The Future of Audiences

Ranjana Das is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Surrey, UK. Brita Ytre-Arne is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway.

This book brings together contributions from scholars across Europe to present findings from a foresight analysis exercise on audiences and audience analysis, looking towards an increasingly datafied world and anticipating the ubiquity of the internet of things. The book uses knowledge emerging out of three foresight exercises, produced in co-operation with more than 50 stake-holding organisations and building on systematic reviews of audience research. It works through these exercises to arrive at a renewed agenda for audience studies within communication scholarship in the context of intrusive and connected interfaces and emerging communicative practices. 

Foreword: Sonia Livingstone.- Part 1: A new crossroads.- Chapter 1: A new crossroads for audiences and audience research: Frameworks for a foresight exercise anticipating intrusive technologies, datafication and the Internet of Things.- Chapter 2: Designing a foresight analysis exercise on audiences and emerging technologies: CEDAR's analytical-intuitive balance.- Part 2: Interfaces and Intrusions.- Chapter 3: Audiences' coping strategies with intrusive digital media.- Chapter 4: Acknowledging the dilemmas of intrusive media.- Chapter 5: The co-option of audience creativity.- Chapter 6: Redefined relationships between audiences and larger powers.- Part 3: Engagement and Action.- Chapter 7: Small acts of engagement and audiences interruptions of content flows.- Chapter 8: Interruption, disruption or intervention? A stakeholder analysis of small acts of engagement in content flows.- Chapter 9: The micro and macro politics of audience action.- Chapter 10: Collaborations over audience action.- Part 4: Horizons and Agendas.- Chapter 11: Scanning horizons and envisaging scenarios for audiences: The internet of things and audience analysis, towards 2030.- Chapter 12: Implications for audiences across generations in a changing Europe.- Chapter 13: Audiences, audience research and an unfolding agenda 1 : Facing the challenges of intrusive technologies and the Internet of Things.