Niklas Alexander Chimirri

Everyday lives of audiences in a future Europe: tracing emerging issues from scenarios to experiences in 2030

This chapter considers the scenarios from the previous chapter, and asks what futures they envision for audiences, across generations, and in the context of a changing Europe, towards 2030. Our discussion emphasizes the challenges of conceptualizing agentic capabilities of audience experiences that are yet to unfold in the trans-media environment of the future. As these phenomena are yet unavailable for empirical research, we apply the foresight methodology technique of story building to advance our discussion. This enables us to reflect upon dilemmas in everyday lives of audiences across generations in 2030, utilizing the scenarios to pinpoint diverging challenges and opportunities.

Stakeholder discourses about critical literacies and audience participation

The next section of this book looks into the horizons that lie ahead for audiences, a short while from today, towards 2030. In chapters 11 through to 14, colleagues will look at key societal drivers of future change, such as the increasing ubiquity of connected gadgets attendant to the Internet of Things, and critical concerns around datafication and the arrival of Big Data. In this chapter, we conclude presenting work on the here and the now, hereby presenting outcomes from the stakeholder consultation part of our foresight work. We distil and discuss themes that emerged from stakeholder interviews around micro and macro forms of action, the inherent technological implications, ensuing academic social responsibilities, and the relevance of investing in critical thinking as part of critical literacies, more broadly, as a fundamental component for positive action. These findings, around the importance of critical literacies, irrespective of technological conditions, resonate into the very futures that The Future of Audiences considers in the chapters that follow.