The revitalisation of audience studies is not only about new approaches and methods; it entails a crossing of disciplines and a bridging of long-established boundaries in the field. The aim of this volume is to capture the boundary-crossing processes that have begun to emerge across the discipline in the form of innovative, interdisciplinary interventions in the audience research agenda. Contributions to this volume seek to further this process though innovative, audience-oriented perspectives that firmly anchor media engagement within the diversity of contexts and purposes to which people incorporate media in their daily lives, in ways often unanticipated by industries and professionals.

This volume focuses on processes and means to revitalise the academic field of audience research. Ultimately, the revitalisation of audience studies not only means developing new approaches and methods; it also requires a 'Kuhnian discussion', in the sense of discussing the need for the introduction of new paradigms or conceptual developments into the field of audience research. This requires that researchers transcend established boundaries in the field, and entails both the need to cross disciplines (e.g., between the social sciences tradition and the critical/cultural tradition, or the computational tradition) and the need to bridge long-established boundaries in the field (e.g. between 'old media' and 'new media'; between mass communication and group communication; between content/production and audience/reception). Contributors therefore aim to facilitate this process of boundary crossing through a series of interdisciplinary debates across the full range of audience consumption and reception studies.