Audiences and Publics

Sonia Livingstone

Description

In today’s thoroughly mass-mediated world, audiences and publics are, of course, composed of the same people. Yet social science traditionally treats them quite differently. Indeed, it is commonplace to define audiences in opposition to the public: in both popular and elite discourses, audiences are denigrated as trivial, passive, individualised, while publics are valued as active, critically engaged and politically significant.

Sujets

• Social Psychology
• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Performing Arts
• Sociologie, société et politique
• General officer
• Cultural studies
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 août 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841509235
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The European Science Foundation (ESF) acts as a catalyst for the development of science by bringing together leading scientists and funding agencies to debate, plan and implement pan-European scientific and science policy initiatives. It is also responsible for the management of COST (European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research). ESF is the European association of 76 major national funding agencies devoted to scientific research in 29 countries. It represents all scientific disciplines: physical and engineering sciences, life, earth and environmental sciences, medical sciences, humanities and social sciences. The Foundation assists its Member Organisations in two main ways. It brings scientists together in its Scientific Forward Looks, Exploratory Workshops, Programmes, Networks, EUROCORES (ESF Collaborative Research Programmes), and European Research Conferences, to work on topics of common concern including Research Infrastructures. It also conducts the joint studies of issues of strategic importance in European science policy and manages, on behalf of its Member Organisations, grant schemes, such as EURYI (European Young Investigator Awards).
It maintains close relations with other scientific institutions within and outside Europe. By its activities, the ESF adds value by cooperation and coordination across national frontiers and endeavours, offers expert scientific advice on strategic issues, and provides the European forum for science.
Audiences and Publics:
When cultural engagement matters for the public sphere
Changing Media, Changing Europe Volume 2
Edited by Sonia Livingstone
First published in the UK in 2005 by
Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First published in the USA in 2005 by
Intellect Books, ISBS, 920 NE 58th Ave. Suite 300, Portland, Oregon 97213-3786, USA
Copyright 2005 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Electronic ISBN 1-84150-923-X / ISBN 1-84150-129-8 ISSN. 1742-9439
Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons
Copy Editor: Heather Owen
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd.
Foreword
This volume is the product of a major Programme under the title Changing Media - Changing Europe supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF). The ESF is the European association of national organizations responsible for the support of scientific research. Established in 1974, the Foundation currently has 76 Member Organisations (research councils, academies and other national scientific institutions) from 29 countries. This programme is the first to be sponsored by both the Social Sciences and the Humanities Standing Committees of the ESF, and this unique cross-disciplinary organization reflects the very broad and central concerns which have shaped the Programme s work. As co-chairpersons of the Programme it has been our great delight to bring together many of the very best scholars from across the continent, but also across the disciplinary divides which so often fragment our work, to enable stimulating, innovative, and profoundly important debates addressed to understanding some of the most fundamental and critical aspects of contemporary social and cultural life.
The study of the media in Europe forces us to try to understand the major institutions which foster understanding and participation in modern societies. At the same time we have to recognize that these societies themselves are undergoing vital changes, as political associations and alliances, demographic structures, the worlds of work, leisure, domestic life, mobility, education, politics and communications themselves are all undergoing important transformations. Part of that understanding, of course, requires us not to be too readily seduced by the magnitude and brilliance of technological changes into assuming that social changes must comprehensively follow. A study of the changing media in Europe, therefore, is indeed a study of changing Europe. Research on media is closely linked to questions of economic and technological growth and expansion, but also to questions of public policy and the state, and more broadly to social, economic and cultural issues.
To investigate these very large debates the Programme is organised around four key questions. The first deals with the tension between citizenship and consumerism, that is the relation between media, the public sphere and the market; the challenges facing the media, cultural policy and the public service media in Europe. The second area of work focuses on the dichotomy and relation between culture and commerce, and the conflict in media policy caught between cultural aspirations and commercial imperatives. The third question deals with the problems of convergence and fragmentation in relation to the development of media technology on a global and European level. This leads to questions about the concepts of the information society, the network society etc., and to a focus on new media such as the internet and multimedia, and the impact of these new media on society, culture, and our work, education and everyday life. The fourth field of inquiry is concerned with media and cultural identities and the relationship between processes of homogenisation and diversity. This explores the role of media in everyday life, questions of gender, ethnicity, lifestyle, social differences, and cultural identities in relation to both media audiences and media content.
In each of the books arising from this exciting Programme we expect readers to learn something new, but above all to be provoked into fresh thinking, understanding and inquiry, about how the media and Europe are both changing in novel, profound, and far reaching ways that bring us to the heart of research and discussion about society and culture in the twenty-first century.
Ib Bondebjerg
Peter Golding
Contents
Author Biographies
Sonia Livingstone
Introduction
Sonia Livingstone
Chapter 1: On the relation between audiences and publics
Daniel Dayan
Chapter 2: Mothers, midwives and abortionists: genealogy, obstetrics, audiences and publics
Dominique Mehl
Chapter 3: The public on the television screen: towards a public sphere of exhibition
Mirca Madianou
Chapter 4: The elusive public of television news
Ulrike Hanna Meinhof
Chapter 5: Initiating a public: Malagasy music and live audiences in differentiated cultural contexts
Roberta Pearson and M ire Messenger Davies
Chapter 6: Class acts? Public and private values and the cultural habits of theatre-goers
Sonia Livingstone
Chapter 7: In defence of privacy: mediating the public/private boundary at home
Kirsten Drotner
Chapter 8: Media on the move: personalised media and the transformation of publicness
Appendix: Audiences and publics: comparing semantic fields across different languages
Overview by Ulrike Hanna Meinhof. Particular entries on English (Sonia Livingstone); German (Ulrike H. Meinhof);
Danish (Kirsten Drotner); Greek (Mirca Madianou); Slovenian (Sabina Mihelj); French (Daniel Dayan).
Index
Author Biographies
M ire Messenger Davies
M ire Messenger Davies is Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Centre for Media Research in the School of Media and Performing Arts at the University of Ulster, Coleraine. She has a BA in English from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD in Psychology from the University of East London and taught in universities on both sides of the Atlantic before joining the University of Ulster in 2004. Her most recent book is Dear BBC : Children, television-storytelling and the public sphere, published by Cambridge University Press, 2001; she is currently writing Small Screen, Big Universe: Star Trek as television , with Professor Roberta Pearson, for the University of California Press.
Daniel Dayan
Daniel Dayan is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He has taught media sociology and film theory at various universities including Stanford, Institute d Etudes Politques, Paris, USC-Cinema, Annenberg School for Communications, EHESS, University of Oslo, University of Geneva. His books include Western Graffiti (Clancier-Guenaud, 1982), Media Events (with E. Katz, Harvard University Press, 1992), En Busca del Publico (1997), and Despacio Publico in Imagenes (with I. Veyrat-Masson, 1998). He is currently working on two projects concerning the rhetoric of terrorism and the role of specular processes in media theory.
Kirsten Drotner
Kirsten Drotner is Professor of Media Studies at the Centre for Media Studies, University of Southern Denmark, and founding director of the Centre for Child and Youth Media Studies and DREAM (Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials). Among her extensive publications are English Children and their Magazines, 1751-1945 (Yale, 1988); Medier for fremtiden: b rn, unge og det nye medielandskab [Media for the future: children, young people and the changing media landscape] (Hoest, 2001); Disney i Danmark: at vokse op med en global mediegigant [Disney in Denmark: growing up with a global media giant] (Hoest, 2003); and Researching Audiences (London: Arnold, 2003, with K. Schroeder, C. Murray and S. Kline). Her current research interests include mobile media and the development of digital learning resources.
Sonia Livingstone
Sonia Livingstone is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has published widely on the subject of media audiences. Her recent work concerns children, young people and the Internet, as part of a broader interest in the domestic, familial and educational contexts of new media access a