Exploring the making of audiences: the contribution of an interdisciplinary approach. The case of the configuration of European institutional communication audiences.

The presentation will discuss theories and methodologies that can be useful to explore the representation of audiences in the European institutional communication (i.e. communication of institutions such as the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council), notably on social media platforms. In doing so, it will propose a conceptual and practical approach to studying audiences making different disciplines interact, such as linguistics, rhetoric and argumentative studies, communication and media research but also political science. The concept of audience is indeed a “boundary concept” (Esquenazi, 2009) and as such may benefit from a fruitful dialogue between these different disciplinary approaches. A common tie that binds them is their ability to show how audience is constructed from scratch by the discourses about it (Dayan, 1992) but also by the marketing/management/communication tools that are used to design and represent them. Therefore medium and medium devices play a part. Analyzing the construction of audiences reminds us that knowing audiences cannot be taken for granted. Building up audiences is a professional skill which, in the context of the European institutions, seem to fall into the competency of communication professionals. Configuring audiences is a way to demonstrate the importance of communication: it is because there are audiences that there is a need for communication professionals to approach them, who mobilize increasingly marketing and advertising methods. However, as audiences are constructed through management tools, they isolate individuals from their social and cultural context. Consequently communication professionals do not seem to call on other types of skills in order to take social complexity into account when figuring audiences. Further, as highlighted by Grossetête (2011), the objective to talk to a wider audience leads up to neglect populations that are supposed to difficult to reach. In the case of the European Union institutional communication, the process of audience representation is driven by indicators. Quantifying is indeed the dominating process to frame (and therefore grasp) audiences. “Quantification, in this regard, is a way to manage unruly publics” (Demortain, 2019). It is also a tool in the “process of neutralization of audiences” (Gorbeil, 2019). Thus, audiences that are portrayed in EU institutional communication are young, educated, privileged audiences, convinced by the EU or will be so shortly, who show no sign or partisan belonging or activism (the only affiliation is to the EU). With regards to the Audience Section call for proposals 2021, and building on a theoretical interdisciplinary framework, this reflection aims at discussing the way audiences are conceptualized, measured and addressed by institutions, and by doing so exploring the issues facing the professionals who have these responsibilities