Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences. Napoli, Philip M. (2011). New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 240.
Philip M. Napoli provides a critical cultural examination of the evolution of the concept of audience, beginning with its twentieth-century definition by media theorists and media practitioners. Persons within media industries, academia, and the consumer have redefined the conceptualization of audience, given the onset of the Internet in the twenty-first century. Napoli’s ideas help to shed light on the conceptualization of “audience” for the future. Scholars of journalism, mass communication, and cultural studies (as well as business) will find useful information in Napoli’s book, which provides new entrees into understanding how socially constructed definitions of audience are changing.
Audience Evolution, according to Napoli, grew out of ideas that were fermented while writing his award-winning book, Audience Economics (2003). He states that his new book “is primarily concerned with the institutionalized audience, that is, the audience as socially constructed by media industries, advertisers, and associated audience measurement firms” (p. 3). Napoli addresses “…how these social constructions of media audiences change over time, of how technological and institutional forces can… [affect] such change, and how such changes are negotiated and resisted by the stakeholders involved in attracting and monetizing media audiences” (p. 3). Napoli raises ideas about the sociocultural implications of these changes that can serve to stimulate discussion and debate in classrooms and possibly lead to further research by media scholars.
Following from the proposition that media are evolving as a result of technological change, Napoli posits that the conceptualization of audience is evolving as a consequence of “the technological changes that are transforming how, when, and where audiences consume media,” and that two key phenomena are produced: (1) media and audience fragmentation, and (2) audience autonomy (pp. 4-5). These two phenomena, according to Napoli, are key to the fading away of the “mass” audience ideal and the evolution of audience conceptualization based on “long tail” scenarios, “in which audience attention is clustered around a select few content options, followed by a long tail, in which the remaining multitude of content options each attract very small audiences” (p. 5). The cumulative number of smaller audiences in the long tail eventually may outnumber the size of the aggregate “hits” or audience at the head. Furthermore, Napoli makes a case that media stakeholder resistance and negotiation of the latter phenomena lead to an evolving social construction of “audience.”
Media stakeholders’ reactions (resistance and negotiation) to the dynamics of audience evolution are the subject of a critical cultural analysis study by Napoli and the basis for Audience Evolution. In conducting the study, Napoli reports that he engaged in participant observation during media and advertising conferences and symposia, conducted informal interviews, and read and dissected the primary and secondary literature of those in the field of media and advertising. His study’s findings and his reflections are reported in the five chapters of Audience Evolution (“Contextualizing Audience Evolution,” “Transformation of Media Consumption,” “The Transformation of Audience Information Systems,” “Contesting Audiences,” and “The Implications of Audience Evolution”). Sixty-two pages of author notes and bibliographical references are provided in the book.
In chapter 1, “Contextualizing Audience Evolution,” Napoli gives a brief historical and theoretical overview of the evolution of media and the coinciding understanding of audience by modern media industries. Napoli’s examination of media “refers to the idea that media industry sectors essentially evolve over time in response to changing environmental conditions, these may be technological, economic, cultural, or regulatory” (p. 25). Napoli reviews the context of media evolution and the evolution of audience, by examining major changes in media from its origins as an intuitive industry to one that transitioned to use rationalization in its operations, beginning in the 1930s with Paul Lazarsfeld and others, and later to media changes brought about with the introduction of the Internet. A key research presupposition that Napoli points out in this chapter, and comes back to throughout the book, is that “both improvements in the availability of analytical tools and technological changes that undermined the status quo were… [and are still]…necessary conditions for the process of media evolution to take place” (p. 28).
In chapter 2 of Audience Evolution, “Transformation of Media Consumption,” Napoli underscores the rise of media fragmentation and audience autonomy that are a result of technological changes. Media fragmentation, Napoli outlines, stems from several factors including new delivery platforms, disaggregation of content and increased bandwidth, all of which increase consumer choice. In order for media content providers to remain viable in the fragmented media environment and with limited production budgets, media producers have turned to recycling or “repurposing” media content and using various forms of “user-generated” content (pp. 68-69).
Audience autonomy, made possible largely as a result of technological change, creates manifest changes in the dynamics of media production and consumption. Terms such as “prosumers” and “produages” have been coined to reflect the evolving role of media content users’ as both consumers and producers (p. 79). As Napoli, explains,
Audience autonomy refers to the extent to which the contemporary media environment provides audiences with unprecedented levels of control over not only what media they consume, but also when, where, and how they consume it; and also, increasingly, the extent to which audiences have the power to be more than mere media consumers, becoming contributors to the media environment as well. (p. 55)
Chapter 2 describes the transformation of media consumption in detail and with concrete examples, posing questions along the way, as Napoli does throughout the book, for scholars and practitioners to ponder. At one point in chapter 2, Napoli states, “…the objective here is less to document the ways in which the dynamics of media consumption have changed than it is to explore what these changing dynamics mean for how media industries understand their audiences” (p. 79). One critical question asked is, “How do these changing dynamics of media consumption effect what audiences mean to content producers and distributors, advertisers, and media buyers?” (p. 54).
Chapter 3, “The Transformation of Audience Information Systems,” discusses the major technologies that have given rise to greater audience autonomy while at the same time opening possibilities for media providers to negotiate with audiences and to use audience behaviors and actions to their advantage. Audience use of the Internet, in particular web 2.0, is a prime area utilized by media producers and providers to track audience “digital footprints” through various means. According to Napoli, “These interactive infrastructures facilitate the flow of information not only from content providers to audience members, but also from audience members to content providers (typically referred to as ‘return path data’)” (p. 88). Audience behaviors on the Internet, such as site visits, recommendations, and ratings can be collected on an individual and group basis. Chapter 3 analyzes media industries’ emergent understanding and use of “audience engagement” data. As Napoli points out, “The rise of user-generated content therefore has a significance that extends beyond the fact that audiences are now empowered to produce and distribute content, and to operate alongside traditional media organizations. These organizations can unobtrusively learn more about the tastes, preferences and interests of their audiences” (p. 94). The latter has tremendous impact on a new “market information regime” (p. 121).
Chapter 4, “Contesting Audiences,” covers how audience interactions currently are either fostered or impeded by media producers. The chapter “demonstrates that dominant conceptualizations of audiences are, in fact, often negotiated outcomes between companies, audience measurement firms, and even policymakers and public interest organizations” (p. 118). Napoli points out Hollywood studios’ initial reaction to the VCR and the studios’ efforts to have VCRs banned is a type of response that media all too frequently have had toward what they perceive as potential threats to the status quo. Chapter 4 provides a close analysis of contesting perspectives on a new audience information system, the introduction of the DVR, and the transition to the C3 rating system.
In chapter 5, “The Implications of Audience Evolution,” Napoli proposes a “post-exposure marketplace.” Napoli suggests that the outdated social constructions of audience based on media content exposure will be replaced with an “evolving institutionalized media audience,” a more holistic conceptualization of audience based on media users’ exposure, interest, appreciation, engagement, and response to media content. He briefly discusses how this new conceptualization of audience will interplay with political economy, public policy, and media scholarship. Certainly scholars will find fertile ground in the ideas and questions raised in Audience Evolution on which to base further research.
GRACE JACKSON-BROWN
Missouri State University