The Dynamics of Audience Fragmentation: Public Attention in an Age of Digital Media

Abstract

Audience fragmentation is often taken as evidence of social polarization. Yet the tools we use to study fragmentation provide limited information about how people allocate their attention across digital media. We offer a theoretical framework for understanding fragmentation and advocate for more audience-centric studies. This approach is operationalized by applying network analysis metrics to Nielsen data on television and Internet use. We find extremely high levels of audience duplication across 236 media outlets, suggesting overlapping patterns of public attention rather than isolated groups of audience loyalists.

Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?

“…Coined 'exposure diversity' or 'diversity as received ' (van der Wurff, 2011), recent empirical studies deal with how and to what extent audiences consume different viewpoints provided to them (Napoli, 2011;Webster, 2007). This is done by empirically tracking individuals' news consumption (Webster & Ksiazek, 2012), or by studying if a fragmented media market results in people actively selecting diverse content (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008). In contrast to previous presumptions, altogether findings suggest that more media outlets have resulted in people taking part of news from fewer rather than more media outlets (Webster, 2007).…”

Challenging Selective Exposure

“…But partisans also use an above--average level of general--interest news (Bimber 2001;Zaller 1992). And virtually all users of specialized low--reach online outlets in the so--called 'long tail' use mainstream online and TV outlets as well (Webster and Ksiazek 2012). In other words, audiences of very small outlets are usually found within the audiences of larger ones and use specialized outlets on top of their mainstream media diet.…”

Young people and television fiction. Reception analysis

“…Likewise, our research also points out the increasing role of internet in the "empowerment" of TV content by viewers (Borelli, 2008), as well as the "social desirability" generated by the promotion of programs through the web (Webster and Ksiazek, 2012) largely conducted by viewers themselves. Hence the need to develop new conceptual understandings aiming to accommodate the research to evolution in media form and media delivery (Carolyn, 2009).…”