ABSTRACT
Since the early days of city life, the street and the square have been the central stages for public appearance and interaction, permeated by intricate codes that govern urban modes of (self-)presentation and audiencing ( Goffman, 1963; Sennett, 1974). Today, because of the overwhelming presence of audiovisual media, big cities, in particular, resemble department stores or commercial television rather than theatrum mundi in their overall rhetoric. In recent years, the digitalisation of material infrastructures, and the proliferation of networked Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have augmented media saturation and deepened the commodifi cation of cityscapes, thereby multiplying instances of urban mass media audiencehood. At the same time, mobile ICTs have diversifi ed people’s activities as urban audiences; we now also receive constantly-in both voluntary and forced audience positions-other people’s technology-enabled presentations while on the move in the physical city. In addition, through our smart gadgets, we can audience performances ‘virtually elsewhere’. Hence, the history and the transformations of both face-to-face and (mass-)mediated audience practices as well as their multiple intertwinements, particularly in contemporary urban environments, offer a multifaceted topic for theoretical and empirical attention.
