Papers by Tereza Pavlickova
Convergence, Mar 30, 2017
This study investigates the role of interpretation in cross-media uses. Highlighting the specific... more This study investigates the role of interpretation in cross-media uses. Highlighting the specificity of cross-media uses within meta-media environments such as Facebook, we argue that interpretative processes play a crucial role in the formation of cross-media repertoires. The methodology relies on a reception analysis for which we conducted interviews with eleven expatriates using Facebook on a daily basis, in conjunction with a commented consultation of their newsfeed. In the analysis, we show that reading Facebook’s newsfeed is an activity that contributes to the construction of the user’s mediated lifeworld. Schutz’s phenomenological approach allows us to explore how users develop reading strategies to typify their experience of the social world within Facebook, to maintain the relevance of their newsfeed and to negotiate the technological features of Facebook, shedding light on how users assemble their cross-mediated experience within meta-media.
The Future of Audiences, 2018
This chapter builds upon central findings arising from consultations with stakeholders about audi... more This chapter builds upon central findings arising from consultations with stakeholders about audiences’ engagement in the content flows, defined as an ever evolving ecology of online and offline content produced by a number of more and less institutionalised content producers, ranging from news organisations to YouTubers. First, we note that increasing use of audience analytics tends to fragment the monolithic audience into tangible sub-communities. Second, we discuss how production routines of legacy media change in response to small acts of engagement via digital interfaces. Third, audience creativity enters economic relations and amateur production struggles with a tension between being creative and economic logic of production. Fourth, we look at transformations related to (dis)trust as a mutual dynamic that not only concerns audiences’ trust or mistrust in legacy media, but which is increasingly significant in regard to media’s trust in content produced by audiences as well, making it more difficult for audiences to engage with the content produced by media institutions.
This report has been produced by the CEDAR network which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Re... more This report has been produced by the CEDAR network which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to run between 2015-2018.
This report has been produced by the CEDAR network which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Re... more This report has been produced by the CEDAR network which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to run between 2015-2018.
Audience Transformations: Shifting Audience Positions in Late Modernity, 2014
This chapter is dealing with the construction, or textual positioning of the reader / user. Autho... more This chapter is dealing with the construction, or textual positioning of the reader / user. Authors have established a simple theoretical distinction between confidence and trust, and discussed the scale of the six implied ways for audience to engage in trustful processes of reception and participation. In traditional media an institution constructs its position by professional means, while in new, digital, media such a position is constructed by the user him-or herself, and not necessarily as part of a strong relationship with traditional authorities.
The study of media audiences was not assigned an especially prominent place in Central and East E... more The study of media audiences was not assigned an especially prominent place in Central and East European (CEE) academia after ‘the big bang’ in 1989. Even now, almost 25 years later, the audience research is not performed in a consistent manner and pronounced in a firm voice in this region. We could say that media audiences – people who receive, co-create, interpret, understand and appropriate media messages – were rendered almost invisible in the post-socialist study of media. This state of affairs may seem like a coincidence of idiosyncratic factors but it is in fact a repercussion of larger socio-political logics which established themselves as unquestioned mainstream discourses underlying the period of post-socialist transformation. The trifling, petty problem of media audiences (from the societal perspective, not for us) thus becomes an access point which enables us not only to understand the reasons for its suppression but also to gain a deeper insight into the character of th...
The Future of Audiences, 2018
This chapter develops a set of findings around audiences' small-scale acts of engagement with med... more This chapter develops a set of findings around audiences' small-scale acts of engagement with media texts. We identify and discuss three distinct emanations of these small acts: 1) one click engagement, 2) commenting and debating and 3) small stories. In contrasting them with more structural productive practices, we further conceptualise them in relation to two main dimensions: effort and intentionality. Lastly, we suggest to develop a conceptualisation of the influence which we have labelled interruption. Content flow can be challenged if not transformed due to the volume of these acts, which is realised by the producing audiences as well as by mainstream media. Profound changes in the way information is produced and distributed are fuelled by small acts of engagement rather than by more laborious practices.
This report presents outcomes of the second phase of CEDAR’s work: a foresight exercise aiming to... more This report presents outcomes of the second phase of CEDAR’s work: a foresight exercise aiming to present a research agenda for the field as it would stand in the year 2030. In order to do this, the consortium, having used a systematic literature review already, conducted a trend analysis exercise, a stakeholder consultation exercise and a horizon-scanning exercise to arrive at a set of implications and research recommendations for the field of audience studies looking into the immediate future. This report has been produced by the CEDAR network which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to run between 2015-2018.
This collection brings together 71 papers by 83 authors from 20 countries presented at the 5th Ce... more This collection brings together 71 papers by 83 authors from 20 countries presented at the 5th Central and Eastern European Communication and Media Conference, titled “Media, Power and Empowerment”, in Prague, Czech Republic, in April 2012. It maps out trends in CEE media research across the entire region and provides insight into the broad span of relevant topics. The contributors to the volume successfully voice the multiple, yet specific, questions relevant to the CEE countries; the papers offer original research results to the reader, and invite them to participate in further debate on CEE media and communications research. To date, there have not been many publications dedicated to outlining the media and communications research interests across the region. This collection shows that the countries of the region indeed have a lot in common – historically, politically, and socially – while also discussing the differences among them, including the multiple political particularitie...
Abstract in French Les médias en ligne sont souvent vus comme une solution à de nombreux problème... more Abstract in French Les médias en ligne sont souvent vus comme une solution à de nombreux problèmes, ce qui en dit plus long sur notre fascination pour les technologies (médias) que sur leur capacité à effectivement résoudre ces problèmes d’une manière exclusive. Il n’empêche que les médias en ligne ont quelque chose à nous offrir: loin d’être des remèdes miracles porteurs d’amélioration, ils peuvent, lorsqu’ils sont utilisés intelligemment, aider les citoyens et les organisations de la société civile à (mieux) atteindre leurs objectifs. La question centrale dans ce rapport est traîtreusement simple: comment les médias en ligne sont-ils utilisés pour renforcer cet engagement social? Et plus spécifiquement, comment ces médias en ligne sont-ils utilisés à cet effet par et dans la société civile? Abstract in English Online media are often viewed as the solution to all kinds of problems, yet this says more about our fascination with (media) technology than about these media’s actual abil...
CM - casopis za upravljanje komuniciranjem, 2013
Building on Luhmann's theoretical concept of familiarity as a necessary precondition of trust, th... more Building on Luhmann's theoretical concept of familiarity as a necessary precondition of trust, the study draws on qualitative interviews with young professionals on their crossmedia consumption; the analysis reveals that the respondents, as media users, establish an imagined author as part of the process of interpretation. The concept of the imagined author is developed theoretically using Genette's concept of paratext. It is thus the reader's realisation of the author that belongs to the text as a paratextual feature, and is clearly formed of three qualities perceived by the audience: the author's identity, expertise and reputation. The ability to establish these qualities in the author helps the users to place the imagined author within a broader context of previous experiences, establish familiarity with the text and therefore decide whether they will place trust in the text or not.
The Communication Review, 2013
ABSTRACT In the current media environment the texts available to media audiences are from very di... more ABSTRACT In the current media environment the texts available to media audiences are from very diverse sources. This paper deals with a theoretical question of how the audiences' understanding of author co-determines the reader's interpretation of the particular text. Drawing on the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics, a concept of the imagined author is introduced: a result of the text-reader encounter, where the notion of the author suggested by the text is realized by the reader through their prior knowledge and expectations of an author. A multidimensional model of the author is therefore proposed to appreciate different characteristics and values potentially associated by audiences with varying forms of authorial presence. Distinguishing various dimensions of the author allows a matrix of authorial characteristics to be built that positions the author brought into the encounter by the text as a paratextual feature that co-determines the meaning of the text.
New Media & Society, 2013
In this paper we employ a conceptual repertoire from philosophical hermeneutics and literary aest... more In this paper we employ a conceptual repertoire from philosophical hermeneutics and literary aesthetics to examine people’s expectations of and trust in interactive media. Drawing on data from two projects, first, with young professionals on their perceptions of the informational value of various media, and second, with youthful users of the online genre of social networking sites, we present findings on perceptions of authorial presence and constructions of an imagined author. We conclude that an (imagined) author plays a key role in media users’ ability to critically use interactive media and evaluate the relevance and reliability of media content, rather than functioning as an authoritative originator of the meaning. We argue that this is important not only for contemporary research in critical digital literacies, but also for the intrinsic importance of trust in any act of communicative engagement.
New Media & Society, 2019
In this article, we develop the concept of small acts of engagement (SAOE) in a networked media e... more In this article, we develop the concept of small acts of engagement (SAOE) in a networked media environment as a conceptual framework to study specific audience practices and as an agenda for research on these practices. We define SAOE, such as liking, sharing, and commenting, as productive audience practices that require little investment and are intentionally more casual than the structural and laborious practices examined as types of produsage and convergence culture. We further elaborate on the interpretive and productive aspects of SAOE, which allow us to reconnect the notions of a participatory culture and a culture of everyday agency. Our central argument is that audience studies’ perspective allows viewing SAOE as practices of everyday audience agency, which, on an aggregate level, have the potential to become powerful acts of resistance.
At the same time, the study also calls for further support with respect to the promotion of exper... more At the same time, the study also calls for further support with respect to the promotion of expertise; the facilitation of communicative (and participative) assessments of civil society organisations; the organisation of needs studies for individual organisations (together with the establishment of networks) and per sector (combined with consultations); better promotion of existing (positive) examples; the mainstreaming of (consideration of) the use of (online) media within the King Baudouin Foundation; and more generally speaking the further reinforcement of a participative culture within civil society.
The diverse character of sources available online requires media users to employ strategies of in... more The diverse character of sources available online requires media users to employ strategies of interpretation to establish whether the particular source is trustworthy or not. Yet this might be rather problematic in the case of user-generated content, where readers may have no previous experience of authors who are unknown to the reader, and moreover, the author might be hidden behind an online identity. Building on Luhmann's theoretical concept of familiarity as a necessary precondition of trust, the study draws on qualitative interviews with young professionals on their cross-media consumption; the analysis reveals that the respondents, as media users, establish an imagined author as part of the process of interpretation. The concept of the imagined author is developed theoretically using Genette's concept of paratext. It is thus the reader's realisation of the author that belongs to the text as a paratextual feature, and is clearly formed of three qualities perceived by the audience: the author's identity, expertise and reputation. The ability to establish these qualities in the author helps the users to place the imagined author within a broader context of previous experiences, establish familiarity with the text and therefore decide whether they will place trust in the text or not.
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Papers by Tereza Pavlickova
This report brings together the work done by CEDAR - Consortium of Emerging Directions in Audience Research, an Arts & Humanities Research Council funded consortium of early-career European audience researchers. CEDAR came together to map trends, gaps and priorities emerging over the past decade in the field of audience studies.
Online media worden vaak gezien als een oplossing voor een veelheid aan problemen, iets wat meer zegt over onze fascinatie voor (media) technologie dan over de capaciteit van online media om effectief en op een exclusieve manier aan deze problemen te verhelpen. Maar online media hebben ons ook iets te bieden, niet omdat ze wondermiddelen zijn die beterschap brengen, wel omdat ze – als ze verstandig worden ingezet – onder meer burgers en middenveldorganisaties kunnen ondersteunen om hun doelstellingen (beter) te bereiken. De centrale vraag in dit rapport is verraderlijk eenvoudig: Hoe worden online media dan gebruikt om dit sociaal engagement te versterken? En meer specifiek, hoe worden deze online media daarvoor in en door het middenveld gebruikt?
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Abstract in English
Online media are often viewed as the solution to all kinds of problems, yet this says more about our fascination with (media) technology than about these media’s actual ability to fix those problems effectively and in an exclusive way. Nonetheless, online media do also have something to offer, not because they are panaceas, but because – provided they are used wisely – they can help citizens and civil society organisations attain their objectives (to greater effect). The key question in this report is deceptively simple: How are online media used to underpin social engagement? More specifically, how can these online media be used to this end in and by civil society?
Les médias en ligne sont souvent vus comme une solution à de nombreux problèmes, ce qui en dit plus long sur notre fascination pour les technologies (médias) que sur leur capacité à effectivement résoudre ces problèmes d’une manière exclusive. Il n’empêche que les médias en ligne ont quelque chose à nous offrir: loin d’être des remèdes miracles porteurs d’amélioration, ils peuvent, lorsqu’ils sont utilisés intelligemment, aider les citoyens et les organisations de la société civile à (mieux) atteindre leurs objectifs. La question centrale dans ce rapport est traîtreusement simple: comment les médias en ligne sont-ils utilisés pour renforcer cet engagement social? Et plus spécifiquement, comment ces médias en ligne sont-ils utilisés à cet effet par et dans la société civile?
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Abstract in English
Online media are often viewed as the solution to all kinds of problems, yet this says more about our fascination with (media) technology than about these media’s actual ability to fix those problems effectively and in an exclusive way. Nonetheless, online media do also have something to offer, not because they are panaceas, but because – provided they are used wisely – they can help citizens and civil society organisations attain their objectives (to greater effect). The key question in this report is deceptively simple: How are online media used to underpin social engagement? More specifically, how can these online media be used to this end in and by civil society?