This study explores how audience’s everyday use of fictional entertainment may facilitate public connection. Whereas the public connection perspective thus far primarily has been employed in the study of audience’s use of factual media, this study, first, conceptually updates the notion of public connection and develops a framework sensitized to capture the significance also of audience’s use of TV-series. Second, based on large-scale qualitative data collection reflecting the sociodemographic diversity in Norway, this study empirically highlights how the use of TV-series forms part of diverse yet typical orientations toward the sphere of politics. The study finds that given favorable combinations of repertoires of media use and habits, alongside resources, values, and dispositions, the viewing of TV-series clearly provides audiences with a link to the sphere of politics. It further finds, however, that the civic exploits of watching TV-series also hinge on a number of factors connected to audience’s background resources.
This article addresses the question of how engagement with fictional entertainment can enable audiences to function as citizens. It argues that existing theoretical perspectives assume spurious links between the use of fictional entertainment and politics. This article mobilizes the theoretical perspective of public connection to show how audience’s engagement with fictional entertainment can forge manifest links to the sphere of politics. The article presents five functions that capture the main varieties of how the engagement with TV series enables public connection. These functions are conceptualized as ‘Charging’, ‘Deepening’, ‘Affinitive motivation’, ‘Introduction/Extension’ and ‘Solidification’. These functions are theoretically qualified and empirically grounded in extensive qualitative research into people’s use of TV series in Norway. The article argues that these functions also apply to the engagement with other forms of fictional entertainment, including film and fiction literature.
This article investigates sense-making processes of news audiences when faced with destabilizing global events. The destabilizing event is Trump’s 2016 election win, which we study from the perspective of audiences far removed: in the Nordic region. Asking how we can understand shifts in the balance between the informational and ritual aspects of news over time, we study how journalism matters when ordinary practices are suddenly uprooted, and in the gradual return to everyday life. Based on the analysis of extensive qualitative material, we formulate three successive phases of Norwegian news audiences’ reactions to the election: annoying circus far away, world-shattering shock and regained stability. We underline not only shared experiences but also nuances which we link to differences in media use routines, levels of interests in news as well as resources for the sense-making of politics. Our findings contribute to the scrutiny of news use in everyday life and at times of political upheaval, and add an audience perspective to research on Trump and the media.
Practitioners and scholars alike assume that data visualization can have political significance—as vehicle for progressive change, manipulation, or maintaining the status quo. There are, however, a variety of ways in which we can think of data visualization as politically significant. These perspectives imply differing notions of both ‘politics’ and ‘significance’. Drawing upon political and social theory, this chapter identifies and outlines four key perspectives: data visualization and 1) public deliberation, 2) ideology, 3) citizenship, and 4) as a political-administrative steering tool. The aim of this chapter is thus to provide a framework that helps clarify the various contexts, processes, and capacities through which data visualizations attain political significance.
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