Tracking Audiences: How Mapping Forces a Rethinking of the ‘Mass’ in Mass Media

Poster Session

Ward, Doug. Associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Kansas

Title: Tracking Audiences: How Mapping Forces a Rethinking of the ‘Mass’ in Mass Media

Abstract: Traditional methods of media history favor qualitative analysis, and a focus on individual lives, organizations, and social and institutional norms. That focus often leaves the role of location largely unexplored. This presentation will explain how the concept of where can be combined with the analysis of media audiences, another little-explored area of media history. It will show how a combination of geographical information systems and statistical analysis of census data can lead to new questions about audiences. It will argue that the term “mass magazines” is a misnomer, and that geographic patterns of readership suggest a deeper, more complex relationship between magazines and audiences than analysis of editorial content can explain.