The Research - Our Aims
Our primary concern in our research was how we as aspiring media producers can use the online environment to our advantage, as opposed to working against it. We realized that it is extremely difficult to reach a significant and relevant audience online and saw media aggregators as being our best way to reach the most suitable audience. Our initial research question is as follows:
How is the notion of ‘audience’ conceptualized in relation to both traditional broadcast media and personalized aggregated content, from theoretical and business perspectives?
Sub-questions related to this include:
• Will traditional broadcast model media be lost entirely to an aggregated model or will both continue to coexist? And if so for how long?
• What kind of cultural shifts have taken place to allow the rise of new media?
• What will content producers need to know to best reach their desired audiences?
• With the introduction of new media, will the idea of citizenship be shifted and what are the political and cultural implications of personalised aggregated content?
Our research project has had the aim of demystifying the aggregated media environment so that we, as aspiring media producers, can assert ourselves and make a living in this relatively new environment. This initially required us to clear up some confusing terms. In this research we will use the term ‘aggregated media’ to refer to media content which has been passed through certain filters, set-up either by you or content providers, in an attempt to sift through the vast amount of material online, giving you a more personalized media experience.
Because the group’s interests lie mostly in this area, we have chosen to concentrate our studies on providers and consumers of entertainment-orientated material, as opposed to online news media which is a different environment with its own relationship to the audience.
