In the book "Audience Analysis", mcguire set up a theoretical research and mentioned the concept of "audience in the new media environment". Starting from mcguire's theoretical paradigm, combined with the change of the integrated media in the new era, I try to talk about the role change of the audience.

although the audience has not disappeared, it has a new era significance. This new change is not so much reflected in the new definition, but more clearly reflected in the new perception of each individual as an audience for the audience environment.

first of all, this new change is manifested in: the audience has changed from the End of the communication chain considered by the critical school to the Linked Chain in the contemporary communication environment. The audience is no longer a controlled, ignorant and passive receiver, but at the same time, it spreads new information and acts as the source of information.

Secondly, the audience in the new media environment presents stronger individual differences, while in the traditional media era, the essence of reading printed newspapers is reading the news combination screened by editors. When the audience watches TV programs, it is the TV content that draws the audience's attention until the audience accepts it. In the era of all-media, LBS and other services based on geographic location push information are more in line with the geographical proximity of the audience.

Finally, social media is playing an increasingly important role in the new media environment, which weakens the stimulation of authoritative media, dilutes the concept of "psychological ignorance" that the media unilaterally gives to the audience in the eyes of critical schools, and enables the audience to truly interpret media texts from their own social conditions and construct meanings.

In his book, mcguire made a discussion and prediction about the future of new media and audience. Focusing on the "Breakdown of The Referent", he said: "No one is willing to accept the same information package with others at the same time", and the increasingly unique and diversified segmented audience and audience needs have become the characteristics of the personalized communication era; However, under the mode of expanding rather than replacing the old audience behavior, the audience can be larger than ever, and the scale is even larger, just like returning to the Quiet Era when the mass audience was in power.

This issue is also worth thinking about. mcguire is not a technological determinist. When he studied the audience in the new media era, he also suggested that we should not only think about the reasons for the formation of a new type of audience from the technical level. While affirming that technology directly promotes audience segmentation and individualization, he also dialectically points out that these new media technologies have not fundamentally changed people's audience behavior. Even in today's rich communication channels, a large number of communication machines are still ready to work hard to maximize the audience. This is the reality, and it is indeed the case to make a decision from the perspective of a clear communicator. This is the so-called great change in the new media technology is an expansion of the old audience's behavior, not a complete change.

from the point of view of "existence is reasonable", mcguire believes that the mass audience in the traditional mode still has reasons for existence and will still adapt to the reality, and it is inevitable that the new media will breed new audiences, but how the result of this pregnancy is quantitatively and qualitatively is the result of a variety of social factors, that is, what he called "unknown potential".

Liu Yannan, the translator of Audience Analysis, pointed out in the preface: "mcguire's discussion on the development of communication technology and future audiences is not one-dimensional, but two-dimensional or multi-dimensional; It is both technical and social. " Perhaps it also confirms mcguire's view that the formation of the audience is influenced by various social factors, and the audience is not only the product of technology, but also the product of social life.

(The author is an undergraduate student in the School of Journalism, China Renmin University)

Source: Young Journalists, May 2113.