ABSTRACT
Parts of the media, however, often slip back into much older dismissals of users as though they were still a doped, duped ‘mass’.
The term ‘audience’ is clearly also inadequate for covering the many ways in which people engage with interactive media. Do games, for example, have an ‘audience’ which is delivered to them? Players are attentive, but perhaps not in the ways presumed by ‘audience’, or even ‘text’ in earlier emphases. Yet we need some way to discuss the possible influence of the widespread distribution of ‘texts’ such as adverts, especially in combination with the marketing and other invitations to use, if not actually to ‘believe’ in, what they offer. This means that a single ad, part of a big marketing drive, is worth studying as a ‘text’, and is likely to be much more powerful than, for example, a single tweet against that ad. (See Ruddock 2008 on binge drinking, students, peer pressures and marketing campaigns.)
What concepts help us think through this area – which, after all, involves ‘us’?
