Prof. Dr. Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt

The presentation takes a starting point from the teaching experiences in Malmö University, where the students on the MA programme Media and communication: Culture, Collaborative Media and Cultural industries learn in a hybrid and flexible learning environment. The programme has a synchronous and asynchronous online and offline component, and students can choose their own pathway between these three modes of learning. This makes the learning-environment very much like a cross-media environment characteristic to today's media worlds. Based on my experience as an audience researcher as well as experiences of teaching in the hy-flex environment, I will discuss the notions of students as audiences. How do they navigate the diverse learning opportunities and different media and what is the mode of engagement happening with the students? Thus the presentation discusses the potential usefulness of audience studies in the context of learning. I will give a brief overview of the different stages of audience studies and ask a question of how this inspires and informs my work as a lecturer and how it helps me to understand the cross-media environments that students navigate. Drawing on the MA thesis from Joelle Vanderbeke and Hanna Meyer zu Hörste, where they interviewed students and staff of the programme, I will discuss how their findings contribute to the broader theoretical link between students as cross-media audiences.

Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt is a professor in media and communication, Malmö University since November 2016 and has previously worked in University of Tartu as a professor in media studies (2014-2015). Her research interests have focused around cultural citizenship and participation and engagement in museums, libraries and public broadcasting. She has also worked internet users and social applications of new technologies. She has been an active member in the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and is currently the international director of European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School. She has been the project leader on different local projects, which have had her working on new and emerging technologies, youth participation and museum engagement questions.