Production perspectives on audience participation in television: On, beyond and behind the screen

Abstract

This article adds an empirical production perspective to the widely discussed concept of audience participation. It studies how audiences are integrated in the production of television and what motivations producers have to do so. Increased opportunities for audiences to produce or contribute to media content may change the way television is produced, as audience perspectives can be more easily integrated. Theoretically, the notions of corporate and political participation are discussed as a basis for a qualitative content analysis, focusing on a range of nonfictional television programs in Flanders, combined with in-depth interviews with editors-in-chief to study their motivations, looking at audience participation on screen, beyond the screen and behind the screen. Results show that producers mostly integrate the audience in the production process within a corporate understanding of participation, although some producers have integrated political forms of participation as well. However, rather than focusing on participation, a central motivation for producers is to engage the audience.

Production Perspectives on Audience Engagement: Community Building for Current Affairs Television

“…51 Vranckx can be considered a unique case to the extent that the production practices are not typical or representative of other current affairs programs in Flanders. 52 A case study enables the combination of multiple, complementary data sources. 53 In our study, a combination of interviews, observations, and content used and produced by producers and audiences were collected to study audience engagement and community building in the production process of Vranckx.…”

Audience Participation in PSM from a Media-centric to a Society-centric Approach

“…24 Other participatory projects, in turn, were initially marketing-driven, but engaged in more societal goals over the course of the project, or wanted to achieve both. 25 For example, VRT's current affairs program Vranckx initially aimed to increase audience appeal by creating an online community, but media producers became concerned of more democratic PSM objectives such as decreasing polarization and including different perspectives throughout the project. 26 This also shows that more minimal forms of participation, such as interaction in an online community, can foster societal goals equally well as some more elaborate forms of audience participation in media production.…”

The Place of Convergent Audiences in the Small Industry Market

“…Having the audience identity recognized as a common social role brought about studies of changes in audiences' behavior and their media consumption routines. Existing studies of audience behavior concerning industry operations are mostly available in the context of more "significant" western markets (Draper and Turow 2017;Kosterich and Napoli 2016;Te Walvaart et al 2019;Webster 2016), leaving many territories out from any deeper or integrated consideration. However, as recent studies have already proven (c.f.…”