Small acts of engagement: Reconnecting productive audience practices with everyday agency

Abstract

In this article, we develop the concept of small acts of engagement (SAOE) in a networked media environment as a conceptual framework to study specific audience practices and as an agenda for research on these practices. We define SAOE, such as liking, sharing, and commenting, as productive audience practices that require little investment and are intentionally more casual than the structural and laborious practices examined as types of produsage and convergence culture. We further elaborate on the interpretive and productive aspects of SAOE, which allow us to reconnect the notions of a participatory culture and a culture of everyday agency. Our central argument is that audience studies’ perspective allows viewing SAOE as practices of everyday audience agency, which, on an aggregate level, have the potential to become powerful acts of resistance.

(Against a) Theory of Audience Engagement with News

“…A person can become acutely-concerned, passionately-discuss, even actively-campaign around an issue of public affairs through their engagement with journalism. Engagement can also be emotionally less intense and require limited audience investment, in line with what Picone et al (2019) label "small acts of engagement", such as liking, sharing, and commenting.…”

From active audience to passive data: Dominant conceptualizations of internet users

“…Ideju da konzumenti medijskih sadržaja postaju kreatori sadržaja, zameniće potom ideje da su građani istovremeno i jedno i drugo, proizvođači-korisnici (produser), novim konstelacijama kulture konvergencije (Bruns, 2006;Jenkins, 2006). Dok su navedeni pristupi relativno komplementarni, dva pristupa koji nastaju u poslednjoj deceniji predstavljaju radikalno različite pozicije: prema prvom, publika je skup podataka, tragova o upotrebi medija koji čine takozvane velike podatke, a prema drugom, publiku čine pojedinci čija je svakodnevica ispunjena malim činovima angažovanja (Picone et al, 2019) kojima se grade društveni odnosi i identiteti.…”

“…U njih se ubrajaju "angažovanje jednim klikom, komentarisanje i debatovanje, i male priče" (Kleut et al, 2018), činovi koje oblikuje okrenutost ka izgradnji društvenih veza i ispoljavanju identiteta, kao i subjektivna percepcija da se aktivnosti odvija "u letu". Mali činovi angažovanja su dakle "činovi produktivne aktivnosti koji zahtevaju relativno malo napora kako bi bez poteškoća bili integrisani u dnevne rutine i koji primarno potiču iz želje da se predstavimo drugima i gradimo identitet, a ne iz želje da se pruže informacije" (Picone et al, 2019(Picone et al, : 2020.…”

“…Kako smatra Karpentje, problem je u tome što se "sve publike posmatraju kao aktivni učesnici, a tada pasivnog konzumiranja kao da nema ili je manje vredno" (Carpentier, 2011b: 524). Time se, tvrde pojedini autori, zanemaruju decenije studija publike koje pokazuju da gledanje, čitanje ili slušanje nisu pasivni procesi već aktivan rad na pripisivanju značenja i aproprijaciji sadržaja u svakodnevnom životu (Van Dijck, 2009;Livingstone, 2015;Picone et al, 2019).…”

Trust, Disconnection, Minimizing risk and Apathy

“…Focusing on coping tactics as forms of resistance directs us towards the smaller acts which happen in the flow of the everyday but nevertheless constitute agency on the part of the users (Picone et al, 2019). The views from the users are presented in the analytical Article: Trust, Disconnection, Minimizing risk and Apathy Jannie Møller Hartley and Sander Andreas Schwartz part of this article, presenting four types of coping and appropriation tactics found across the material.…”