The Journal of Media Innovations 1.2 (2014): 126-128.
© Ingela Wadbring 2014
http://www.journals.uio.no/index.php/TJMI
Audience Research Methodologies:
Between Innovation and Consolidation
Geoffroy Patriarche, Helena Bilandzic, Jacob Linaa Jensen and Jelena Jurišić
Routledge, 2014
We are all aware that the media landscape is transforming, and that this change
brings with it problems related to conducting audience research. Contemporary
academic discussions on the topic include themes such as the shift from
consumption to prosumption, from analogue to digital, and from one audience to
several. A well-recognised problem among researchers is that audience behaviour
has become harder and harder to grasp. The book Audience Research
Methodologies is therefore a welcome contribution to the field, in that it explores
ways of understanding how people use media and how they construct meaning
out of it, as well as ways of developing related research.
The book originated with the conference “New Challenges and
Methodological Innovations in European Media Audience Research”, which was
held in Croatia in 2011; it is based on a selection of papers from the conference.
A wide range of topics is discussed in the book, and most chapters take a multi-
methodological approach. All chapters include comprehensive literature lists to
facilitate further reading.
The editors have taken great pains to design all chapters using similar
components: a general description of the chapter’s subject, a discussion of related
pros and cons as well as the possibilities and limitations that arise with the use of
different methodologies, and illustrative case studies. In the introduction, the
editors state that the book’s aim is to illustrate the dialogues that are increasingly
taking place among various research traditions. The book’s conclusion warns,
however, that its content should not be seen as a replacement of traditional forms
of data and methods, but rather as a complement.
Apart from the introduction and conclusion, the book consists of twelve
chapters, which are organised into four sections: