Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Post 8: Audience Fragmentation

Some scholars have argued that the Internet leads to increased fragmentation between people. In this posting, please offer some solutions about how this problem can be alleviated.

2 comments:

Av DG said...

From a personal standpoint and as a member of the audience, I look at audience fragmentation as a boon. The media landscape can offer me so much more choices than I previously had. I am able to tailor the content that I want from the internet. I could filter out unwanted information and zero in on the ones I am interested in and the ones that are of utility to me.

However, this also means that what I see on my monitor and the content that I read become increasingly different from what my friends have. Because of the high customization we make for the information we need, the unity that media used to bring to people and communities are vanishing.

Audience fragmentation is not very prevalent in a developing society like the Philippines where access to cable TV and the Internet, also known as the 'greatest fragmenter', is not very widespread. Communities in rural areas still gather around the TV set during evenings to enjoy the spectacle of the latest conflict in their favorite soap operas. One can be on the bus and comment on a certain piece of news the night before and you'd be gratified by a reply. Community and the uniting or centripetal power of media can still be seen in these instances.

In the urban areas, however, the Internet has created a whole new niche which people explore and exploit to their liking. Thus, someone who has regular access to the internet increasingly finds himself unable to share his comments on Internet news and information with someone who uses the internet differently. He may have found phenomenal news but his neighbor had totally passed it by. Advertising aside, the Internet has both united people (faster and less expensive communication, shrinking of geographical barriers, etc) and divided them (RSS feeds, language use, access speeds required).

I believe that this fragmentation is on a downhill drive and that this is going to go on and on exacerbated by the dominant world view that 'independence' is a good thing. For a developing country however, I would encourage the use of more uniting media (radio and TV) and provide a caveat to the centrifugal effects of Internet use.

Ko-Jung said...

From my perspective to audience fragmentation and digital divide, I think each of these two concepts has different cause-and-consequence relationship. For the audience fragmentation, in order to communicate more effectively, the owners of the mass media or advertising industry fabricate different programs or shows focusing on some specific group in the society. When the mass audience saw receive these programs or shows focusing on some specific of the receivers, then the mass audience would be separated by these programs which made and based on the audience the fragmentation. In other word, the audience fragmentation causes the separation of the audience. For the digital divide, however, people of the society are divided by introducing of the new technology, which is accepted by different generation, age, gender, background, social status, and so on. That is to say, the digital divide is the consequence of the introducing of new technology, and new technology is the cause of the separation of audience.
As a generation of the mass communication, I have fully experienced the audience fragmentation when watching TV, advertisement and surfing on internet. In some particular time, the TV station will broadcast some program designed for children, teenagers, and old people and the commercial advertisements in that time correspondingly promote the product for children, teenagers, and old people. Moreover, many channels can be separated by several different types of channels which specifically broadcast science-fiction movies, talk shows, news, weather, and even TV shopping. Therefore, the commercial advertisement of these channels would focus on those who likely watch these channels.
The audience fragmentation, in my opinion, is inevitable in society, because the owner of mass communication or advertisement decide which specific information convey to specific group. We have power to choose, but the power will shrink gradually when we depend more and more on the mass media. Even this audience fragmentation would break the boundaries of nations, race, religions, and physical distance. However, this fragmentation is also vulnerable and its effect is limited in some range. Therefore, it is the best way to emphasis the general idea and concept in the education and reality life and the government should take responsibility to maintain the function and existence of public media which convey the general issues, news, topics, and attentions of the society. Further, the mass media should inform some proportion of these public ideas to reduce the audience fragmentation effect in our society.