Couldry, Nick. “The Extended Audience”. From Gillespie, M (Ed.) “Media Audiences”. Open Uni Press, 2005. (184-196, 210-220).
Nick Couldry’s chapter on the extended audience addresses the issue of the changing nature of the audience and the methodological implications of how audiences are to be studied. Couldry argues that the development of media technologies transforms the social and spatial forms of ‘audience-hood’ and thus results in different experiences. Our desire to perform and interact with media technologies suggests that studying audiences requires more than simple, single-faceted observations.
Couldry introducesc the three phases in the development of the audience as identified by Abercrombie and Longhurst in the book, ‘Audiences’. The first stage is the ‘simple audience’, pre-media age for theatre and books. The second is the ‘mass audience’, namely broadcast media such as newspapers, radio, films and television. Finally, the contemporary ‘diffused audience’ that is connected to some form of media at every point in time. Audiences expereience media in both their public and private lives, whether willing or not. This social fragmentation means study of audiences should extend to the places and activities in order to understand ‘what membership of the contemporary audience involves’.
As the study of audience is compelled to change as the nature of audience becomes more dispersed, Alasuutaari (Finnish media research) describes a ‘more multi-dimensional way of thinking about the audience’. Here the idea of ‘media culture’ is introduced as the objective of audience research becomes to grasp ‘media culture’ which is the bigger context in ‘which audience activity takes place and through which its wider meanings are inscribed.’ It is almost a study on identity and how media consumption and media culture construct identity.
In an extract from Abercrombie and Longhurst, the idea of audiences becoming performers is expressed. “People simultaneously feel members of an audience and that they are performers; they are simultaneously watchers and being watched.” Does this blur the lines of reality? It is argued that there is the potential for erosion of ‘the distrinction between private and public inherent in diffused audiences’ performances [that] suggests a general characteristic of this audience form – the breaking of boundaries.’
It is the issue of power, where Couldry feels Abercrombie and Longhurst’s definition of diffused audience falls short, that introduces us to Couldry’s own concept; the extended audience. While the ‘diffused’ audience captured how the experience of being in a media audience is widely shared and differentiated, it suggested that ‘power dimensions of an earlier audience-media relationship have somehow been diffused or reduced’. Couldry argues that the differences between audience members and media performers are in fact more important now. His concept of the ‘extended’ audience examines the ‘whole spectrum of talk, action and thought that draws on media, or is oriented towards media’.
Couldry also talks about tourism and the attraction audiences see in visiting places they have seen on television and in movies. One example of this is the movie Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie. Part of the movie was filmed in Cambodia, specifically in one of the ancient temples Ta Prohm. I have visited Ta Prohm both before and after the production of the movie. Since 2001, when the movie came out, tour guides now call the temple ‘the Tomb Raider temple’ and that is how they relate to their visitors. Despite the fact the the temple can advertise itself, the idea that it was in the movie makes it all the more exciting for some audiences.
something to blog about... 