Audience Engagement of Media: Presenting a conceptual framework

Increased competition among media outlets has made the mangers of such organizations to look for new business models in order to generate new source of income. Since the business models are based on attracting more audience and turning them to loyal viewers, therefore engaging the audience has become an important subject among media management researchers and media mangers.  Despite increasing importance of this issue, there has been a few number of research works on conceptual frameworks and providing theoretical models. Due to this reason and in order to present a conceptual framework for future studies and developing models and theoretical advancement, the present paper by reviewing the media study literatures and empirical findings on media audience engagement, has come up with a conceptual framework to be use in future studies and advancing the theory of this concept. The structure of the proposed framework includes elements such as what, why, level, strategies and consequences of engagement of the media audience. In addition to findings of systematic review of the literature, issues like policies of media organizations, ethical considerations and macro-environmental variables have taken into consideration within this framework