Jay Rosen (2006),’The People Formerly Known as the Audience’, PressThink blog, June 27.

This blog post discusses the changing concept known as the audience and its meaning and role in a modern society. He suggests how audiences have evolved past a passive society and into an active, free and engaged group. Rosen writes that once where media was consumed in a top-down model, that relied on a few firms to completely control the media we consume, and now, especially through the internet, allows all people to consume it how they wish. He is critical of how the few engaged with the masses – acknowledging that ‘horizontal flow, citizen-to-citizen, is as real and consequential as the vertical one’.

It is interesting how he highlights that an audience is still perfectly justified, capable and interested in consuming media in the ‘older form’ and can still choose to write in blogs and discuss and create media on their own terms. There is no exclusivity between the audience and ‘the people formerly known as the audience’.

The blog post discusses how media communications have changed in regards to mass consumption and production, illustrating the importance local and free consumption is for society and media studies.