Audience & Jimmy Kimmel Mean Tweets

This weeks reading in Keywords was about “audience” and the role technology plays on the evolution of the audience. The term audience used to represent people in a crowd of a performance. However, radio, television and movies have allowed the audience to be present while not physically being at the show. The quote that resonated with me the most was: “Audiences can also use social media to migrate from “simple” audience modes to those with “mass” or “diffused” currency, for example tweeting photographs taken at a red-carpet film premiere or a preview screening.” The role of social media allows for individuals that are lost within the mass audience to be active participants. The first thing that I thought of when reading this quote was Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets, where celebrities read tweets from random twitter users.

For this video I used President Barack Obama’s skit on Jimmy Kimmel, where he read various mean tweets about him during the end of his presidency. Before this episode of Jimmy Kimmel, very few people would have read these tweets, however, the role of mass media allows an individual’s thoughts to be diffused. I decided to add still shots of some of the twitter accounts that are mentioned throughout the skit, and many of these accounts had very few followers. The skit perfectly shows how the audience can move from the “simple” audience modes to a mass audience.