The Institutionally Effective Audience in Flux : Social Media and the Reassessment of the Audience Commodity

Technological changes are straining traditional institutionalized conceptualization of the television audience, while at the same time providing opportunities for alternative conceptual and analytical approaches. The result is a rare point in time in which the very nature of the audience commodity is being reconsidered by industry stakeholders. This chapter addresses these developments within the specific context of the emergence of social TV analytics -- measurement systems that produce metrics of television program engagement derived from the aggregation of social media conversation