to their ideological characterization. Specifically, organizations are more likely to be stigmatized when they have a negative characterization based on the focal newspapers’ ideology. Conversely, organizations are more likely to be destigmatized when they have a positive or neutral characterization based on the newspapers’ ideology. By highlighting the role of ideology in determining organizational stigma during scandals, we advance the understanding of the sources of organizational stigma as well as demonstrate the role of audience heterogeneity in organizational social evaluations.

Audience Heterogeneity, Costly Signaling, and Threat Prioritization: Bureaucratic Reputation-Building in the EU

Abstract Organizational reputation theory suggests reputational threats can induce public organizations to change their behavior. However, it offers few insights into how organizations in contexts of high audience heterogeneity prioritize between conflicting threats, or how they ensure reputation-seeking signals reach their intended audiences. This article seeks to close these knowledge gaps. It expects organizational threat prioritization to be shaped by the centrality of the threat to the organization’s distinct reputation, and by differences in audiences’ capacity to put pressure on the organization through mobilization. Moreover, it argues that public organizations strategically vary the observability and costliness of outgoing reputation-seeking signals in response to shifts in the balance of reputational threats they face. It finds support for these expectations in the context of the European Commission, a supranational organization operating in a context of high audience heterogeneity and severe reputational threats. The empirical analysis is based on the Bayesian longitudinal modeling and simulation of Commission decision-making and applies a novel dataset on fiscal rule enforcement in the European Union (EU). The findings have important implications for organizational reputation theory and call for a renewed focus on the mechanisms underlying audience-induced organizational behavior.

Unpacking Stigmatization: Labeling, Audience Heterogeneity, and Market-Based Sanctioning

Existing research on organizational stigma has predominantly focused on its origins, as well as for the consequences of stigma for the organizations that are subjected to it. By contrast, the stigmatization process has remained relatively unexplored from an empirical standpoint. In this paper, therefore, we theorize about the stigmatization process and we suggest that its effectiveness in eliciting market-based sanctions will be a function of: 1) the labels used in framing stigmatizing judgments; 2) the audiences using those labels; 3) the “fit” between vilifying labels and the audiences using them. Through an analysis of cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) in the wake of stigmatizing judgments formulated by various audiences and targeting firms active in the defense industry between 1998 and 2016, we find broad support for our arguments.

Net audiences: a comparison of the Sainsbury Normal Method and the Sainsbury Weighted Method

ABSTRACT For almost nine decades, advertisers have relied on the Sainsbury Normal Method (SNM) to estimate net-reach where single-source data are either too expensive or unavailable. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no SNM validation studies have included catalogues, smartphone applications, websites, social media, or cinema. While few studies have applied the SNM across media, no study has addressed the limitation of the SNM, that is, the implied assumption of audience homogeneity. Given that audiences do differ by age within any medium, and across media, there is a need to incorporate audience heterogeneity into the method. The authors introduce the Sainsbury Weighted Method (SWM) which provides more accurate within medium net-reach estimations in 82% of the 9,680 cases analysed, with an average accuracy improvement for within medium net-reach estimations of 0.6 percentage points (or 13%). For across media net-reach, the SWM estimations are more accurate in 77% of the 968 cases analysed, improving the average accuracy by 0.5 percentage points (or 49%).

Outsiders favor the most: Status and the heterogeneity of audience coverage in M&A deals

Uncertainty experienced by market audiences is the fundamental premise for status to take effect. Whereas prior research usually assumes that uncertainty is evenly distributed among audiences, this study emphasizes the heterogeneity of audiences. Audiences usually differ in the scope of firms they cover. They acquire more information and confront less uncertainty when evaluating firms under their coverage than those not. Status may thus exert different effects across audiences. My theoretical development is situated in the context of M&A. In particular, I hypothesize that although an acquirer's status is generally beneficial, it is more appealing to investors who do not cover the acquirer, as compared to covering investors. Results of the empirical analysis on the U.S. deals between 1990 and 2014 provide considerable support for my framework.

Appreciation or Awareness? Differential Preferences for Category Spanning in an Online Community

Literature in organizational sociology states that category spanners – producers or products that span multiple categories – are less appealing to audiences than actors that do not span categories. Scholars also provide instances, however, where category spanners are advantaged. Audiences may interpret the same category spanning behavior from different perspectives based on their own experience and knowledge on the market. As such, we suggest a closer investigation of audience heterogeneity in expertise to help explain these mixed findings. When audiences broadly interact with the market domain, will they gain appreciation or awareness of category spanners? In a market where actors can simultaneously be both producers and consumers, we argue for a homophily preference – a greater liking of actors with homogeneous category spanning experience – which leads knowledgeable audience members to appreciate category spanners. Using a longitudinal dataset of an online community where individuals posted reviews on ...

Audience Heterogeneity and the Effectiveness of Market Signals: How to Overcome Liabilities of Foreignness in Film Exports?

This study extends research on the importance of market signals in international markets for cultural products by examining not only when market signals are important but also what types of market signals are most important to which audiences. Specifically, we argue that audience heterogeneity influences the effectiveness of commercial performance and artistic acclaim as market signals in international film markets. Audience heterogeneity refers to the differences in the cultural knowledge and preferences of domestic and foreign consumers (end audiences) and product specialization of domestic and foreign distributors (intermediary audiences). Our empirical setting is the European film industry. We use a large sample of films produced and distributed domestically and internationally in Europe between 2004 and 2009. We find that domestic commercial performance and film festival participation increase international film success, but also that their effects depend on the cultural distance between countries and the use of major or independent distribution in the domestic and foreign markets.

Embarrassment and Social Organization: A Multiple Identities Model

We empirically evaluate the proposition that the very same situational mechanisms that tend to evoke multiple identities—the processing of cognitive and affective information from the standpoint of discordant self-identifications—also produce variations in the experience of embarrassment. We integrate the classic Goffmanian model of the social sources of embarrassment with recent theorizing on the ecological features of encounters that invoke multiple identities (audience size, multiplexity, and audience heterogeneity). We use survey data obtained via the experience sampling method to show that these same mechanisms are connected to the higher self-reported levels of embarrassment in systematic and predictable ways net of fixed individual-level factors. We close by outlining the implications of our results for the revitalization of sociological research on embarrassment, specifically an approach that connects systematic features of the structural and relational position of persons with the concrete characteristics of situations in which interaction occurs.

Maintaining CEO Legitimacy: Strategies of Managing Multiple Audiences

Being considered legitimate is critical for CEOs to gain support and endorsement in their work. In order to create, maintain or enhance their legitimacy, CEOs rely on various strategies. However, managing legitimacy might be a challenging task for CEOs considering the heterogeneity of audiences who may have competing demands. This paper develops a theory that accounts for how CEOs strategically manage their legitimacy when facing a complex network of audiences having distributed interests. Our theory suggests that when facing pluralistic demands, CEOs may adopt various practices to disentangle the expectations on and actions of their organization from the expectations on and the actions of themselves as the CEO. To maintain their legitimacy, CEOs may also engage social capital and political tactics to prevent legitimacy contests. Our contribution to the literature and promising directions are discussed.

Oratorical Innovation and Audience Heterogeneity in Islamic West Java

Oratorical Innovation and Audience Heterogeneity in Islamic West Java Julian Millie (bio) Recent writing about Islamic orators in Indonesia has highlighted an important if rather obvious aspect of their activity: social change creates audiences in new combinations with diverse needs for religious mediations by preachers with competencies that match the audiences’ novel preferences and requirements. James Hoesterey, for example, has highlighted the “innovative claims to religious authority” of the Bandung-based orator Aa Gym. The mediation of religious authority in Indonesia has conventionally been the domain of people formally trained primarily in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), and against this background Aa Gym has appeared as a new type of celebrity preacher who signifies a shift away from that tradition.1 In her writings about novel articulations of Sufism in Indonesia, Julia Day Howell has noted a growing urban audience for Sufism that recognizes “televangelists and professors” as credible religious mediators, despite their lack of formal religious qualifications. These “new-media,” “entertainer-preachers” break the mold of the classic or old-style religious scholar (ulama).2 Akh Muzzaki has noted the rising public demand for sermons by Surabaya’s university-based preachers, a class of expert mediators he contrasts with the leaders based in East Java’s traditional pesantren. By responding to changes in the “preacher’s social landscape,” the campus-based preachers break from [End Page 123] traditional modes of oratorical mediation of Islam.3 These writings emphasize three points in common: the dynamic creation and recreation of audiences for Islam in Indonesia, the novel competencies that have arisen among preachers to make the mediations acceptable to these new audiences, and the ongoing, compelling grip of the kyai (pesantren leader) as the archetypal image of religious authority in Islamic life, including in the field of oratory. Having recently completed a three-year research project about Islamic oratory in West Java (2007–11),4 I concur with these researchers’ identification of preachers’ emerging competencies as responses to social change. But their observations also lead to other questions about the practice of Islamic oratory that are at risk of being obscured by the novelty of the mediators on whom they focus. The research mentioned above dwells on the highest-profile manifestations of innovative preaching. Preachers such as Aa Gym, Arifin Ilham, Yusuf Mansur, and Jefry Al-Buchori have attracted attention for their undeniable novelty, something inseparable from their prominence in emerging media networks and the national celebrity system. But it is a mistake to think that sophisticated urbanites and users of modern media are the only audiences for oratorical innovation. In Bandung, I found that a sensitivity to cultural change and a willingness to develop performance strategies in response to it are necessary capabilities even for those mediators who style themselves on the model of the traditional kyai, and who find their core audience at preaching events held in villages—the social context that appears most clearly as a continuation of Indonesian pasts. My argument here is that oratory taking place across the social spectrum succeeds as a medium for Islamic participation because orators are willing and free to shape their mediations in accordance with cultural particulars of their audiences and preaching contexts. The orators’ dynamic responses to cultural particularism constitute a general aspect of preaching that boosts its participation levels. I support this argument by contrasting preaching styles in two settings: first, in life-cycle and calendrical celebrations held in West Javanese villages, and, second, in bureaucratic workplaces. The former setting shows continuity with the past, while the second was, during the 1980s, a relatively novel context for preaching. In both settings, preaching performances are successful when preachers engage with the cultural particularisms of their audiences in their contemporary forms. This tendency to diversity does not prevail across all Muslim-majority societies. Oratory is a relatively unregulated field of activity in post-Suharto Indonesia, something that cannot be said of other Islamic countries, such as Malaysia and Egypt.5 [End Page 124] Simply put, in Indonesia, anybody whose talents and competencies are accepted by audiences can find success as a muballigh (preacher). When the field of preaching in Indonesia is surveyed, one finds that the range of acceptable talents and competencies is...

Oratorical Innovation and Audience Heterogeneity in Islamic West Java

Oratorical Innovation and Audience Heterogeneity in Islamic West Java

The calendrical rite of the ascension to power

This study isolates significant recurring similarities of rhetorical style and substance in presidential inaugural addresses after 1932 and compares them with prior addresses. The stylistic response to the new rhetorical situation—characterized by audience heterogeneity and the need for ritualistic unity—was one of higher abstraction. The aim was to provide audience members with more freedom of interpretation in order to achieve agreement.