There has been a load of buzz recently about PR, social media releases and a few people coming down on the use of the word “audience” favouring the world “people” or some other construct. I get the point, that audience implies some kind of faceless mass, whose sole responsibility is to receive, but I actually think audience is a fairly accurate term within the social media structure.

To the participants: Please, please, please don’t talk about audiences when you are theoretically promoting social media. As Jay Rosen has suggested, we are the people formerly known as the audience. Blogging is not just another channel for corporate marketing types to push their messages to markets, eyballs, or audiences. Social media is based on the dynamic of a many-to-many dialogue between people. Yes, people: that’s the word that should have been used. Not audience. If you’d like to make a distinction between a company and those outside the company, just remember: they are not an audience for your messages, any more than you are an audience for theirs. The whole point is that the people formerly known at the audience — the edglings, as I call us — are participating in the blogosphere, and if individuals within companies want to, they can participate: as individuals. Companies don’t blog, or converse: people do.

From Stowe Boyd

The Oxford Dictionary defines Audience (in this context) as: “the assembled spectators or listeners at an event.”

Anyone who finds the term audience offensive or incorrect in a social media context has obviously never been a speaker, presenter, actor, comedian, or part of a pitch team. The audience in all of these cases wears the pants and are far from passive receivers – be it as subtle as the vibe of the room or as active as the questions asked, applause received or word of mouth after the fact. In most cases an audience is self-selected, as in social media. Where an audience is captive (i.e. interuptive advertising models) we must remember that it is not the advertisers audience (i.e. When watching Lost, I am not an audience for the advertisers, but for the show). So when marketers earn their attention, they do indeed have their own audience.

There is also the notion that since the social media audience comment, trackback, respond and spread the word, that they are not primarily an audience. This too is nonsense to me. Last I checked, the 1% rule is still in effect and the vast majority of readers of blogs, listeners to podcasts, visitors to Web 2.0 type sites are simply there to view. One need only look at the ratio of comments to views or even votes to views on a site like Youtube and it is fairly obvious the primary motivator for most visitors is to receive.

I believe in the value of the conversation as much as anyone in the blogosphere, but as long as there companies and individuals who have a product to sell or point of view to expose then there will always be someone initiating the conversation to an audience, who may then choose to dialogue or otherwise engage. Personally I find the term “people” an utterly meaningless term and it feels much more mass and monolithic that recognizing their are various audiences with different opinions and interests.

I do agree with Mr. Boyd on the term “eyeballs” though, that one is just plain offensive.
[Photo from hi-tekznologik via Flickr]

This entry was posted on January 31, 2007 at 10:07 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Opinion Public Relations Social Media by dwalker 2 Comments