Audiences Recap

Audiences Recap

When media text producers profile their audience they take into account AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHICS 

(class/economic status, gender, age, geographical location) along with their viewing preferences/needs.

There are mass or mainstream audiences

basically large audiences who consume mainstream or popular culture (Marxist would claim that this audience is largely made up of the ‘working class’), such as Hollywood films, Eastenders, reality TV, Premiership football, simple Hollywood, tabloids

and niche audiences

A niche audience is smaller than a mass audience but usually very influential. E.g. those that Marx would define as upper class/middle class, who controlled the media and may wish to see ‘high culture’ programs. Hence the launch of BBC Four for those who wish to hear/see artistic high culture programs.

Niche audiences don’t have to be this group though, they can be any small, dedicated group who advertisers feel are worth targeting or creating products for.

Examples could include, certain films (e.g. 'adult' movies - which can not really be called ‘high art’), fishing magazines, farming programs, underwater knitting!

In other words, text producers think about the following before developing a text...

1) What social class will the primary target audience fall under?

2) What gender is the primary target audience?

3) What age will the primary target audience be?

4) What nationality will the primary target audience be?

5) What values do the primary target audience have? (Ideology).

6) Audience appeal - what will the primary target audience be looking for in a text? (UGT).

They then think about how they can best represent their primary target audience through;

genre, narrative, characters, cast, locations, cinematography, sound, editing, advertising etc.

If you are answering a question on audiences…

THE FOUR C’S (cross-cultural consumer characteristics): 

This is one of the earliest, but still most popular, ways of profiling audiences. It profiles the audience in terms of wants and needs, not simply demographic. The categories are as follows:

 • Mainstreamers (this is the largest group. They are concerned with stability, mainly buying well-known brands and consuming mainstream texts).

• Aspirers (they are seeking to improve themselves. They tend to define themselves by high status brands, absorbing the ideologies associated with the products and believing their status alters as a result).

 • Succeeders (people who feel secure and in control – generally they are in positions of power. They buy brands which reinforce their feelings of control and power).

• Reformers (idealists who actively consume eco-friendly products and buy brands which are environmentally supportive and healthy. They also buy products which establish this ‘caring and responsible’ ideology). Individuals (highly media literate, expects high-production advertising and buys product image not product, requires high-profiling sophisticated advertising campaigns).

The consumer would look to the text for one or more of these reasons:

Uses and Gratification Theory: 

 This theory is the opposite of effects theory because it relies on the premise that audiences have free will and choose to consume certain things for different reasons. The theory was developed in the 1960s and was in expanded in 1974 by Blumer and Katz who suggested a series of possible reasons why audience members might consume a media text:

• Diversion (escape from everyday problems - emotional release, relaxing, filling time etc.)

• Personal relationships (using the media for emotional and other interactions e.g. substitution soap opera for family life OR using the cinema as a social event).

• Personal identity (constructing their own identity from characters in media texts, and learning behavior and values – useful if trying to fit into a new country/culture)

• Surveillance (information gathering e.g. news, educational programming, weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains etc).

This can lead you on to ….

Stuart Hall deals with ‘Reception Theory’ study which determines how different audiences view the same text.

He found that the way audiences interpreted a text generally fell under one of the following:

• A preferred reading; of the text most likely to be received by the intended target audience who share the same ideologies (people read it as the creators intended – this is the closest to the hypodermic needle).

• An oppositional reading; generally by people who are not in the intended target audience (they reject the meaning intended and receive an alternative meaning).

• A negotiated reading; basically accept the meaning but interpret it to suit their own position/ideologies.

Then you can discuss TWO STEP FLOW ….

Which suggests that information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. 

Which can bring you on to

Mediation and how the text tries to involve an audience through

Mode of Address, persuasive, emotive language

Don’t forget dominant ideology

Marxists are likely to find evidence in the modes of address of almost every text that confirms evidence of a class divided society in which workers are exploited by capitalists.

Feminists are likely to find evidence in the modes of address of almost every media text that there are assumptions about gender.

Always write a conclusion no matter how small.