Understanding on-line Audiences: new research approaches

Understanding on-line audiences 2 Audiences research today face a large number of challenges, technological change and its social consequences, probably being the most important. The contemporary audience that connects to the world and others via the web is difficult to understand using traditional approaches. The status of the World Wide Web nowadays, forces us to think both the user and the medium. User’s activities are apparently a fertile ground to build a more comprehensive account of audiences today focusing on what the “audience does”. Using Multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis techniques a study was conducted with the purpose of building a spatial map able to represent an important set of internet activities, group them into different clusters and identify different dimensions that can helps in understanding users attitude towards the medium and the type of media culture it frames