Media Audiences| The Media Landscapes of European Audiences

Rasmus Helles, Jacob Ørmen, Casper Radil, Klaus Bruhn Jensen

Abstract


This article provides an overview of findings from a European study of media use patterns in nine different countries, and presents a typology of European media audiences. The first section offers a brief review of previous research on audiences’ uses of “new” and “old” media, individually and in combination, specifying the analytical perspective of the comparative study. The following three sections detail three aspects of the findings: a mapping of the landscape of media in which European audiences move in terms of their choice of and time spent on different media types; a cluster analysis of the distinctive ways in which different sociodemographic groups locate themselves in the media landscape overall; and a further analysis and interpretation of how media are integrated by audiences into the contexts of their everyday lives. The conclusion notes some theoretical lessons of the project, and considers ways of conceptualizing and operationalizing the communicative practices of audiences in future research.


Keywords


audiences, users, comparative research, cluster analysis, cross-media communication, Europe

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