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In our week 9 lectorial, Brian had a small presentation on audiences. There was an interesting quote in his slides that goes as follows:
“The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable. You should welcome that, media people. But whether you do or not we want you to know we’re here.”
- Jay Rosen – Today’s Reading
The most important part of this quote is how Jay refers to the audience as “the people formerly known as the audience”. As a result of the advent of new media, the term ‘audience’ is the same as what it referred to back when public broadcasting was the king of media. The audience is no longer a faceless group of people without a voice. The audience is now louder than ever due to social media. It gives the audience a face, which means media producers have to change the way they communicate with their audience if they want to survive.
If a media producer does something unethical, the audience will not stay silent. There will be a barrage of tweets and Facebook posts that will spread like wildfire, until some form of punishment is achieved (such as the media producer who committed the unethical act to be fired). The audience can now have some impact on what is shown and what isn’t. We are no longer just an audience, but also co-directors in making media.
With the ability to watch what they want, when they want, the audience has a large say in what becomes popular, and what doesn’t. Taking news an example, we can choose to consume our news from public broadcasters, or from Facebook, or even from blog posts. The audience now has the power to curate their news feed to their interests, rather than consuming whatever is on the television at the time of their viewing.
Overall, the audience has become a more powerful entity than ever before. Producers now have to think more carefully when deciding what they show to their audience, and also how they show it, if they want to avoid causing an uproar.