Clay Shirky: End Of Audience theory

Clay Shirky believes that audiences are no longer passive, meaning that audiences that mindlessly watch films or read magazines without thinking or doing anything no longer exist. He thinks this because he believes that audiences are now more active, wanting to interact with the media for example liking a post or commenting on a video. This belief of his was formed due to how technology has evolved and therefore changed our expectations and behaviour- we now expect a certain level of interaction with the media products we watch. Newspaper and magazine circulation is declining in general, this is because audiences no longer enjoy just simply reading a magazine or newspaper, they more like to go online and interact with social media news post. This is why more recently newspapers upload digital versions online as many audiences prefer this nowadays. Another one of Shirky's theory was that now audiences like to 'speak back' to producers of the media, we now as audiences do not like to be kept separate from the hierarchy of having producers at the top and audiences at the bottom. Now because of social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat we can interact with the people making media and communicate with them to advertise what audiences like and dislike. Because of this, there potentially is more equality of power and less hierarchy where producers used to be a lot more powerful. 

Having a look at an artist in a similar genre as to the song I have chosen for my music video: Ella Mai 

Looking at her twitter she is encouraging her followers to listen to her new song as she adds an interactive link with her post. This is engaging for followers as they are predominantly with her for her music. Clearly, releasing her song on twitter was successful as it gained 13800 likes and 3400 retweets. 

On her Instagram, she encourages audiences to watch a fashion show as she poses in trendy jacket as she tags the brand- advertising the brand to her followers. She may also gain more followers from advertising and inspiring the audience to be more interactive will help her to keep an engaged audience. 

In this post, she continues to encourage her fans to interact with the post by hashtagging the photo as well as tagging the brand, advertising a product.