Module 5: Audiences as Citizens

We all have different experiences as audiences of online or oline content. Increasingly, this is via digital communication companies and online digital entrepreneurs buoyed by social media and digital technology such as mobile phones and applications. In many regions, children and adults both spend a significant amount of their time each day engaged in media and digital communications activities. In the latter part of the twentieth century, a common assumption was that a given audience may have been a homogeneous group of passive or receptive individuals who would interpret a text or a media form in the same or a similar way. This was often the case with television, especially in its earlier phase, in that the communication was not generally multi- dimensional with multiple feedback loops. Today’s Internet-based context has greatly complexified not only the ways that we communicate but also with whom we communicate. We can now be considered, concurrently, consumers (sometimes referred to as “target audiences” including targets for data driven advertising and selected content items) as well as active participants, which means that we are also producers and creators of content.

Target audiences are groups of readers, viewers or listeners, and increasingly users, defined by specific demographic and other characteristics, such as age, ethnocultural background,  socio-economic  status,  gender,  identity or interests. These could be considered a specific group for whom various actors develop and shape messages. For example, traditionally, advertisers have been concerned with buying time or space that will provide them with access to a specific demographic or target audience. ln the television industry, advertisers will buy commercial time-slots from a network during a particular programme, if that programme is attracting the audience they want to reach. Many programmes are designed from the get-go to attract types of advertising. Presently, within the context of new media and social media, in particular, there are algorithms, tracing measures and digital footprints that can surreptitiously identify or isolate users. Thus, sophisticated marketing schemes can be developed to present users with advertisements and other content without an audience asking for them or even being aware of the ads being interwoven into their consumption. For example, someone interested in travelling to a specific destination may look for information through a web browser, and then find advertisements pop up through social media sites that they access afterward in a seamless way, illustrating how access, usage and targeted information and messages can be interwoven exponentially. See Module 10 for more on advertising. 

However, people are citizens and not mere audiences. People have value far exceeding those relating to consuming content. How we interpret messages and interactions can relate to our socio-psychological  and  lived  experiences, as well as our values, attitudes and behaviours, given our cultural, economic, ethno-racial and other identities. While there are still inequalities, barriers, obstacles and divides that can impede and diminish social relations throughout the world, there are also myriad possibilities and openings to engage and communicate with others across linguistic, geographic, cultural and political boundaries. This reality, combined with  serious  issues  that  transcend  national and local concerns, such as the environment, migration, racism, conflict, poverty and economic policies, connect directly to global citizenship. With increasing mobility of people (threatened by the COVID-19 crisis at the time of writing), access to Internet-based communications, and the circulation of ideas, culture and education, global citizenship is becoming increasingly necessary in order to confront long- standing problems, and to strive for peace, social equality, and cultural survival, significantly for marginalized groups and indigenous peoples.

According to IDEAS for global citizenship (and Oxfam):

A Global Citizen is someone who:

• Is aware of the wider world and has a sense of their own role as a world citizen
• Respects and values diversity
• Has an understanding of how the world works
• Is outraged by social injustice
• Participates in the community at a range of levels, from the local to the global
• Is willing to act to make the world a more equitable and sustainable place
• Takes responsibility for his/her actions

UNESCO approaches the subject like this : "The definition of citizenship is discussed and there is no widely agreed definition of global citizenship. In all cases, global citizenship does not entail a legal status. It refers more to a sense of belonging to the global community and a common sense of humanity, with its presumed members experiencing solidarity and collective identity among themselves and collective responsibility at the global level. Global citizenship can be seen as an ethos or a metaphor rather than a formal membership. Being a framework for collective action, global citizenship can, and is expected to, generate actions and engagement among, and for, its members through civic actions to promote a better world and future.”"

To be effective Global Citizens, young people and adults alike need to be flexible, creative and proactive. They need to be able to solve problems, make decisions, think critically, communicated ideas effectively and work well within teams and groups. These skills and attributes are increasingly recognized as being essential to succeed in other areas of 21st century life too, including many workplaces. These skills and qualities cannot be developed without the use of active learning methods through which pupils learn by doing and by collaborating with others.

Education, and, for our purposes, global citizenship education (GCED), has an enormous relevance to media and information literacy (MIL) equation. As shall be illustrated in the below, MIL and GCED have some common objectives.

This module will explore several key questions:

1. How does global citizenship affect the ways that we might consider the notion of audience in relation to content, institutions, and technologies?
2. How might a producer/author’s background and experience influence the understanding of a text in all forms?
3. What are the other factors shaping how content is interpreted, including cultural, educational and identity variables?
4. How could the construction of a text guide, or a media and information literacy model strengthen a critical interpretive process?
5. How do audiences use the communications ecology in their daily lives, and what is the impact?