Media Studies 2.0; Media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power

As the media landscape changes and develops, new media occur and old media change.With this development, new logics and practices emerge as regards the production, dissemination and consumption of media content.In particular, the advent of digital media aff ords changes in media production and media uses, which urges scholars to revisit and/ or rethink central concepts or maybe to consider up-to-date media studies a regular academic fi eld.Th e two books reviewed here are each taking one of the two approaches: Th e fi rst is taking media audience studies into the age of today's 'complex and potentially bewildering' media environment, while the second points to the need for revising and updating media studies as such, taking the same context into consideration.In Media Audiences.Eff ects, Users, Institutions, and Power, John S. Sullivan revisits and rethinks the concept of media audience with a profound sense of historical development and recent changes and challenges.Th e book is based on the author's own teaching experiences.Th is becomes quite evident in its approach to a concept which is important to study and discuss theoretically, analytically and methodologically and with a fi rm grip of the changing meanings embedded in the concept 'audience' which -as the author has it -can be 'conceptually murky'.In the age of digital and cross-connected media, we are well-adviced to consider the change in audience behavior from being readers, listeners and viewers to becoming increasingly 'active' as produsers (Bruns), .Th e book explores media audiences from multiple theoretical perspectives: as victims, institutional constructions,