The Audience Commodity in a Digital Age

Lee McGuigan is a PhD student in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His research has been published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry and Television & New Media. Vincent Manzerolle (PhD, University of Western Ontario, Canada) is a lecturer in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He has published articles in Ephemera, Surveillance and Society, and Triple C: Communication, Capitalism, and Critique.

Contents: Lee McGuigan: After Broadcast, What? An Introduction to the Legacy of Dallas Smythe – William H. Melody: Audiences, Commodities and Market Relations: An Introduction to the Audience Commodity Thesis – Dallas W. Smythe: Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism – Graham Murdock: Introduction to The Blindspot Revisited – Graham Murdock: Blindspots About Western Marxism: A Reply to Dallas Smythe – Eileen R. Meehan: Introduction to «Ratings and the Institutional Approach» – Eileen R. Meehan: Ratings and the Institutional Approach: A Third Answer to the Commodity Question – Sut Jhally: Introduction to «Watching as Working» – Sut Jhally/Bill Livant: Watching as Working: The Valorization of Audience Consciousness – Philip M. Napoli: The Institutionally Effective Audience in Flux: Social Media and the Reassessment of the Audience Commodity – Jason Pridmore/Daniel Trottier: Extending the Audience: Social Media Marketing, Technologies and the Construction of Markets – Detlev Zwick/Alan Bradshaw: Capital’s New Commons: Consumer Communities, Marketing and the Work of the Audience in Communicative Capitalism – Micky Lee: From Googol to Guge: The Political Economy of a Search Engine – Mark Andrejevic: «Free Lunch» in the Digital Era: Organization Is the New Content – Vincent Manzerolle: Technologies of Immediacy / Economies of Attention: Notes on the Commercial Development of Mobile Media and Wireless Connectivity – Graham Murdock: Commodities and Commons – Edward Comor: Value, the Audience Commodity, and Digital Prosumption: A Plea for Precision – Christian Fuchs: Dallas Smythe Reloaded: Critical Media and Communication Studies Today.