Converging perspectives in audience studies and digital literacies: youthful interpretations of an online genre

Engaging with a set of ideas proposed in an article published in this journal in 2004, this article transposes concepts from one mediated condition to another, as it applies selected theories from audience reception studies to research on media and digital literacies. In approaching multi-method qualitative data from a project that researched youthful digital literacies on social networking sites, the article presents a discussion on anticipations of genre and modes of interpretative engagement. It is concluded that the text–reader framework of audience reception studies pushes the digital literacies discussion away from treating literacies as practical skills, encouraging a critical examination of people’s interpretative engagement with media texts. By doing this, the article also explores how concepts lying at the core of the reception studies repertoire need to be retained and revised in the age of the internet