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Thursday, November 10
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ARS01
Media Repertoires as Pathways to Understanding Cross-Media Practices Among Users
K. Schroeder
1
1
Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
In the present“mediamanifold”(Couldry 2012: 44), cross-media approaches to investigatingmedia use are gaining a new relevance, although the cross-me‑
dia perspective has some historical precedents in research about patterns of media use, such as the work of Katz, Gurevitch & Haas (1973) and Silverstone &
Haddon’s study of The Household Uses of Information and Communication Technologies (e.g. Silverstone 1994). In this age of connectivity and media-satu‑
rated cultures, people compose and make sense of their media diets across a variety of different media (Lundby 2009: 2; Lunt/Livingstone 2015: 4).The par‑
ticipants in this panel argue that media users’cross-media repertoires should be studied in terms of two‘levels’and three‘layers’. As regards‘levels’, the first
level refers to the individual media user, whose personal cross-media diet can be characterized as a personal “media repertoire” (Schrøder & Kobbernagel
2010; Hasebrink/Domeyer 2012). The second level refers to “social domains” (communities, organizations, etc.) that can be analyzed as communicative
figurations characterised by a particular “media ensemble” (Hepp/Hasebrink 2014; Taneja et al. 2012). The participants in this panel will bring these two
perspectives into dialogue with each other. To interlace both perspectives will help clarifying the conceptual and empirical relation between cross-media
use as individual practice and as part of the communicative figuration of a social domain: On the individual level, media repertoires are composed of me‑
dia-related communicative actions, by which individuals relate themselves to the social domains they are involved in. On the level of social domains,
media ensembles are characterized by the media-related communicative practices of the figuration of actors involved in the social domain. With respect to
the‘layers’of media repertoires, it can be argued that we need to study the interrelations between the three layers of 1) repertoires based on media types; 2)
repertoires based onmedia titles; and 3) repertoires arising from a gateway layer, based especially on the growing role of social media for people’s encounter
and engagement with news sources. The five papers in this panel cover all three layers of media repertoires, and discuss their implications for the compo‑
sition and breadth of citizens’media diets, including the variety of news sources that citizens encounter routinely, purposefully or inadvertently. This panel
brings together scholars from different theoretical and methodological backgrounds, whose research on users’appropriation of media ensembles provides
a cross-fertilizing perspective on the understanding of the formative – including media systemic – influences on contemporary landscapes of traditional
and new media. The aim of the panel is thus to contribute to a sophisticated theoretical understanding of ‘everyday media users’, which critically addresses
an important aspect of media power in the 'media manifold', beyond a single media perspective.
PN 009
How to Research Cross-Media Use? Investigating Media Repertoires and Media Ensembles
U. Hasebrink
1
, A. Hepp
2
1
University of Hamburg, Hans Bredow Institut, Hamburg, Germany
2
University of Bremen, Centre for Media- Communication & Information Research, Bremen, Germany
In a broad perspective ‘cross-media’research is nothing new: In audience studies we can find a long-term discussion on peoples’use of a variety of different
media. However, with a radicalised process of mediatization and with the present trends of a rapidly changing media environment, cross-media research
becomes again a hot topic of theoretical and methodological innovation. From such a point of viewwe can define cross-media research as a methodological
area of investigating communications practices, appropriations and the everyday power of media users across the variety of different media in a way that
reflects the interrelations between these media. Therefore, cross-media methods are not just about the variety of media; they are about investigating
their interrelatedness. In the proposed paper we will first elaborate on the conceptual distinction between media repertoires and media ensembles as it
is the overall focus of the panel. Our main argument here is that it is helpful to combine the perspectives of the ‘individual’and the ‘social domain’ in order
to arrive at a more holistic understanding of our present ‘media manifold’. Second, we will discuss methodological options for the reconstruction of media
repertoires. At this point we will focus on a methodology based on laying cards that we have used in previous studies. Third, we will move to the level
of ‘social domains’, which we conceptualise as complex communicative figurations, characterised by a certain actor constellation, a frame of relevance, and
communication practices with a related media ensemble. Again, interviews and laying cards are helpful for this; however, they must be used in a way that
allows for reconstructing the perspectives of the different actors in the actor constellation as well as the variance of different communicative practices in
their relation to certain media. This means not to investigate individual uses, but actor perspectives on forms of common media practices and the related
aspects of power and agency. Fourth, we will demonstrate how these two perspectives of the ‘individual’ and the ‘social domain’ can be ‘triangulated’ for
an overall critical analysis of cross-media use.
PN 010
From Everyday Communicative Figurations to Audience News Consumption and Public Connection. Methodological Challenges for
Researching Cross-Media News Consumption
K.C. Schroeder
1
1
Roskilde University, Communication and Arts, Roskilde, Denmark
In the last couple of decades there has been an unprecedented explosion of media platforms and formats, as a succession of digital and social media have
joined the ranks of legacy media. We live in a ‘hybrid media system’ (Chadwick, 2013), in which people build their personal cross-media repertoires from
the ensemble of old and new media available. In the domain of news, there is no dearth of survey research mapping the wax and wane of the different
players in the big picture of national and global mediascapes (e.g. The Pew Institute’s State of the News Media; The Reuters Institute Digital News Report).
However, knowledge about audience-behavior-on-the-ground is still scarce. This is problematic because it is precisely the user practices in the situational
and communicative figurations of everyday life which at the aggregate level of media use surveys form the statistical insights about competitive relations in
media markets and the health of democratic publics. This paper presents an essentially qualitative analysis, at the micro-level of the everyday, of cross-me‑
dia news consumption practices in the theoretical perspective of public connection (Couldry, Livingstone & Markham 2007). Recognizing the need for
Audience and Reception Studies
(ARS01–ARS18)