Researching mobile audiences: per un'analisi delle nuove territorialità mediali

This paper is aimed at investigating the patterns of media consumption at the intersection of old and new media which increasingly characterize urban spaces. The consumption practices, the discourses and competences which have great part in defining the way we inhabit and personalize our urban experience are increasingly shared and socialized in public spaces of the city. The present contribution draws on the findings of a research project on young people’s extra-domestic media diets and consumption practices, conducted in the city Milan through the adoption of a qualitative methodology which has combined participant observation of public spaces and narrative/ in depth interviews. The discussion of the findings provides the basis for reflecting upon methodological issues: breaking with the boundaries between old and new media, public and private space, domestic and extra-domestic media, production and consumption, the contemporary patterns of multiplatform consumption set new challenges to the researcher interested in understanding and describing these processes. There’s a need for a ‘mobile’ ethnography, able to provide an account of mobile consumption, and to embed in the research practice itself the increasing mobility and permeability among different realms of experience.