Appel pour la rédaction d'un chapitre : Mesures de l'audience Télé

[Ludovic]

CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS
Television audience measurement worldwide

Proposals are invited for book chapters analyzing television audience measurement in a global perspective, from a sociological or historical point of view. Edited by Jerome Bourdon (University of Tel Aviv), and Cécile Méadel (Center for the Sociology of Innovation, Ecole des Mines and CNRS, Paris), the book will be published in both French (with the Presses des Mines, Paris) and English.

Background: Audience measurement has been much debated but, for the most part, the procedures and methods actually used for producing the “numbered public” have been neglected by Academic researchers. Before we accept and quote audience figures wholesale, reject their validity, or blame them for a degradation of “quality”, we have to understand the elaborated machines which produce them and make them available, in different forms, to media professionals, but also to the political world and to the media themselves. Statistical (e.g. methods of sampling), and technical (e.g. phone survey, peoplemeters) knowledge must be understood not as inherently “true” or “false” but as a form of mediation between different actors, at given points of national and global media histories.. Although commercial media and the advertising industry (which does not always speak with one voice) have become central, other actors should not be neglected (parliaments, ministers of communication). Case-studies of specific media in different national contexts are welcome, but so are historical approaches, the study of the global diffusion of professional knowledge, and the analysis of specific technology (e.g. peoplemeters). Transnational comparisons will be given special consideration.

Scholars interested should send a 500 words abstract, in English or in French, to Cécile Méadel, Email: cecile.meadel@ensmp.fr,
and Jérôme Bourdon, Email: jerombourdon@gmail.com
before September 15th, 2010.
Notification of acceptation for proposals will be sent no later than October 1st, 2010.
First drafts are expected by December 15, 2010.
A joint seminar of authors is planned to take place in Paris, France, in mid-January 2011, in order to discuss and improve the drafts.