[Commlist] ICA Pre-conference: Reviving Qualitative Audience Research for the Streaming Era

We invite proposals for an ICA Pre-conference on Reviving Qualitative 
Audience Research for the Streaming Era

Date: Wednesday, 19 June 2024

Location: Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (Kelvin Grove 
campus)

Division Affiliation: Popular Media & Culture, Media Industry Studies

Link: https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/ICA24-Reviving

Call for papers:
This full-day preconference will provide a space for those studying 
audiences through interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and other 
human-based qualitative approaches to share both findings and 
methodological tips and interrogations. Excited advertising rhetoric 
tells us that everything has changed, and certainly at industrial and 
textual levels, much has already been done and said to chart the 
shifting landscape. But we know little of how viewers, readers, and 
listeners that are spread across more content and more forms of media 
than ever before are experiencing these changes. Media content now 
travels more freely across national borders, remains relevant as long as 
it is accessible (which is far longer than in the past), and legacy 
media providers persist and adapt to an increasingly multifaceted field 
of creators and content. How do audiences use media now that they have 
greater choice and control? Are the streaming audiences of 2024 
comparable to their earlier equivalents? Or, rather, how are they 
comparable, and how are they not?

Qualitative, audience research blossomed in the eighties, with numerous 
projects exploring the gendered, racialized, national, and class 
politics of viewing, the sociocultural uses of television and other 
media, and hence the place of media consumption in everyday life. Though 
audience studies has survived, and even thrived, since then in the 
service of examining fans, diasporas, and several other specific 
communities, we hope that this preconference will contribute to another 
wave of broad exploration of varying modes of consumption, of the 
politics of viewing, listening, and using, and the uses of media of all 
kinds.

We invite scholars working on any medium (television, music, film, 
streaming, games, podcasts, print; entertainment or news; social or 
legacy media) and/or with any audience, who are interested in discussing 
the state of audience research and in designing its future. Papers (20 
minutes max.) may focus more on findings, on methods (especially 
methodological innovations), or consider both. Work in progress can also 
be presented (please indicate in your abstract).

Submission:
Please submit a title and 400-word abstract about the work you will 
present and its level of completion. Submit to Jonathan Gray at 
(jagray3 /at/ wisc.edu) no later than 1 December 2023; please title your email 
“ICA preconference submission.” Potential submitters are welcome to 
contact the conference convenors (via the same email) to discuss ideas 
in advance. Notifications of acceptance will be circulated prior to 
release of the ICA schedule (ie, no later than 10 January 2024).

(Note that attendance at the ICA main conference in the Gold Coast from 
June 20-24 is not required to attend this preconference. For those who 
are attending the main conference, though, Brisbane is just under 2h 
away from the Gold Coast by train, with plenty of trains running daily. 
International visitors will likely find it more convenient to fly 
directly into Brisbane rather than the Gold Coast, since the latter 
requires transfer from elsewhere in Australia.)


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