Cross-European Patterns and National Variations of Media Use

• In Event: Comparatively Speaking: The Challenge of Comparative Research on Media Audiences in a Global Media Environment

Abstract

The first paper gives an overview of media use patterns across the nine countries, and presents a fine-grained typology of media users at a cross-national as well as an intra-national level. The findings depict media use as a mundane, if complex practice in everyday contexts of action, where media are combined and supplemented, rather than being used ‘one medium at a time.’ At the same time, different media hold different affordances (Gibson, 1979; Hutchby, 2001) – perceived potentials – for different segments of users, nationally and cross-nationally. Six segments were distinguished, not least, by the variable diffusion of smartphones, and of advanced mobile phone features, into users’ everyday lives. Whereas ‘everybody’ uses the mobile core functions of voice and text messaging, just as ‘everybody’ goes online for information and still watches traditional broadcast television, only certain segments watch online broadcasts or use the mobile as a personal assistant, calendar, or camera.

Authors

• Rasmus Helles, U of Copenhagen

• Jacob Ørmen, U of Copenhagen

• Casper Radil, U of Copenhagen

• Klaus Bruhn Jensen, U of Copenhagen