Public isn’t what it used to be: From Time to Reputation

Public isn’t what it used to be:
From Time to Reputation

Digital Etnography Week
Trento, 17-21 September 2012

Tiziano Bonini - IULM University of Milan

domenica 16 settembre 2012

networked are publics that are restructured by networked technologies (Boyd

publics 2011:41). These kinds of publics all share 4 fundamental affordances

that make them different from all the previous mediated publics:

Persistence means that in SNS the public’s expressions are automatically recorded and archived.
This means that feedbacks (opinions, feelings and comments) of every listener are public and since they can

remain on line for a long time they can also have a role in shaping the reputation of the radio station.

Replicability means that the content produced in networked publics is easily replicable.

Scalability in networked publics refers to the possibility of tremendous - albeit not guaranteed -
visibility. This means that, for example, unique listeners commenting and talking about a radio show on its social

network profile can reach a wide audience.

Searchability means that content produced by networked publics can be easily accessed.


a) Change in the publicness of publics (more visible, more audible)

The implant of SNS on the body of the radio medium renders the immaterial capital
made up by the listeners public and tangible. While until recently the
public was invisible to radio and was confined to its private sphere except in the case of
phone calls during a programme, today listeners linked to the online profile of a radio
programme are no longer invisible or private (as underlined by Gazi, Starkey,
Jedrzejewski, 2011), and the same goes for their opinions and emotions. And if
emotions and opinions are no longer invisible or private, they are
measurable. For the first time in Radio history, listeners are not only numbers:
their feelings, opinions and reputation are trackable and measurable through
netnographic methods (Kozinets 2010). To this end Arvidsson claims
that “the remediation of social relations that has accompanied the rise of consumer
culture has managed to transform the nature of affect, from something private or at least
located in small interaction systems, to something that acquires an objective existence as
a value creating 'substance' in the public domain. Social media have taken this process
one step further” (Arvidsson 2012:forthcoming).



b) Change in the speaker-to-listener relation

The new communication model that derives from the short-circuit between radio and social media is a
hybrid model, partly still broadcast, partly already networked. Radio is still a one-to-many means of
communication. However, telephone already made it partly a one-to-one medium (phone interview)
and many-to-one (open mic, phone talk radio); to this we have to add SNS, which are at once a one-
to-one (chat), one-to-many (tweets, FB notes or posts), many-to-many (FB Home, Twitter hashtags),
many-to-one (FB comments) kind of media. The mix between radio and SNS considerably modifies
both the hierarchical/vertical relation between the speaker/presenter and the public, and the
horizontal relation between each listener. Both types of relation are approaching a less hierarchical

peer-to-peer culture. New practices of
dynamic typical of

co-creation of contents.



c) Change in the listener-to-listener relation

Fans of a radio programme can establish links online, exchange public
comments on the programme’s wall, express more or less appreciation
for specific contents, exchange contents on their personal walls, write
each other private messages or chat with each other. The radio’s public
has never been so publicised. While before SNS the concept of radio
public was a purely abstract entity, which could be understood
sociologically and analysed statistically, today this public is no longer
only an imagined one (Anderson 1993). People who listen frequently to
a radio programme and are its fans on FB have the opportunity, for the
first time, to see and recognise each other, to communicate, to create
new links while bypassing the centre, in other words the radio
programme itself.

“The gatekeeping function of mass media is challenged as
individuals use digital media to spread messages much
farther and more widely than was ever historically
possible” (Gurak 2001).
While a radio public is an invisible group of people who are not linked together, the SNS
audience of a radio programme is instead a visible group of people/nodes in a network,
connected by links of variable intensity.



d) Change in the value of publics (a new social capital?)

This visible group of people/nodes/links is the most important new feature produced by the hybridisation between
radio and SNS. A radio programme’s network of friends/fans on SNS represents its specific social capital (Bourdieu
and Wacquant 1992). While the wider (and invisible) radio public, as charted by audience rating companies, still
constitutes the programme’s economic capital, the more restricted public of social media should in my view be
considered the real social capital of a programme, a tangible and visible capital.

If we consider the networked public that forms around a radio programme its bridging social capital, we can expect
this listener based network to produce, if not emotional and substantive support, then at least a certain amount of
benefits in terms of news, tastes, information retrieval, cultural trends, comments and reviews. If we observe the
SNS of the most popular radio programmes we will realize that this is already taking place: listeners anticipate/
continue on SNS a discussion on the themes introduced by the radio show, adding comments, contents, links,
references, quotations, suggestions. Moreover, the personal information and the public wall posts in the listeners’
SNS profiles can help radio producers to better understand who is hiding behind a comment or link, helping them to
assess the reputation of the listeners/producers and consequently decide if they can trust them or not. The
reputation (and trustability) of each single listener belonging to the network of a radio programme contributes to the
general reputation of that specific networked public, and, due to the transitive property, it constitues the
reputational capital of that radio programme.

Since on this stage radio producers and listeners can act at the same time as actors and audience, their reputation
(both the producer’s and the the listener’s) is continuously being evaluated by the networked public. It is therefore in
the radio producer’s interest to develop, nurture and take care of this reputational capital and to manage the
establishment of a high quality and highly satisfied networked public.

For radio makers, a wide network of friends/fans is of great importance for their future. Even if the fans' network
does not generate a tangible economic value like the radio audience already does, it nevertheless generates a great
reputational capital. The message of the SNS public of a radio programme is the network itself, because this network
is able to produce value. The value embedded in the networked public is not already convertibile into economic
capital, but the crisis of traditional mass advertising will lead to a future increase and refining of tools for the
capitalization of the wealth of networked publics linked to radio programmes and stations.



Crisis of value of listening time-based radio markets
average loss: -6% (Europe + USA)



Crisis of value of attention economy

The proof that the system of the economy of attention is increasingly in crisis can be found in
the figures of advertising revenues earned by the big media institutions. Mediaset, for example,
closed 2011 with -5.1% of advertising proceeds (at a national average of -4.2%), against a 26%
increase in the supply for commercials on its networks (as estimated by Nielsen 2012).
Increased advertising corresponds to lesser earnings, not only because the public is decreasing,
but most of all because this public is losing value.
Mainstream TV is dropping sharply (RAI and Mediaset together represented 89% of viewers in
2003, while today they are at 67%). Newspapers have lost 27% of their advertising revenues
in the last 5 years, while periodicals have lost almost 40% (Nielsen 2012). The same crisis is
being experienced by free-press newspapers and magazines: their public spends so little that it’s
not worth advertising with them.

The global economic crisis has certainly influenced this drop (whose trend continues to not be
positive) but during the same period, investments in advertising on the Internet have almost
doubled.

This general crisis of the value of traditional media has to do with the general crisis of the
value of the public of this media. The attention of millions of people who read newspapers,
watch TV series and listen to radio programs every day has less value today than it once did.
One minute of my attention is simply exchanged today at a lower price than it once was,
because it is supposed that I do not have the purchasing power necessary to convert my attention
into consumption.



VALUE = measure of listening time

From an attention economy:
Broadcasting era: attention time = value

a new emerging
paradigm
new emerging tools
of assessing listeners’ value

to a reputation economy:
Social network era: reputation = value
VALUE = measure of
general sentiment,
engagement, appreciation
rate, conversation rate,
amplification rate,
personal involvement



broadcasting + social media

attention + reputation = listeners value


political outcomes
- more productive publics
- quality (reputation) of a public more important than quantity
- Media have to take care of the quality of their public
- publics can influence public spheres and discourses
- publics can produce counter narratives
- every one is a medium, every one has its own public to nurture

economic outcomes
- more value for niche contents
- digital reputation of a public = digital reputation of a medium

risks
reputation wars; reputation corruption; privacy;
non-transparent parameters of rating reputation


Conclusion:
The VALUE of a certain
medium lies in the network of
listeners
that it is able to attract



tiziano.bonini@iulm.it

contacts

::: Academia :::
http://iulm.academia.edu/TizianoBonini

::: Audio/Radio :::
www.radiofactory.org
http://audioboo.fm/tizianobonini Tiziano Bonini - IULM University of Milan


Public isn’t what it used to be: From Time to Reputation

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