ECREA16-Abstract

Friday, November 11

1 6 : 0 0 – 1 7 : 3 0

ARS10

The Scope of Audience Research: Findings froma ThemeMapping Exercise by the CEDARNetwork

A. Jorge

1,2

Catholic University of Lisbon, Communication and Culture Research Centre, Lisbon, Portugal

CICS.NOVA, Lisbon, Portugal

This international panel presents results from the research done by CEDAR (Consortium on Emerging Directions of Audience Research) – a 14 country Euro‑

pean consortium of young audience researchers working to map trends, gaps and priorities emerging over the past decade (2005–2015) in the field of au‑

dience research, funded by the AHRC, UK. Based on a mapping exercise of audience research, four papers critically discuss boundary-making and shifting

formations defining the field, highlighting specific gaps and uncertainties. A cross-generational dialogue is ensured through the two respondents.The rapid

uptake of new technologies has left audience researchers both enthused and confused. While some have proclaimed to leave the arena of‘audience studies’

to ‘new media (user) research’, and some have claimed that we are in a ‘post-audience’ age, the others continuing working within the field have not yet

identified a core set of priorities and concepts to address the wide variety of media forms and technologies available today. In this panel, the organisational

and methodological work of CEDAR is presented by Das and Ytre-Arne, to contextualise the results from the inductive and deductive analyses of audience

research. The coordinators of the network present some general findings of the mapping exercise organised in thematic clusters (texts and audiences,

design interfaces and platforms, methods and methodology, audience experiences, and publics and participation). The next three papers offer bird’s eye

views on some of those clusters, and highlight key themes and main findings concerning the scope and definition of audience research. Stehling and Finger

look at comparative studies. They detect the trend of combining cross-media and cross-country analyses, discussing on the one hand the methodological

and theoretical challenges for this area; and on the other hand arguing that comparing shall be seen as integral part of future audience studies in the light

of new developments of convergence and globalization. Next, Kaun et al. turn the focus on to the invisible – audiences who have not been studied, or

studied only marginally in the midst of a rich and buzzing field. Their inquiry into the invisibility of certain audiences hones in on post-socialist audiences,

working class audiences and very young audiences, and on lurking or unintended audiences. Finally, Mathieu et al. explicitly explore the methodological

and disciplinary boundaries of audience research, as they resort to interactive interviews with scholars who are differentially positioned towards audience

research. They argue that audience research has organised its “borders”and its interactions with other fields of inquiry throughout interdisciplinarity, nor‑

mativity and contextuality. Their methodology offers a complement to the literature review conducted under CEDAR, bringing reflection on methodologies,

knowledge interests and claims that can be conceived within audience research. Lastly, Sonia Livingstone and Kim Schrøder will stand as respondents to this

panel, from their viewpoint of senior academics in the field, discussing the results in terms of its implications for audience research, as well as contributing

to the second phase of the network’s work, foresight analysis.

PN 196

An Experiment in Cross-National, Qualitative Stock-Taking: Lessons from the First Phase of the CEDAR Consortium’s Work on Media

Audiences

R. Das

, B. Ytre-Arne

Leicester University, Media and Communication, Leicester, United Kingdom

University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

In this paper we bring together insights from the first year of research done by the Arts and Humanities Council of UK funded network – Consortium

of Emerging Directions in Audience Research. Bringing together 33 researchers from 14 countries, CEDAR has set out to (1) first, in 2015, map emerging

themes in inter-related areas of audience studies as the field has rapidly transformed and morphed over the past decade and (2) second, over 2016–17,

create a foresight agenda to outline priorities for the future of the field. In this paper we address some of the challenges we have faced in our first phase

– about conducting qualitative research across cross-national teams dealing with a vast and sometimes ill-defined body of literature, the systemic and

organisational challenges that faced this network of early career researchers, methodological challenges in mapping a field as diverse and difficult to define

as audience studies, and the value created out of this work. In the second part of this paper we address some substantial issues concerning the outcomes

that have been generated by the network in its first year. We go through the intellectual logic of the work done by CEDAR inside and across its research

clusters. We present results from the consortium’s work - on texts and audiences, design interfaces and platforms, methods and methodology, audience

experiences, and publics and participation to outline ways in which people have been engaging with their media environments, to what purposes, and in

which ways – for this has all been changing over the past decade, reflecting not only the affordances of media technologies around us, but the diverse ways

in which people use the media in personal relationships, across distance and boundaries, and always, for a variety of personal, communal, political and civic

purposes. We try to present why, ultimately, as it stood in 2015–2016 – audience research could only be defined by the network with great difficulty, for

it had spread its roots amongst a variety of sub-fields and new fields (with which CEDAR has engaged), and yet – people continued to do (their own kind

of) audience research. So what had happened over the past decade that would allow audience researchers today to make sense of what the field looks like

now?Which were the burning conversations and what new paradigms of looking at the field were being proposed? In this paper, the directors of the CEDAR

network address these issues while paying attention to the challenges presented by the very structure and nature of its own endeavour.