Amanda D. Lotz, "After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century" (NYU Press, 2025)

May 2, 2025

In this discussion, Amanda D. Lotz, a professor at Queensland University of Technology and author of a compelling new book, explores the evolution of storytelling in the digital age. She emphasizes the shift from mass audiences to microaudiences, revealing how niche content thrives in the modern media landscape. The conversation dives into the impact of streaming services, the redefinition of television quality, and the necessity for diverse narratives. Lotz encourages innovative approaches to engage today's audiences, highlighting the importance of adaptability in storytelling.

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ANECDOTE

Misconception of Mass Audience

Amanda D. Lotz noticed that many viewers still think of popular shows as part of a mass culture, which is a misconception for today's fragmented audiences.
She observed that hits like Game of Thrones had significant but not mass-scale numbers compared to historical TV audiences.

INSIGHT

From Niche to Micro Audiences

The term "niche" is no longer useful because almost all audiences today are small by traditional mass media standards.
Amanda redefines small scale viewership as "micro audiences" to better describe contemporary viewing patterns and industry changes.

INSIGHT

National TV in Global Context

Media industries in smaller countries like Australia experience crises earlier, revealing shifts in national versus global production.
National policies supporting domestic TV are under strain due to globalization and international productions dominating markets.

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With significant evolutions in digital technologies and media distribution in the past two decades, the business of storytelling through screens has shifted dramatically. In the past, blockbuster movies and TV shows like Friends aimed first for domestic mass audiences, although the biggest hits circulated globally. Now, transnational distribution plays a primary role and imagined audiences are global. At the same time, the once-mass audience has significantly fragmented to enable an expansion in the range of commercially viable stories, as evident in series as varied as Atlanta, Better Things, and dozens of others that are not widely known, but deeply loved by their microaudiences.

Delving into the changing landscape of commercial screen storytelling, After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century (NYU Press, 2025) explores how industrial shifts and technological advancements have remade the narrative landscape over the past two decades. Television and movies have long shaped society, whether by telling us about the worlds around us or far away. By examining the internationalization of screen businesses, the rise of streaming services with multi-territory reach, and the stories made for this environment, this book sheds light on the profound transformations in television and film production and circulation. With a keen focus on major changes in the types of screen stories being told, Amanda D. Lotz unravels the industrial roots that made these transformations possible, challenges some conventional distinctions of screen storytelling, and provides new conceptual tools to make sense of the abundance and range of screen stories on offer.

Through its comprehensive analysis, After Mass Media exposes how contemporary industrial dynamics, particularly the erosion of traditional distribution models based on geography and mass audience reach, have far-reaching implications for our understanding of national video cultures.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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