Course literature in Audience Research

I am teaching audience research at Roskilde University. I teach Master students about the kind of audience research taking place in the media industry as well as academic approaches, inspired mostly by the work within cultural studies that followed the development of reception studies in the 1980’s. I also incorporate newer developments regarding the use of audience data, metrics and analytics. The course takes its point of departure in the idea of audience measurement, but I open up progressively towards more interpretative and qualitative approaches to audience research. In a nutshell, the course is teaching students how to produce knowledge about audiences in a Communication Studies programme. I make sure to engage students in the politics of audience research, as well as in questions of validity, ethics and applicability.

The reason why I am sharing this list of literature is because I had a hard time myself finding relevant and quality academic literature on some aspects of the course, especially regarding industry practices and the use of (big) data in audience research. For example, I can find literature on social media analytics and metrics, but mostly within marketing, which does not sit well with media and communication studies in terms of the philosophies of science that we rely upon in our field. Therefore, if you have suggestions for literature you wish to bring to my attention, or simply wish to discuss the research and teaching of audience studies, you are welcome to contact me or my colleagues in the research group Audiences and Mediated Life.

The course is divided into three modules. The first module introduces students to the notion of audience measurement as practiced in the communication and media sector. The second module explores the use of data, analytics and metrics in audience research. The third module focuses on qualitative and interpretative approaches to audience knowledge production. I have divided the literature below accordingly into three sections.

Module 1: Audience measurement and target group analysis

• Napoli, P. M. (2011). Audience evolution: new technologies and the transformation of media audiences. New York: Columbia University Press.
• McQuail, D. (1997). Audience analysis. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.
• Ang, I. (1991). Desperately seeking the audience. London, UK: Routledge.
• Lazarsfeld, P. F. (1941). Remarks on administrative and critical communications research. Zeitschrift Für Sozialforschung, 9(1), 2–16.
• Webster, J. G. (2014). The marketplace of attention: how audiences take shape in a digital age. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT press.
• Gunter, B. (2000). Media research methods: measuring audiences, reactions and impact. London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.
• Sullivan, J. L. (2013). Media audiences: effects, users, institutions, and power. Los Angeles, Calif.: Sage Publications.
• Smythe, D.W. (1981). “On the audience commodity and its work.” In Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. P. 22–51 (p. 231-256).
• Slater, M. D. (1995). “Choosing Audience: Segmentation Strategies and Methods for Health Communication”. In Designing Health Messages: Approaches from Communication Theory and Public Health Practice Thousand Oaks: SAGE. P. 186–198
• Barnett, C., & Mahony, N. (2011). Segmenting Publics. National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement, Bristol. P. 2-7, 11-14, 15-21.
• Hansen, F. (2002). “The development of an operational second dimensional value system”. Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, 11 (2). P. 148-167.
• Dervin, B. (1998). Audience as Listener and Learner, Teacher and Confidante: The Sense-Making Approach. In R. E. Rice & C. K. Atkin (Eds.), Public Communication Campaigns. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. P. 67–86.
• Rasmussen, C. V., & Fischer, L. H. (2008). Målgruppeanalyse: Lær din målgruppe at kende. Nyt Teknisk Forlag.

Module 2: Social media analytics and big data in audience research

• Jenkins, H. (2008). Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. “Chapter 3 Buying into American Idol: How We Are Being Sold on Reality Television”. New York: New York Univ. Press. P. 59-92.
• Bechmann, A., & Lomborg, S. (2013). Mapping actor roles in social media: Different perspectives on value creation in theories of user participation. New Media & Society, 15(5), 765–781.
• Kitchin, R., & McArdle, G. (2016). What makes Big Data, Big Data? Exploring the ontological characteristics of 26 datasets. Big Data & Society, 3(1).
• Rogers, R. (2013). “Ch. 7 Social Media and Postdemographics”. In Digital methods. MIT Press. P. 153-164.
• Alaimo, C., & Kallinikos, J. (2017). Computing the everyday: Social media as data platforms. The Information Society, 33(4), 175–191.
• Paine, K. (2009). Goodbye, eyeballs. Hello, engagement. Communication World, 26(3), 21–24.
• Zeller, F. (2016). Analyzing Social Media Data and Other Data Sources: A Methodological Overview. In L. Sloan & A. Quan-Haase, The Sage Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (pp. 386–403). London: Sage.
• Pääkkönen, J., Laaksonen, S.-M., & Jauho, M. (2020). Credibility by automation: Expectations of future knowledge production in social media analytics. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.
• Thelwall, M. (2018). Social media analytics for YouTube comments: Potential and limitations. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(3), 303-316.
• Napoli, P. M. (2011). Audience evolution: new technologies and the transformation of media audiences. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Markham, A. & E. Buchanan (2012). Ethical decision-making and Internet research 2.0: Recommendations from the AoIR ethics working committee.
• Beninger, K. (2016). Social Media Users’ Views on the Ethics of Social Media Research. In L. Sloan & A. Quan-Haase, The Sage Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (pp. 57–73). London: Sage.
• van Dijck. (2014). Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big Data between scientific paradigm and ideology. Surveillance & Society, 12(2), 197–208.
• Boyd, D., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for big data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. Information, communication & society, 15(5), 662-679.
• Tufekci, Z. (2014). Big Questions for Social Media Big Data: Representativeness, Validity and Other Methodological Pitfalls. Proceedings of the 8th International Aaai Conference on Weblogs and Social Media(ICWSM) 2014, Ann Arbor, USA, June 2-4, 2014.

Module 3: Critical, qualitative and interpretative approaches in audience research

• Schrøder, K. C. (2016). “Reception Analysis”. In G. Mazzoleni (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication. Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, p. 1–9.
• Hall, S. (1973/1980). “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse”. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Low & P. Willis, Culture, Media, Language (pp. 197-208). London: Hutchinson.
• Schrøder, Kim et al. (2003). “Reception Research in Practice: Researching Media Meanings through Talk”, p. 105-120, in Schrøder et al., Researching Audiences. London: Arnold.
• Schrøder, Kim (2000). “Making Sense of Audience Discourses. Towards a Multidimensional Model of Mass Media Reception”, p. 233-258, European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol 3 (2).
• Kvale, Steinar & Svend Brinkmann (2009). Interviews. Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing. London: Sage.
• Borer, M. I., & Fontana, A. (2012). Postmodern Trends: Expanding the Horizons of Interviewing Practices and Epistemologies. In J. Gubrium, J. Holstein, A. Marvasti, & K. McKinney, The SAGE Handbook of Interview Research. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.  pp. 45–60
• Alasuutari, P. (1995). Researching Culture: Qualitative Method and Cultural Studies. London: Sage. P. 41-62.
• Livingstone, Sonia (2000). “Television and the Active Audience”, p. 175-195, in Dan Fleming (ed.), Formations: 21st Century Media Studies. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Livingstone, Sonia (2007) The challenge of engaging youth online: contrasting producers' and teenagers' interpretations of websites. European journal of communication, 22 (2). pp. 165-184.
• Barker, M & E. Mathijs (2012). "Researching World Audiences: The Experience of a Complex Methodology". Participations 9(2), p. 664-689.
• Ang, I. (1991). Desperately seeking the audience. London, UK: Routledge.
• Hagen, I. (1999). “Slaves of the Ratings Tyranny? Media Images of the Audience", in Pertti Alasuutari, Rethinking the Media Audience: The New Agenda. London: Sage Publications. P. 130-149.