Clay Shirky’s end of audience theory presents a positive and exciting view of the digitally convergent media landscape. Yet in actuality, many media products only engage audiences in simple and straightforward ways. Attitude Online is a classic example of the limited practical applications of Shirky’s theory.
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| While Attitude Online is technically hypermodal and digitally convergent, it is also simple and straightforward, which very little in the way of audience interaction be design. Why? Because the website essentially functions as an advertisement for the magazine. In short, Attitude Online is essentially 'legacy media' or even 'old media', deliberately eschewing any radical sites of audience interaction in order to promote the legacy editions of the magazine. |
1 – Two way communication between producers and audiences - audiences have no way of directly interacting with the online magazine, and are forced to engage with social media platforms instead. Verdict: the end of audience theory is not very useful here!
2 – Publish then filter: producers will rapidly publish media, and allow audiences to spot errors. For example, Cyberpunk 2077, released unfinished and then patched after release. Attitude online demonstrates this trait through hastily cobbled together articles, clearly copy pasted from either the magazine itself, or from assorted press releases. Many articles are also selected to maximise audience engagement, with titles selected to maximise clickbait potential. Verdict: Shirky's theory is actually very useful here.
3 – Complex audience responses – audiences now produce, consume, and share media products - far from complex interactions, the vast majority of comments appear to be strings of heart emojis. Verdict: again, Shirky's theory is of limited use here...
So what can we conclude from this little investigation? Essentially, Attitude Online is simple, straightforward and old fashioned in its approach. There is little opportunity for audience interaction beyond the basic hypermodally situated social media accounts.