The right of audience, in common law, is the right of a lawyer to represent a client in a court. Royalty, the Pope and some Presidents grant audiences. What does the power to grant an audience consist in? And what does it mean to demand an audience? Through a reading of the way in which the vocabulary of theatre, acting and audience is involved in the generation of a theory of state by Hobbes and Rousseau, this (...) paper looks to reopen these questions as a political resource for us to re-imagine and refigure our ways of being together. Through readings of Hobbes and Rousseau, it looks at the ways in which the performance of politics creates the public, the representative and the sovereign and the ways these figures interact. It proposes an alternative role for theatre as places of affective learning and a civic ethics of playfulness, in which the auto-institution of the state as an imagined collectivity is fully assumed. nema. (shrink)

Public participation broadcasting has recently become the focus of attention in media studies, as well as from the social interactional perspectives of discourse and conversation analysis, and it has been argued in particular that the talk show genre has given new and enhanced status to the `authentic' voice of lay members of the public. What remains largely unexplored is how lay participants discursively construct authentic positions for their own knowledgeable participation in such discourse. Expert speakers in public (...) participation broadcasts are typically attributed names, rank, institutional affiliation and status, which legitimizes their position, and in so doing provides their warrant to talk about whatever issue they have been brought in to discuss. Lay participants typically do not have this status attributed to them, but need to establish their own position from which to talk. In this article I examine the public identities that lay speakers build for themselves in these broadcasts, and show how they routinely draw on a range of discursive resources to construct situated, local identities which provide a warrant for what they have to say. (shrink)

Art historical research shows that artists, especially since the 1960s rise in museum and art gallery attendance do not always trust the audience’s ability to deal with their art. The choice for a performative aesthetic, for example, has also been a method for reasserting rather than—as is often thought—relinquishing artistic control. The article looks at aesthetic strategies developed by artists who desire(d) a more attentive look from their audiences. It considers works made by artists in the sixties and seventies. (...) It is a fact that the appearance of mass audiences goes hand in hand with the creation of artworks that have “attention” as their subject. Secondly, the article takes a look at more contemporary work. Faced with spectators that spend about 28 seconds looking at artworks and reading the accompanying labels, artists are developing strategies that slow spectators down, thus hoping to channel and hold their attention. (shrink)

Little is know about factors that influence the development of public self-consciousness. One potential factor is exposure to audiences: being repeatedly aware of one's object status could create a high disposition to focus on public self-aspects. To explore this hypothesis public self-consciousness was assessed in two groups of subjects: 62 professors and actors (high exposure to audiences) and 39 people without audience experience. Analysis show that significant differences exist for public self-consciousness in men only. Also, (...) history of frequent exposure to audience is significantly but weakly correlated with high public self-consciousness in men. This supports previous observations indicating that self-consciousness seems to develop differently for men and women. (shrink)

This article aims at shedding light on how civic engagement matters for the emergence of a European public sphere. It investigates the citizen's role in constituting it and asks how citizens, being located in different cultural and political contexts, participate in and appropriate EU political communication. First, the article develops a pragmatic approach to the European public sphere emphasizing the importance of citizens' communicative participation and, moreover, considers the transnational and transcultural character of European political communication. It is (...) assumed that the constitution of public spheres – representing social constructions fulfilling democratic functions – ultimately relies on the citizen audience's perception of the impact of common problems and the EU's political decisions as well as on their subsequent participation in public discourses. The second part of the article presents the findings of empirical case studies conducted in France, Italy and Germany to explore citizens' engagement in and appropriation of the European constitutional debate. (shrink)

S’intégrant dans une étude ethnographique du pouvoir pénal à l’épreuve de la violence terroriste, cet article a pour objet d’interroger le rituel des audiences de jugements au prisme de la problématique du secret et de ce qu’elle emporte en termes de recompositions de l’État et de son action judiciaire. À partir de l’observation de plus de 130 procès depuis 2015, la compréhension des enjeux liés à la publicisation des audiences, à la judiciarisation des renseignements en éléments de preuve ou encore (...) à la fabrication des condamnations, nous permettra de dévoiler les dynamiques sociales, juridiques et politiques d’une justice sous urgence. (shrink)

In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple (...) audience is often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: Rigotti and Rocci’s notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; the stakeholder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman’s theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices. (shrink)

This exploratory study is focused on the perceptions of science communication practitioners about the activities of scientists and the audiences of the marine sciences outreach in Portugal. Using the qualitative method of thematic analysis and collecting data through semistructured interviews of 14 practitioners of diverse professions, backgrounds, ages, and stages of career, it was found that the role of marine scientists in this area is traditionally viewed as reduced, but with a slight improvement in the past 5 to 10 years. (...) Despite having a historical connection with and curiosity about the sea, audiences were considered to have a mostly utilitarian interest in the marine sciences. Most practitioners had a view of science communication connected to the knowledge deficit model, with a minority articulating a more dialogical model. Although there are signs of conflict between science communicators and scientists, the proliferation of training opportunities in science communication at the national level, the perceived increase of interest and participation of marine scientists in public communication in the past years, and the consolidation of science communicators as part of the scientific community offer positive prospects for the future of outreach of marine sciences in Portugal. (shrink)

Scientists, their allies, and opponents engage in struggles not just over what is true, but who may validate, access, and engage contentious knowledge. Viewed through the metaphor of theater, science is always performed for an audience, and that audience is constructed strategically and with consequence. Insights from theater studies, the public understanding of science, and literature on boundary work and framing contribute to a proposal for a framework to explore the construction of audiences during scientific controversy, consisting (...) of three parameters: history, composition, and role. Applying this framework to the controversy over the presence of genetically modified maize in Mexico demonstrates how multiple and contested audiences form during a scientific controversy. Different scientific ?productions? construct distinct or overlapping audiences; audiences constructed at one time become ?easy recruits? for later stages of the controversy; and the various roles cast for different audiences showcase strategies for building scientific power and reflect assumptions about the capacity for publics to participate in the governance and production of science. (shrink)

Current accounts on globalization and transnational media flows have reformed traditional debates on media events and have raised questions on the integrative potential of media events at a global level. This article addresses this issue by employing the case of global disasters as media events and exploring some of the characteristics of the global public sphere surrounding them in one of its particular actualizations: that of the Greek audience. The article is empirically grounded on focus group discussions through (...) which questions of perception and framing of disasters as well as of the potential of promotion of global solidarity will be addressed. (shrink)

La mesure d'audience est au coeur de l'activité des médias dits de masse: elle sert de référence pour quantifier les auditoires et s'impose comme mode de consultation du public. Le présent numéro d'Hermès présente tout d'abord les systèmes de mesure d'audience des différents médias , mettant en évidence que l'audience est le résultat d'un ensemble de contraintes et d'un consensus toujours fragile entre les partenaires concernés. La deuxième partie, plus particulièrement centrée sur la télévision généraliste, analyse (...) les effets de la concurrence sur les programmes et les programmations. La partie suivante s'interroge sur la validité de l'audience comme moyen de connaissance des publics, et sur la possibilité de créer d'autres types de liens avec le téléspectateur. Enfin, la spécificité d'Internet par rapport aux médias traditionnels permet d'affirmer que la mesure d'audience n'y jouera sans doute jamais le rôle central, un nouveau mode de relation s'instaurant avec l'usager.Audience research is at the centre of mass media activity: it serves as a reference to quantify viewers and are considered to be THE way to survey audiences. This issue of Hermes first presents different audience rating systems used by the media , emphasizing the fact that the audience is the result of many constraints and of an invariably weak consensus between the partners concerned. The second part focuses more particularly on traditional TV channels, analyses the effects of competition on schedules and programming. The section that follows questions the validity of the audience as a means of getting to know viewers and also questions the possibility of creating other types of links with the viewer. Finally, the specificity of the Internet as opposed to more "traditional" media leads us to observe that audience rating might never play a central role in this media since a new type of relations is being created with users. (shrink)

Existing evidence suggests that children from around the age of 8 years strategically alter their public image in accordance with known values and preferences of peers, through the self-descriptive information they convey. However, an important but neglected aspect of this 'self-presentation' is the medium through which such information is communicated: the voice itself. The present study explored peer audience effects on children's vocal productions. Fifty-six children were presented with vignettes where a fictional child, matched to the participant's age (...) and sex, is trying to make friends with a group of same-sex peers with stereotypically masculine or feminine interests. Participants were asked to impersonate the child in that situation and, as the child, to read out loud masculine, feminine and gender-neutral self-descriptive statements to these hypothetical audiences. They also had to decide which of those self-descriptive statements would be most helpful for making friends. In line with previous research, boys and girls preferentially selected masculine or feminine self-descriptive statements depending on the audience interests. Crucially, acoustic analyses of fundamental frequency and formant frequency spacing revealed that children also spontaneously altered their vocal productions: they feminized their voices when speaking to members of the ballet club, while they masculinized their voices when speaking to members of the rugby club. Both sexes also feminized their voices when uttering feminine sentences, compared to when uttering masculine and gender-neutral sentences. Implications for the hitherto neglected role of acoustic qualities of children's vocal behaviour in peer interactions are discussed. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact '. (shrink)

The public communication of science and technology has become increasingly important over the last several decades. However, understanding the audience that receives this information remains the weak link in the science communication process. This essay provides a brief review of some of the issues involved, discusses results from an audience-based study, and suggests some strategies that both scientists and journalists can use to modify media coverage in ways that can help audiences better understand major public issues (...) that involve science and technology. (shrink)

In this article Goffman's theories on participation framework and change in footing are applied to discursive material from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The main finding is that a discursive setting such as the public hearings of a truth and reconciliation commission can be highly intricate and layered when considering the role of the various discourse participants. The testifying victims, the TRC commissioners and the audience engaged in various forms of subordinate communication — byplay, crossplay and (...) sideplay — in addition to the standardized and expected interaction between victims and commissioners. This tells us that face-to-face talk should not be regarded as the prototypical participation framework, even not in a highly stage-managed discursive setting. Moreover, by paying attention to the co-presence of also a `virtual' audience, the Goffmanian framework is taken beyond its confines of only discussing interaction between discourse participants who are physically present in a speech situation. In the end, each of the discourse participants tried to exploit the possibilities offered by this complex framework, thus adding to the impact the TRC had on South African society at large. (shrink)

I do not want to be misunderstood as saying that the cultural situation I describe here caused Reagan, or that it typifies Reaganism, or that everything about it can be ascribed or referred back to the personality of Ronald Reagan. What I argue is that a particular situation within the field we call "criticism" is not merely related to but is an integral part of the currents of thought and practice that play a role within the Reagan era. Moreover, I (...) think, "criticism" and the traditional academic humanities have gone through a series of developments over time whose beneficiary and culmination is Reaganism. Those are the gross claims that I make for my argument.A number of miscellaneous points need to be made here. I am fully aware that any effort to characterize the present cultural moment is very likely to seem quixotic at best, unprofessional at worst. But that, I submit, is an aspect of the present cultural moment, in which the social and historical setting of critical activity is a totality felt to be benign , uncharacterizable as a whole and somehow outside history. Thus it seems to me that one thing to be tried–out of sheer critical obstinacy–is precisely that kind of generalization, that kind of political portrayal, that kind of overview condemned by the present dominant culture to appear inappropriate and doomed from the start.It is my conviction that culture works very effectively to make invisible and even "impossible" the actual affiliations that exist between the world of ideas and scholarship on the one hand, and the world of brute politics, corporate and state power, and military force, on the other. The cult of expertise and professionalism, for example, has so restricted our scope of vision that a positive doctrine of noninterference among fields has set in. This doctrine has it that the general public is best left ignorant, and the most crucial policy questions affecting human existence are best left to "experts," specialists who talk about their specialty only, and–to use the word first given wide social approbation by Walter Lippman in Public Opinion and The Phantom Public–"insiders," people who are endowed with the special privilege of knowing how things really work and, more important, of being close to power1.1. See Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century , pp. 180-85 and 212-6. (shrink)

Flow describes a state of intense experiential involvement in an activity that is defined in terms of nine dimensions. Despite increased interest in understanding the flow experience of musicians in recent years, knowledge of how characteristics of the musician and of the music performance context affect the flow experience at the dimension level is lacking. In this study, we aimed to investigate how musicians’ general music performance anxiety level and the presence of an audience influence the nine flow dimensions. (...) The participants were 121 university music students who performed solo a music piece once by themselves and once in front of an audience. Their general MPA level was measured with an adapted version of the STAI and ranged from 27 to 76. The level of the nine flow dimensions was assessed with the Flow State Scale-2 after each performance. The levels of “concentration on task at hand,” “sense of control,” and “autotelic experience” decreased significantly with increasing general MPA level. The levels of “unambiguous feedback” and “loss of self-consciousness” decreased significantly with increasing general MPA level during the public performance only. The level of “sense of control” was significantly lower during the public performance than the private performance across participants. The level of “unambiguous feedback” was significantly lower during the public performance than the private performance for participants with a general MPA level higher than 47. The level of “loss of self-consciousness” was significantly lower during the public performance than the private performance for participants with a general MPA level higher than 32. In contrast, the general MPA level and the audience did not significantly affect the levels of “challenge-skill balance,” “clear goals,” and “action-awareness merging.” These results show that the effects of general MPA level and audience vary greatly across flow state dimensions. We conclude that musicians’ flow state should be analyzed at the dimension level rather than as a global score. We discuss how our findings could inform the development and implementation of interventions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.2 (2004) 38-52 [Access article in PDF] Artist-Audience Communication: Tolstoy Reclaimed Saam Trivedi Whoever is really conversant with art recognizes in [Tolstoy's What is Art?] the voice of the master.1There has to be some presumption that, as one of the greatest artists who ever lived, Tolstoy might actually have known what he was talking about.2It is widely accepted in contemporary Anglo-American aesthetics that, (...) despite Tolstoy's own literary achievements, his "moralism" about art is a view without much merit. For the most part, I concur with this current consensus about Tolstoy. However, despite the many flaws in his view, I think Tolstoy was on to something, after all. In particular, I believe a concept of artist-audience communication similar to what Tolstoy had in mind can be fleshed out so as to avoid the problems that Tolstoy ran into, while reclaiming the insights in his view.3In what follows, I begin by suggesting briefly that recognizing a quasi-Tolstoyan concept of artist-audience communication may have important implications for how we should approach artworks, and thus also for aesthetic education. Next, I spell out this concept. I then offer trenchant criticisms of Tolstoy's view. Finally, I point out affinities between Tolstoy's concept and mine, while also distinguishing my concept of artist-audience communication from Tolstoy's concept of artistic communication. It will emerge, I hope, that while I disagree more than agree with Tolstoy, the issues where I agree with him may be more significant. Artist-Audience Communication I begin by discussing briefly how talk of a quasi-Tolstoyan artist-audience communication bears relevance for how we should approach artworks, and thus has relevance for aesthetic education. If I am right, then in approaching [End Page 38] and experiencing artworks, we should seek a correct experiential understanding of them that is shared between the artist and audience, and between ourselves and other members of the audience. This does not meanthat we seek what the artist did intend in creating the artwork, as actual intentionalism would have us do. Rather, as members of a competent audience, we should first analyze what a given artwork means by attending to the work itself.4 This includes the broad art-historical context of production (including the period, style, category, or genre of the work; the artist's public persona; the oeuvre of the artist; works by the artist's contemporaries; the social, cultural, and political milieu of the artist; and so on) and the public conventions that apply to it. In cases of irony, satire, and allusion, we may also need to broaden the context and appeal to artistic intentions. Then we should attribute this "work-meaning" to the historical artist as part of what she or he could have intended, so long as this was historically possible. If this historically possible work-meaning coincides with what she or he did intend in that artistic intentions are successfully realized in the work, then we have a real sharing of a correct, experiential understanding of the work between artist and audience, and thus real communication between them in the sense of artist-audience communication explained above. On the other hand, if what the artist did intend is not realized in the work and thus does not coincide with work-meaning as part of what she or he could have intended, then we still have at least a minimal, hypothetical sharing and communication insofar as our correct, experiential understanding of the work is shared with what the artist could have intended.This bears relevance for aesthetic education, assuming one of the purposes of aesthetic education is to teach children and other newcomers to art how to appreciate artworks.5 In teaching people how to appreciate artworks, I suggest we emphasize the shared, communicative aspects of the experience of artworks when they are understood more or less correctly. We should tell them that they should seek to communicate with the artist via the artwork, trying to understand the artwork correctly in the very experience of the... (shrink)

This imaginative and unusual book explores the moral sensibilities and cultural assumptions that were at the heart of political debate in Victorian and early twentieth-century Britain. It focuses on the role of intellectuals as public moralists and suggests ways in which their more formal political theory rested upon habits of response and evaluation that were deeply embedded in wider social attitudes and aesthetic judgments. Collini examines the characteristic idioms and strategies of argument employed in periodical and polemical writing, and (...) reconstructs the sense of identity and of relation to an audience exhibited by social critics from John Stuart Mill and Matthew Arnold to J.M. Keynes and F.R. Leavis. (shrink)

Chez Aristophane, le public est impliqué dans le jeu comique, grâce à la disposition physique de l’espace théâtral. Il est raisonnable de penser que les femmes faisaient partie du public. Ce travail analyse les vv. 42 ss. de Lysistrata, où il semble que Cléonice s’adresse aux femmes assises dans la cavea.

One of the central critiques of the bourgeois conception of public holds that, in its implicit claim to universality, it fails to account for the material particularities of social groups and for the variety of possible rationalities. Some theorists have aimed to solve this problem by describing particular publics and particular rationalities based on racial, ethnic, gender, or political identities. While particularist public models represent difference in protest of the totalizing and counterfactual valence of a bourgeois conceptualization of (...) public, they fail to acknowledge that glossing difference is fundamental to the function of and the authorizing power of public, as it is marshalled by speakers. By analogizing Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's universal audience with public, this paper (a) introduces the public metonym, a rhetorically productive counterfactual totality that glosses the material particularities of social groups, (b) critiques the particularist approach to the paradox of public, (c) introduces the resistance metonym as a rhetorically-minded alternative, and (d) clarifies distinctions among projects that claim to address a common object called pUblic. (shrink)

Danto's discussion of site‐related and site‐specific art opens up perspectives on both his conception of the ethics and politics of public art and on his ultimately idealistic ontology of art. Danto's analysis of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial involves an important distinction between monuments and memorials that is highly relevant to current controversies, like those about Confederate statues. His differing responses to two site‐related public art works by Richard Serra exhibit a nuanced sensibility to the taste of the (...) class='Hi'>public audience and the aesthetics of genius loci. Danto's enthusiastic account of several site‐specific works involving minimal interventions on the ground (some of which remained in the planning stage) disclose his inclination to reduce art to its idea, prescinding from its material presence. (shrink)

The paper discusses the publications of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (RSAS) as part of a wider network of publication exchange, linking learned societies, libraries, and archives. The periodicals of the RSAS went through several reorganisations between 1813 and 1903, all to some extent related to their role in publication exchange. Although subject to many of the same deliberations of commercial value and institutional prestige as the expanding book trade, publication exchange offered a means of communication for institutions with (...) widely differing financial, linguistic and scientific status, and a forum for articulating a wide range of values significant in scientific publication. In the context of publication exchange, the roles of producers and consumers, and of publishers and repositories of scientific knowledge overlap, and librarians emerge alongside editors as central actors in scientific communication. Scientific editorship should be viewed not only as a means of disseminating scientific findings to wider audiences, but as designing a product that could be used to forge institutional connections, to acquire publications, and to build collections. The case of the RSAS periodicals highlights the importance of publication, not only for the distribution of scientific knowledge, but for its acquisition. (shrink)

This article proposes an analysis of the use of emotions, in particular the shame, characterizing the elenctic method performed by Socrates in the dialogue with Callicles in the third part of Plato’s Gorgias. The elenchus aims at improving the interlocutor through a process of purification that is capable of changing his whole existence. However, Plato’s dialogues only rarely give testimony of a successful transformation occurring in the interlocutor. This is due to the interlocutor’s attitude towards shame : the feeling of (...) shame can be accepted as a mean for self-transformation or hidden to protect a social status. The article will explore the way in which this fundamental difference is delineated within the dialogue by providing appropriate textual examples. Arguably, by outlining the distinction between the types of shame, it is possible to notice how the purification of the interlocutor implies a turning point for the public. This is what I call „outreach elenchus”, a specific hermeneutic figure that allows to understand a form of purification of the audience and the spectators witnessing the debate. This type of elenchus steps in at the very moment in which the Socratic interlocutor attempts to protect his social image, concealing his shame. The audience, thanks to Plato’s literary strategy, realizes the failures of the interlocutor even as he refuses to accept them. As a result, his social image becomes tarnished. (shrink)

ArgumentBy the late nineteenth century, science pedagogues and academicians became involved in a vast movement to popularize science throughout the Russian empire. With the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, many now found the new Marxist state a willing supporter of their goals of spreading science to an under-educated public. In the Stalin era, Soviet state officials believed that the spread of science and technology had to coalesce with the Communist Party's utilitarian goals and needs to revive the industrial (...) sector of the economy. This resulted in a new Stalinist technologically oriented popularization campaign. In the Khrushchev era, Soviet politicians became increasingly more aware of the competitive power of Soviet technology in the global arena and developed extensive campaigns to publicize Soviet feats for a broad domestic and foreign public audience. This was particularly true for topics such as the space program and big technologies such as nuclear power. (shrink)

There is a strong appetite in ‘the wild’ (i.e., beyond the academy) for public philosophy. There are myriad forums available, from magazines and online publications to podcasts and YouTube videos, for those who wish to engage in philosophy in a non-academic context. For academic philosophers, this has raised methodological and metaphilosophical questions like: ‘what is the best way to engage in public philosophy?’ and ‘what are our aims when we engage in public philosophy?’ But what do ‘the (...) public’ want? If public philosophy is philosophy written for a public audience, what is it, exactly, that it can or might do for them? Several answers have been proposed by philosophers, but less attention has been paid to how the public themselves might answer that question. The aim of this essay is to try and put together at least the beginning of an answer. In June 2022 we put out a survey in the hope of eliciting views from ‘the public’ on issues relating to the nature and aims of both philosophy (more generally) and public philosophy. In doing so, our aim was to take a ‘democratic’ approach to answering the question: What is public philosophy? (shrink)

In the post-broadcast era, public service media (PSM) organizations have to innovate, stay up-to-date with new ways of consuming content, and experiment with the manifold opportunities that interactivity offers for audience engagement. At the same time, they are still obligated to achieve their public service remit and guarantee that services comply with values such as universality, diversity, creativity, and innovation. This article analyzes the innovation policies and strategies of PSM to understand if these are shifting from a (...) technology-centric to a user-centric approach. It evaluates what areas of innovation are prioritized by both policy-makers and public broadcasters and whether these areas correspond with the innovation goals entrusted to PSM organizations by scholars. To this end, we adopted a multi-case study approach. The focus is on three public broadcasters of varying size and situated in different political, cultural, and economic backgrounds: RTVE (Spain), RTÉ (Ireland), and VRT (Belgium). Based on a qualitative document analysis, we conclude that innovation remains largely technology-centric. Strategies are oriented to the implementation of new technologies, the digital distribution of the content, and the collaboration with external partners. However, these public broadcasters have not yet promoted concrete actions to encourage the participation of their audiences. (shrink)

Surprising artistic interventions in the landscape of the public everyday are psychologically, socially, and politically beneficial to individuals as well as their communities. Such interventions enable their audiences to access moments of surprising inspiration, self-reflection, and revitalization. These spontaneous moments may offer access to the experience of distance from the rational “self,” allowing the irrational and purely emotive that resides within all of us to assert itself. It is this sensual instinct that all we too frequently push aside, particularly (...) in the public realm, for the sake of our responsibilities. Urban communities in particular are persistently accosted by visual and aural advertisements and consumerist lures, that further discourage individuals from accessing their non-rational selves. Yet, I argue that it would improve the health and vibrancy of our communal lives if we encountered among others in public, even for a moment, the strong feelings of sudden elation or confusion that we generally consider to be private. I also argue that an addition could be made to the already diverse oeuvre of artistic approaches that comprise the realm of “sound art” and that it may be termed “musical intervention art” – or, simply put, music played in a circumscribed area in the form of an outdoor installation, that is designed to accost, surprise, overwhelm, and through this, actively engage. This article will describe an imaginary example of musical installation art. (shrink)

This paper takes up the question of how videographic public announcements (VPAs)---i.e. videos that a wide swath of the public sees and knows that everyone else can see too--- have functioned to mobilize people politically, and how the presence of deepfakes in our information environment stands to change the dynamics of this mobilization. Existing work by Regina Rini, Don Fallis and others has focused on the ways that deepfakes might interrupt our acquisition of first-order knowledge through videos. But (...) I point out that even where every audience member takes a video to be veridical, where first-order knowledge acquisition is secure, an audience aware of deepfakes in their environment will not acquire higher order knowledge in the way that has erstwhile been characteristic for audiences of VPAs. Engaging with ideas from the literatures on public announcement logic, common knowledge, and convention, I enumerate a variety of ways in which we should expect this absence of higher order knowledge to throw up barriers to political mobilization. I go on to apply my analysis of VPAs to the mechanisms by which an uptick in publicly available videos of police brutality over the last decade, mediated by camera phones and social media, was responsible for the largest mass protests in US history in summer 2020. This makes vivid the stakes of the transformation in our mobilizing environment that I've claimed deepfakes effect: where we lose the common-knowledge-generating effects of VPAs, there are fresh obstacles to this sort of mass mobilization. (shrink)

Every day, television news operations have available dozens of video news releases (VNRs), public relations handout videos designed to mimic news formats. Electronic tracking indicates some of these VNRs are used. Critics typically assail VNRs on ethical grounds, that VNRs deceive audience members into thinking they are watching news gathered by reporters, rather than a promotional pitch. Using a snowball technique, the researchers presented survey respondents with authentic-looking local television news stories; 157 respondents evaluated three stories (out of (...) nine). Some stories used station-generated footage, some network, and some VNRs. Respondents were asked their best estimation of the source. The data indicated a real likelihood VNR deception is occurring. Two of the three VNRs deceived at least half the respondents. Respondents were incorrect an average of 46% of the time when attempting to identifying VNRs, compared to 29% incorrectly identifying network video and 20% incorrectly identifying locally shot video. (shrink)

The article examines recent debates surrounding public sociology in the context of a UK based Department of Applied Social Sciences. Three areas of work within the department form the focus of the article: violence against women and children; community-based oral history projects and health ethics teaching. The article draws on Micheal Burawoy’s typology comprising public, policy, professional and critical sociology, and argues that much of the work described in the case studies more often lies somewhere in between, in (...) the interstices, rather than within one or other of the four types. The result is not without its tensions and dilemmas, some of which are identified and explored, notably those arising from attempts to appeal to diverse audiences and meet the sometimes conflicting expectations of each. (shrink)

En matière d'audience, la qualité technique du dispositif de mesure ne suffit pas. La pertinence des concepts mesurés et leur insertion dans un processus de prise de décision sont déterminants. Les chaînes généralistes bénéficient de toute une tradition préalable à l'audimétrie et d'un savoir qualitatif permettant une utilisation complexe de données d'audience en phase avec leur économie. À l'inverse, les chaînes thématiques sont dépendantes de chiffres insuffisants à eux seuls pour juger de leur viabilité économique et qui sont (...) utilisés à défaut de tout autre outil de réflexion. Elles feraient bien de tirer parti des leçons de la crise des sites web pour comprendre que leur économie ne repose pas principalement sur leur part d'audience, mais plutôt sur la satisfaction d'un public fidèle et sur un équilibre entre coûts réels et recettes à court terme.In the field of audience ratings, the technical quality of the measurement device is not enough. The relevance of the measured concepts and their insertion in a process of decision-making are crucial. The traditional TV channels benefit from a whole tradition that existed before the introduction of viewing figures and also have qualitative know-how permitting complex use of audience data in phase with their economic profile. Conversely, thematic TV channels depend on viewing figures which are not enough on their own to judge the channels’ economic viability and which are used in the absence of any other review and reflection tools. They would be advised to learn from the crisis faced by certain Web sites that their economy is not principally based on their market share but rather on the satisfaction of a faithful public and on balancing between real costs and short-term turnover. (shrink)

As the basis for federal and state freedom of information laws, the legal idea of a public right to know has been a blessing. As the often-invoked moral justification for the press's right to publish, however, it is dangerous, because an unfettered right to know would result in restrictions on the press's right to determine what to publish. By acknowledging their moral responsibility to provide audiences with information based on their need to know, journalists can avoid the hazards of (...) arguing that an unrestricted public right to know is the foundation of press freedom. (shrink)

Portrayals of female scientists in science fiction tend to be rare and often distorted. Our research investigates the social media discourse related to public perceptions of the portrayals of scientists in science fiction. We explore the following questions: How does audience discourse about a female scientist protagonist in a science fiction film compare with that about a male scientist in a comparable movie? And, what fraction of discourse in each case is dedicated to (a) comments on physical appearance (...) and (b) incredulity that the character is a scientist? Using automated nonparametric sentiment analysis software that employs an intelligent algorithm informed by human coding, we analyze Twitter discourse around the release of two summer 2011 science fiction blockbusters with scientists in lead roles: Thor and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Although scholars have pointed to sexualized portrayals of women scientists in popular media, we found relatively few mentions of the attractiveness of an admittedly attractive female scientist. Additionally, audience discourse was not centered on the implausibility of the female scientist. This is particularly meaningful when combined with previous research showing that strong women in lead roles do not decrease profitability of science fiction films. (shrink)

Public criminology is concerned with public understandings of crime and policing and public discussions of such matters by criminologists and allied social scientists. For the purposes of this paper, these professionals are individuals identified by journalists on the basis of academic credentials or university affiliation as those who can speak to crime matters. This qualitative study investigates media statements made by criminologists and allied social scientists following the 2020 murder of George Floyd with two questions in mind: (...) How have they responded to debates over reforming, defunding, and abolishing police? What insight can these responses provide about public criminology more generally? I analyze statements offered by criminologists in news reports and on Twitter using Qualitative Media Analysis, an approach that emphasizes the processes through which discourse is presented to audiences. I argue that recent criminological debates in the media concerning the future of policing have exposed unresolvable tensions among scholars who engage in the practice of public criminology, suggesting that the public is not receiving coherent, authoritative messages about these issues. The findings also raise questions about public criminology and illuminate new concerns regarding scholarly expertise related to knowledge claims and credibility relative to social justice. (shrink)

Anatomical exhibitions, online atlases and televised dissections have recently attracted much attention and raised questions concerning the status of and the authority over the human body, the purpose of anatomical education within and outside medical schools and the methods of teaching in the digital age. I propose that for understanding the current public views of anatomy, we need to gain insight into their historical development. This article focuses on anatomies accessible to non-medical audiences in the capital of the Habsburg (...) Empire, Vienna, at the time when the city was the seat of a world-leading medical school. Anatomy at the University of Vienna was famous for its research, instruction and the abundant provision with dissectible corpses. Public anatomies were equally rich and ranged from exhibitions at the Präuscher’s Panoptikon und Anatomisches Museum , established in 1871 in the Prater amusement park, lectures on human and comparative anatomy by the university professor Carl Bernhard Brühl (1863–1890), to displays of anatomical objects at the World Exhibition in 1873. I finish by discussing a collection of letters written by the prospective ‘cadaver donors’, offering an insight into the ways in which medical encounters and anatomical knowledge informed the working-class views of their bodies. By looking at the kinds of anatomy in circulation, as well as at the participants in these exchanges, I want to illuminate the relationship between academic and public anatomies, as well as to reveal the purposes to which public anatomy served. (shrink)

Publicity may be considered “covert marketing” when the audience believes the message was created by an independent source rather than the product marketer. We focus on one form of publicity—video news releases —which are packaged video segments created and provided for free by a third party to the news organization. VNRs are usually shown without source disclosure. In study one, viewers’ beliefs about and perceptions of credibility in a news story are altered when they acquire persuasion knowledge about VNRs (...) and learn that the source of the story was an unedited VNR. Study two results show similar patterns despite the fact that source disclosure of the story was provided on screen. Importantly, the perceived ethics of VNRs impact perceptions of credibility. (shrink)

In discussing reform of public schools, the conversation is usually about schools; in this article I examine the meaning of public, drawing on Dewey's (1927/1954/1988) understanding of the nature of a public and its importance to democratic life. Vouchers and other market challenges to public education are a danger to the existence of a public, and a threat to democratic life. I consider the relevant differences between publics, markets, and audiences, and their relation to democracy. (...) Finally, I consider public schools as both a reflection of public will and a central means to create a public. (shrink)

‘Public moods’ are often referred to in laymen’s accounts of public reactions to social events, yet the concept has rarely been invoked by social scientists. Taking public moods seriously as an analytical concept, this article relies on recent work on the moods of individuals as a means of exploring the moods of the public. To be in a certain mood is to attune oneself to the situation in which one finds oneself. Our mood is the report (...) we give on the state of our attunement. A public mood can either be understood as the mood of a certain age, the mood of an audience which jointly attends to a public performance, or the bonding which takes places between bodies which are in close physical proximity to each other. It is in the public mood that emotions, thoughts and plans for action arise. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to explore the views of members of the general public regarding ethical issues in adult predictive genetic testing. The literature pertaining to ethical issues regarding to adult predictive genetic testing is largely restricted to the views of ‘experts’ who have emphasized informed consent, patent issues, and insurance discrimination. Occasionally the views of patients who have undergone genetic counselling and testing have been elicited, adding psychosocial and family issues. However, the general public has (...) not had the opportunity to contribute. In order to explore theatre as a health policy research tool, 1,200 audience members attended the play ‘Sarah’s Daughters’ in seven Canadian cities, following which audience discussions were audiotaped. This study performed a secondary qualitative analysis of the data to identify the ethical issues of adult predictive genetic testing important to members of the general public. The identified issues were: (1) need for public education; (2) choice to undergo genetic counselling and testing; (3) access to genetic counselling and testing; and (4) obligations regarding the handling of genetic information. Audience members emphasized public education and access to information regarding potential choices, which was different from the emphasis on informed consent and other ethical issues prominent in the literature. Members of the general public emphasized ethical issues that were different than those identified by experts and patients. It is essential that members of the public be included in complex and controversial public policy decisions. (shrink)

The concept of ecofascism describes the distortion of ecology for the purpose of gaining greater and wider audience, popularising ideologies and fulfilling xenophobic and nationalistic goals by regimes such as the far-right agenda and the radical ecological groups. This study investigates the issue of ecofascism in Europe, using the example of Greece, by examining the views of the citizens of Greece on the links between the political parties and ecology and environment. A survey of 600 people was conducted in (...) Greece, using questionnaires on ecofascism, politics and ecological issues. The survey showed that the sample has, in general, humanistic, democratic and quite left-wing ideals. However, some of the respondents indicated nationalistic, even fascist, trends. Because the current socio-economic and political conditions in Europe can fuel an outbreak of fascism, we should be very cautious about these findings, due to the growing impact of far-right ideas on society. Some aspects of the ecofascist rhetoric still continue to mislead, revealing the sly and worrying penetration of fascism in Greek society on the pretext of the protection of the Greek environment. (shrink)