Material not available: ‘Sharing’ Audience Research

By weaving together reflections from other disciplines – particularly data studies, future studies and design research – this contribution aims to function as a starting point to imagine alternative ways of sharing audience research. The understanding of ‘sharing’ put forward here highlights that audience research, at its core, is a practice of care and collaboration, and raises questions about how different publication forms and formats correspond to this. By extension, this challenges us to (re)consider what we invest our energies in. If our main avenues of sharing audience research are individually authored summaries of findings and results, we might be missing an opportunity for not just critical reflection on the state of the field of audience research but also an opportunity to engage more meaningfully with each other’s work. This contribution is part of the Cultural Commons special issue on ‘Energy! The Power of Audience Research as Field, Practice and Critique’, edited by Joke Hermes, Linda Kopitz and Helen Wood.