The Donald McGannon Communication Research Center at Fordham University is pleased to announce the publication of Philip M. Napoli’s latest book, Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences (Columbia University Press).
Building on his award-winning book, Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace (Columbia University Press, 2003), Philip Napoli maps the major changes affecting today’s media environment and how they are challenging the media industry’s traditional conceptions of the audience. As Napoli makes clear, the very meaning of the media audience is evolving in response to changing technological, economic, and political conditions.
This in-depth exploration of the changing relationship between media organizations and their audiences examines how the dynamics of media usage have changed, and how the technologies and systems for gathering information about audiences have changed as well. As this book illustrates, traditional audience measurement metrics are becoming obsolete, and media providers, advertisers, and audience measurement firms are deploying alternative tools for gathering and analyzing audience information.
As the media industry transforms in the 21st century, this book provides great insight into how the very meaning of the media audience continues to evolve. According to Professor James G. Webster of Northwestern University, author of Ratings Analysis: The Theory and Practice of Audience Research: “Anyone with a serious interest in the operation of the media industries or popular culture should read this book.”
Philip M. Napoli is a professor in the Graduate School of Business at Fordham University and director of the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center. He is the author of Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace, which won the Robert Picard Award for Best Book in Media Management and Economics, and Foundations of Communication Policy: Principles and Process in the Regulation of Electronic Media.
The Donald McGannon Communication Research Center has a mission to conduct, support, reward, and disseminate research that informs the communications policymaking process and ethical decision-making in the management of media institutions. The McGannon Center seeks to contribute to the development of a tradition of rigorous research into media performance and media policy, with a particular emphasis on the interaction between the economic and the public service dimensions of media performance. More information about the McGannon Center and its activities can be found at the Center’s home page at: http://www.fordham.edu/mcgannon.