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Introduction
Media users: from readership to co-creators
Helena Popoviæ
Hajrudin Hromad iæ
Media users: from readership to co-creators
In this paper we will look at the social and cultural changes which emerged with the
appearance of media technologies and how these changes influenced the
transformations of the mediated public sphere from a historical point of view. We will
also discuss how different concepts of media users relate to the previously mentioned
variations and how different forms of social disintegration and/or integration occur
mediated by media technologies. These questions will be broadly framed within three
historical periods characterized by important inventions and the spread of various
mediums and their usage: the eighteenth/nineteenth century and the spread of the
press; the twentieth century and the appearance of electronic media; the late twentieth
century and the appearance of new digital technology.
The changes in media technology and its usage have to a large extent influenced
the conceptualization of media users and the communication modes which emerge.
Thus, we will focus on two interconnected concepts related to media users: the public
sphere mediated through media technology, and forms of societal dis/integration
between media users developed through the use of media technology. Indeed, the
need for reflection on the concept “media audience” – which emerged in the era of
electronic mass media – is usually evoked by two simultaneous and interconnected
processes: the invention and spread of new information and communication digital
media technologies, and the fragmentation and increasing heterogeneity of the
audiences. This change is also historically reflected in the classic scholarly
understanding of audiences in which the main focus has moved from the
“transmission model” (Shannon and Weaver, 1949, in Watson, 2003), in which the
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