Overview & Objectives

History of Audiences: New Media, New Audiences

In this class we will focus on two parallel moments in media audience history:

  • Early movie going and exhibition–with focus on developing modes of audience interaction and audience engagement, theories of film spectatorship, and questions of movie exhibition and movie going in cultural contexts.
  • Development of digital media technologies and online networks–interrogating theories of the active audience, collective intelligence, fan engagement, the restrictions of technology and interface, the web as authorship tool, and the audience turned author.

OBJECTIVES

By the conclusion of this course, you will be able to

  • Assess and analyze the cultural formations that framed cinema as a new medium and early movie exhibition and movie going experience
  • Interrogate and engage with theories of media spectatorship
  • Engage with theories and histories of new media, the impact of new media on audience engagement, the development of blogs, the impact of technology and interface on user experience
  • Produce nuanced analyses of media representations of audience engagement–both of early cinema and of new media technologies
  • Analyze contemporary audience engagement on the web and with various new media technologies
  • Draw parallels, connections, and distinctions between the “new” media of early cinema and the “new media” of the Internet, mobile technologies, and videogames, etc.

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