Audience Evolution and the Future of Audience Research

This article considers how changes in audience behaviors and in audience information systems are affecting the future of academic audience research. This article first illustrates how changes in the media environment are undermining traditional approaches to audience research while also giving rise to alternative analytical approaches. This article then outlines the contours of a next-generation audience research agenda that reflects these ongoing conceptual and methodological developments. Reflecting these developments, this article next argues for a definition of ratings analysis that focuses not on a particular aspect of audience behavior (i.e., exposure), but on whatever forms of currency are employed in the audience marketplace. From this standpoint, the new media environment provides new forms of “ratings” that exist alongside—and integrate with—the old, and that can renew and revitalize the field of ratings analysis.