The COST Action is over... but things are going on!

Dear all,

The COST Action Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies, has come to an official end on 28 February 2014.

During (almost) four years, many things did happen – all being the result of the open-minded, collaborative and constructive spirit that fed the network throughout the Action’s life span. The Action has strengthened the connections between many parts of Europe and many research centres. One can say that the network of European audience researchers is now more solid, more integrated and more capable of organising itself. The Action has also given a new impetus to audience research, by integrating further emerging issues, approaches and research areas into the agenda of audience research. Thus the Action has fostered innovations in audience research but it has also consolidated the field by connecting these innovations to an already rich research tradition.

You can find a list of all the Action’s outputs here: http://www.cost-transforming-audiences.eu/node/1455 (this version of the list is currently being checked). The numbers are impressive – 4 edited books, 23 special issues of journals, 6 reports, 9 open conferences/workshops, and many other outputs and activities – but equally impressive are the quality of the Action’s outputs and the intense pan-European collaboration that gave birth to them.

All this is the result of a high commitment of the Action members. Especially, we would like to express our greatest gratitude to the WG vice-chairs, the task force leaders, the cross-WG project leaders, the coordinators (for the newsletter, the website, STSMs, project applications, and the partnership with the ECREA Doctoral Summer School), the liaison officers, the MC members, the editors of books/special issues/reports/essay collections, and the organisers of meetings, conferences and workshops.

A warm thanks as well to all those of you who have contributed in some other way – as an author, a speaker, etc. – to the Action’s achievements. Such a lively and productive network couldn’t have existed without the active contribution of so many participants. Congratulations to all of us!

Our gratitude also goes to Emilie Vossen, our Grant Holder Officer at Saint-Louis University, Brussels, for her patience, reliability and good mood all over the duration of the project. Her excellent work as regards administrative and financial matters was most valuable.

And last but not least, we are also very grateful to the COST programme for having supported this project, and to the “Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health” (ISCH) team at the COST Office for their kind assistance.

Although all this sounds like “the end”, things are not completely over. WG2 has just released its final newsletter (see here: http://www.cost-transforming-audiences.eu/node/303) and a group of Action members from the different WGs (Manuel Damasio, Marta Cola, Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Peter Dahlgren, Nico Carpentier, Piermarco Aroldi, Goran Bolin, Cristina Ponte, Nicoletta Vittadini, Frauke Zeller) has submitted a panel proposal entitled “Evaluating the COST TATS Action IS0906: Notes on a scientific legacy” to the ECREA conference 2014.

In addition to these, there are still a few outputs in progress:
- the submission of the final evaluation report,
- the last issue of the Action newsletter,
- the publication of the Action final edited volume (Revitalising Audience Research), and
- the multimedia dissemination project that aims at presenting the Action and its achievements through videos, photos and other online materials.

While the Action as such is over, it has given birth to several initiatives and projects that aim at continuing beyond the COST funding and that are still seeking for new partners. We would like to draw your attention on these as they might match your interest and expertise. The projects and initiatives that can still be joinded are:
- “Audiences across media: A comparative baseline study” – any expression of interest can be made to Klaus Bruhn Jensen (kbj@hum.ku.dk) by 1st April 2014.
- “Global protests: Active audience voices and their alternative multimedia” – interested researchers from UK, France, Italy and Greece can send an expression of interest to Miri Gal-Ezer (miri-gal@012.net.il) and Hillel Nossek (hnossek@colman.ac.il).
- “Cross-media news repertoires as democratic resources: a cross-cultural comparison”: expressions of interest from 2-3 new partner countries are still welcome and can be sent to Hanna Adoni (hanna.adoni@mail.huji.ac.il) and Hillel Nossek (hnossek@colman.ac.il).
- CEDAR/Consortium for Emerging Directions in Audience Research (network of audience researchers who are in their early career years) – please send an expression of interest to Ranjana Das at rd207@leicester.ac.uk.

It was the Audience and Reception Studies section of ECREA that took the initiative to launch the COST Action Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies (it was in 2007). The link with the ARS section and more broadly ECREA was maintained throughout the Action thanks to several partnerships (conferences, doctoral workshops, Doctoral Summer School). Obviously the ARS section offers another forum where the projects and collaborations born in the context of the Action can continue and develop beyond the COST funding. You are thus welcome to join ECREA and the ARS section - as well as the other sections, networks and temporary working groups that might welcome Action projects and collaborations!

Warm regards,

The Steering Group:
Geoffroy (Action chair), Helena (Action vice chair), Kim (chair WG1), Nico (chair WG2), Frauke (chair WG3) and Cristina (chair WG4)