ABSTRACT
Audience research possibilities and techniques have considerably changed within the last decade. Today's online world offers media scholars fast and free ways to gain a profound understanding of audiences and their motives for media use, of their actual media use habits and of the personal and social consequences of such individual media use patterns. The online environment makes it relatively simple to unobtrusively observe media use, to interview audience members, and to collect related statements on public websites or forums. Audience researchers can make use of a vast number of freely available tools and services for many research-related activities. Given the high number of existing tools and the speed of technological progress, it seems impossible not to feel overwhelmed occasionally or not to overlook tools that are perfectly suited for specific research projects. This chapter discusses promises, pitfalls and ethical implications of using Web 2.0 tools for academic audience research, with the aim of raising readers' awareness of the array of freely available solutions and of potential positive or undesirable consequences when utilizing them in audience research inquiries.
