One of the challenges of producing content in the Web 2.0 world is developing an awareness of the audience for whom we are producing.
In this blog post, the Internet artist Ze Frank deconstructs the process by which he imagines his audience, and explores the particular challenges posed by collaborative work. In many cases, one’s vision of the audience is jumbled; Frank argues that this makes producing work online very exciting, but can also pose challenges for one’s critical eye. He suggests some methods for envisioning the audience:
When you write a comment, or a facebook status update, or anything that goes out to a group of people – pay attention to how you imagine it being perceived. Are you imagining each person individually? Have you created some in proxy individual for the group? Are you aware of an unknown audience? What are they like? Is there a mood associated with them? How did it all come to be?
He also suggests some methods for embedding a vision of the audience into collaborative work:
First you can directly state what you consider to be the intended audience: “write as if speaking to a child”, or “give advice to new buyers”. Second, you can reference a specific style (which takes the place of an audience): “like a soap opera”, “in the style of an encyclopedia”. And third, you can add a “final presentation” to the project: “Fifty entries will be displayed at this location when the project is done” or “images will be included in a book”. This at least creates a shared context for how all the contributions will be viewed, and can point to a broader audience (this ad will be shown during the superbowl), or to a very specific audience (this will be displayed at the children’s hospital).
Finally, Frank asks several well-known artists and writers how they view their audiences as they work, and offers some additional thoughts in response to emails after about his original post.
