Film audiences: revisiting the structure/agency debate

‘Convergence culture’, as defined by Henry Jenkins (2006), entails that content flows across a multitude of media platforms. The convergence culture concept stresses media audiences’ agency and capabilities to select the content of their liking – a position frequently linked to arguments about a decline in media industries’ power. The implied increase in audiences’ agency provoked an interesting academic debate on issues ranging from structural power and hierarchy, to the blurring boundaries between production/creation, consumption/use and distribution. Couldry (2011) for example emphasizes hierarchal structures in various convergence cultures, while Bird (2011) problematizes the extent to which ‘produsers’ are indeed submerged in (and hold power over) a media landscape dominated by producers.The proliferation of the agency/structure debate as technology changes is not new (e.g. Uricchio (2004) on the (perceived) increase in agency with the introduction of the remote control). In seeking parallels with other periods of (alleged) changing power structures in a converging media landscape, this paper revisits the agency/structure debate, building on both historical and contemporary research on film audiences. In doing so, this paper historicizes and contextualizes contemporary media practices, rather than (re)theorizing contemporary media practices.‘Convergence culture’, as defined by Henry Jenkins (2006), entails that content flows across a multitude of media platforms. The convergence culture concept stresses media audiences’ agency and capabilities to select the content of their liking – a position frequently linked to arguments about a decline in media industries’ power. The implied increase in audiences’ agency provoked an interesting academic debate on issues ranging from structural power and hierarchy, to the blurring boundaries between production/creation, consumption/use and distribution. Couldry (2011) for example emphasizes hierarchal structures in various convergence cultures, while Bird (2011) problematizes the extent to which ‘produsers’ are indeed submerged in (and hold power over) a media landscape dominated by producers.The proliferation of the agency/structure debate as technology changes is not new (e.g. Uricchio (2004) on the (perceived) increase in agency with the introduction of the remote control). In seeking parallels with other periods of (alleged) changing power structures in a converging media landscape, this paper revisits the agency/structure debate, building on both historical and contemporary research on film audiences. In doing so, this paper historicizes and contextualizes contemporary media practices, rather than (re)theorizing contemporary media practices.C