2. Media Concepts Research Group
• Professor. Maija Töyry, VTT
• Head of Research, Merja Helle, FT
• Since 2006
• Aalto ARTS, Media Department, Graphic Design
• 6 full-time researchers
• Digitalization and changing media as focus
• Developmental projects or trainign in over 60 media titles
• Adult education: Managing Media Concepts 2008-9, new course
starting, Editing, Designing media concepts, Visuality, Magazine
writing etc
• Designing media concepts with visuality/Otavamedia
Seura, TM, Suosikki, VM
3. Research projects
• Tekes Next Media
- eReading, digital publishing and reading
- hyperlocal media and UGC
- Personal Media Day
- Cross-media in magazines
- Visual power, brandin visuality in different platforms
§ Intentional contextuality, portrait photography in magazines
§ Database of magazine research
§ Application to FA about localization of global magazines
§ Upcoming: Imagining the readers/users in editorial offices
4. Mitä lehden mediakonsepti on?
• Media product as an activity concept
(goals, values, economics, readership
relations, publishing platforms, page
plan, work processes etc.)
• Media product as a service concept
(audience data, value for readers/
users, users as community, concept
enlargements, new publishing
platforms, new services)
• Media product as a material artefact
(content, visuality, materia/l sensory
aspects)
• Production processes and
management
6. Creative industries
• ”The idea of creative industries seeks to describe the
conceptual and practical convergence of the creative arts
(individual talent) with cultural industries (mass scale), in
the context of new media technologies (ICT’s within a new
knowledge economy, for the use of newly interactive
citizen-consumers” (Hartley 2005, 5)
7. Theoretical background(s)
• Cultural historical activity theory – activity systems
From Change Laboratory 1996- to Media Concept
Laboratory 2006-
• Technological innovation – media digitalization
• Journalism research – content and work processes
• Literary theory – model/implied reader
• Media business – service and value
• Audience research – meaning, relevance, fragmentation and
autonomy
• Methods – qualitative, iterative combinations
• Design research – participatory design, co-design…
Starting in Personal Media Day, long-term development plans
Design as solving problems??
8. Media concept = audience+purpose+content+form+organization
To create lasting readership relations
12. ”Contested field of
negotiations”
• In media research and teaching
production, texts, visual design
and use/reception are usually
studied separately
• Media concept brings together
the interests of the society,
publisher, journalistic culture,
audience, and technology
• Developmental tool: Media
Concept laboratory
17. Component 1 of mediaconcept:
Publishers values and goals,
journalistic culture,
audience needs,
societal context, technology
history of magazine and the genre
Model reader
”Why we publish this magazine?”
18. Component 2 - architecture
• Visual style, story types
• Tools to create and maintain the architecture of magazines: page
plan, style book, story type descriptions, editing guidelines,
feedback system
• Architecture of the organization
19. Component 3: daily work process
• Daily work processes
• Management of the daily work
• Journalistic textual and visual tools, and competencies
• Knowledge of the audience
• Planning and editing work process
20. The concept of women’s magazines is
always based on contradiction (Töyry 2005)
• Women’s lives are
contradictory, so is their
mediapresentation.
• A magazine offers a
solution to a relevant
contradiction in women’s
lives.
• If the solution satisfies the
reader she enters into a
readership contract
21. Model / Implied reader is an imagined reader of
the media product
• A stereotype, fictional character
• A tool for the construction of shared object of work
• Former ”Pihtiputaan mummo”
• The writers needs an vision of her/his reader in order to
speak to her/him
• Implied reader as a concept is based in research in
narratology/literary science
• Can be analyzed from the texts
• From visual design – needs more research
22. Implied reader
• The concept of an implied reader comes from literary
studies and narratology (Iser 1971; Rimmon-Kenan
1999; Abbot 2002).
• The implied reader should not be confused with the real
life reader. It does not depict a reader in flesh but is a
fictive reader for a story or narrative is targeted at.
• It is analyzable from the texts
• How to combine production, texts, reception/use of
media
3.4.2012
23. ”Rita” the implied reader of the new
website
• Female
• 32 years
• Expert position
• Living with her boyfriend
• Likes traveling, pilates, worried about climate change,
wants an audi
• Vs.
• John 52, manager, drives a Saab, lives in the suburbs, 3
children
23
24. In our work implied reader concept
is used:
1. To focus on the object of journalism – how to choose
story topics, their frames and ways of addressing
readers
2. To clarify different audience related concepts
- e.g. target group, imagined reader, real reader, public
etc.
3. To reflect on journalistic ideals and identity
25. Napoli 2003 Audience economics
• Predicted audience
An educated forecast of the target audience
• Measured audience
Audience as represented by audience measurement
firms
Central product of the audience market place
- a sample
• Actual audience
Invisible ideal of audience market place
- largely unknowable
26. Effects of Technological Change on Audience
Information Systems/Napoli 2010
• Increased fragmentation
– Undermines traditional exposure metrics
• Increased interactivity
– Facilitates measurement of more dimensions of the
audience
27. New Audience Information Systems
/Napoli 2010
• Awareness/Interest
– Nielsen Buzzmetrics, E-Poll, TNS, etc.
• Engagement/Recall
– Nielsen IAG, Simmons, TiVo Stop||Watch, Networked Insights
• Emotional Response
– Marketing Evaluations
• Behavioral Response
– TRA Inc.
29. Observable Activities via Interactivity/
Napoli 2010
Exposure
Search
Content Audience
Provider Participation
Production
Response
30. Audience is a slippery concept
• Livingstone 1996
• implied audience = implicit audience
• “Audience is neutral of the economist assumptions
of 'market', the political assumptions of 'public' or
'mass' or 'nation' and the idealism of community“
31. Value for whom? (Robert Picard 2010)
Golden age of journalism 1960s and After recession
1970s
Media competition 2000-
32. “We all do our own thing”
Merja Helle,
Maija Töyry,
Annika Ruoranen
Aalto, Taik, Department of Media
13.2.2010
3.4.2012
33. “We know what is best for the
readers”
Merja Helle
Maija Töyry
Annika Ruoranen
Aalto University School of Art and Design
Nordic Iscar 24.5.2010 Helsinki
34. How journalists talk about
audiences
• 5 discourses from 3
cases
• Mediaconcept Laboratory
• Implied reader
• Object of activity
MeCCSA 2010
35. (News)Journalists and audience
• Audience needs are not important
• Journalists decide what is important for audiences
= information
• Journalists use derogatory language about audiences
36. Journalists write for each other
• Kärreman and Alvesson 2001:
Journalist: “I would not read my paper if I did not have to”
Audience is seen as interested only in light news, like
sport and gossip, ”a single mother at the supermarket”
• Gans 1979:
Vague idea of audience, journalists write for each other
37. The world is changing
News values for consumer groups
Niblock, Machin 2007 Independent Radio News
• “Journalists were targeting lifestyle groups through careful selection
and use of language”
• “This research demonstrates that journalists’ attention to market
forces does not necessarily result in dumbing down”
• New audience categories are based around research into lifestyles
• Selection, simplification and re-modeling
• Journalist imagined his target audience member – “Craig from
Birmingham” who has a sister etc
38. Ideology of (news) journalism (Deuze
2005)
1. Public service: journalists provide a public service (as
watchdogs or ‘newshounds’, active collectors and
disseminators of information);
2. Objectivity: journalists are impartial, neutral, objective, fair and
(thus) credible;
3. Autonomy: journalists must be autonomous, free and
independent in their work;
4. Immediacy: journalists have a sense of immediacy, actuality
and speed
5. Ethics: journalists have a sense of ethics, validity and
legitimacy.
39. Data from three ethnographic,
developmental research projects
(Mediaconcept Laboratories:
1. National Finnish newspaper 1995-1997
2. Finnish sports magazine 2006-2007
3. Finnish national newspaper and its new website 2006-2007
• The data was gathered with interviews and ethnographic
observation, in developmental interventions using the Change
Laboratory method in the first case and the Mediaconcept
Laboratory in the last two cases.
MeCCSA 2010
40. • “We cannot ask the readers what to write. It is at the
heart of our expertise to know what to do”
• “Everyone has their own idea. Everyone has her or his
personal opinion about the readers. We use our own
imagination”
• “This is what they want, I know what my son wants to
read”
• “It is a male, and there are lots of products and
possibilities for advertising to male readers”
MeCCSA 2010
41. Different discourses of audience by
journalists
1. Absence of audience - discourse.
a. audience not mentioned
b. dumb audience, thus irrelevant
2. Marketing and measuring audiences - discourse.
a. by marketing people
b. journalists interested in web clicks
MeCCSA 2010
42. Audience discourses
3. Important information for the masses, chosen and
delivered by journalists - discourse.
a. passive recipients
b. activating citizens
4. Me, colleagues and friends as the audience - discourse.
5. Addressing audience interests, needs and mindsets -
discourse.
MeCCSA 2010
43. Absence of audience
• "A good paper? Isn't it the about the basic principles of
the (Daily News). Trustworthy, many-sided, absolutely
many-sided -the most readable paper in Finland, that is
what we try to do ... Careful, pedantic work. One must
not make any mistakes.”
• “I don’t know if should do that (talk with marketing). We
have not talked before with the sales people or chief of
marketing. I don’t think their opinions matter a f..s worth
when we are discussing journalism” (magazine editor-in-
chief”.
MeCCSA 2010
44. Advertising discourse
• “It is a male, and there are lots of products and
possibilities for advertising to male readers”
• “We have been told several times (by marketing
department) that the top level executives and middle
level managers are our most important target group.
And after them people who invest in stocks, we have
lots of readers among them. And of course it is an
extremely difficult question and we have been thinking
about it for ten years – what should our audience be”.
MeCCSA 2010
45. Absence of audience
• "A good paper? Isn't it the about the basic principles of
the (Daily News). Trustworthy, many-sided, absolutely
many-sided -the most readable paper in Finland, that is
what we try to do ... Careful, pedantic work. One must
not make any mistakes.”
• “I don’t know if should do that (talk with marketing). We
have not talked before with the sales people or chief of
marketing. I don’t think their opinions matter a f..s worth
when we are discussing journalism” (magazine editor-in-
chief”.
MeCCSA 2010
46. Activating audiences
• "Well, it shows when a discussion springs up, or people
come around or call. Or, of course, at its best, it results
in more than discussion, in something being done about
it, a law is changed."
MeCCSA 2010
47. Me and my colleagues
• “This is what they want, I know what my son wants to
read”.
MeCCSA 2010
48. Rita vs. John
• “If Rita gets interested in a story it does not mean that
John won’t read it. He might be more inclined to read it,
because the language would be clearer and the
headline less boring”.
MeCCSA 2010
49. Five approaches to the link between micro and macro
(Livingstone 1996)
Main focus of approach Associated assumptions Conception of the audience
1. Instrumental Emphasis on analysis of Audience as market
individualism: macro as investement, costs, and (audience as consumer)
aggregate of (idealized) opportunities
micro
2. Interpretative Social constructionist positin Active/creative audience
individualism: micro as within the micro as source of
individual interpretative social order
subjectivity
3. Less agentic version of Micro as autonomous but less Audience as public
social constructionism creative than interpretative (the citizen viewer)
individualism
4. Emphasis on socialization Takes a collective position on Audience as potentially
as the internalized macro order and an instrumental- resistant
subjective position on action
5. Objective structuralism Takes a collective position on Audience as duped mass
order and an instrumental-
objective position on action
