The Evolving Audience Network during Media Environment Transition - A Longitudinal Study of Cross-Platform Use in China

Scholars disagree on whether the media environment has become more concentrated, fragmented, polarized or overlapped. By pooling data from a total of 250 audience surveys conducted over 9 years, we investigated the evolution of a cross-platform audience network during a time of transition in the media environment. We found that both the fragmentation and duplication of the media system changed in a curvilinear manner. More importantly, this study showed that the center of the cross-platform network was transferred from offline to online. This study emphasizes the dynamic of media choice at various stages of media technology development.