Audiences and users: Conceptual shift, points of convergence and mutual enrichments

Several studies have already focused on the concepts of audience (e.g. Carpentier, 2004) and public (e.g. Dayan, 2001), and the relation between them (e.g. Livingstone, 2005). The present study extends these investigations to the concept of user and examines how it is or can be theoretically positioned towards the ‘audience’. The first part of this paper asks why ‘users’ tends to substitute for ‘audience’. It is argued that the conceptual shift is driven by theoretical positions as well as technological innovations. The concept of use is indeed widely constructed in diverse research traditions raising the issue of what people do with or trough media objects. Some of these traditions belong to mass communication research (e.g. uses and gratifications approach, ethnographic studies of domestic audiences) while others have but a loose connection with the field (e.g. French sociology of uses). In any case, the concept of user brings into the focus issues which are not directly addressed by the concept of audience. Technological innovations are also responsible for the redefinition of the audience as users. In fact several dimensions of new media objects put into question the fundamental presumptions of what is an audience. This paper focuses on computerisation (i.e. one have to deal with the considerable technological part of new media), selection (i.e. selective access to information), interaction (i.e. computer-mediated communication between individuals) and co-production (i.e. participation of ordinary individuals in content production and description), and examines for each of these four dimensions the arguments which may speak in favour of ‘users’ and against ‘audience’. The second part of this study demonstrates that despite their specificities, the two concepts are being crossed by similar epistemological, theoretical and ideological debates, especially on the active vs. passive nature of audiences or users, and the micro vs. macro level of analysis. Moreover, it is argued that these points of convergence constitute a fertile ground for mutual enrichments rather than simple substitution. This assertion is elaborated through three issues. First, the concept of audience invites to consider the ‘user’ as a discursive construct which is decoded by socially and culturally situated individuals. Secondly, audience studies challenge the widely spread conception of information search as an individual activity. Instead it is suggested that access to information is a social process occurring in groups and ‘imagined audiences’ (Dayan, 1998). Finally, audience studies have to deal with computer-mediated reception of media texts which are henceforth widely discussed, interpreted, appropriated and redistributed online