AUDIENCE

AUDIENCE DEFINITION

• An individual or a collective group of people who read or consume any media text.

• The assembled spectators or listeners at a public event (can still be TV, radio, newspaper etc).

• Some examples are: TV audiences, radio audiences, newspaper and magazine audiences and audiences online on websites for example.

AUDIENCE GENREAudiences can be defined by their:

GenderEthnicity

AgeRegion, nationality

Socio-economic group

G E

A R

S

WHY ARE AUDIENCES IMPORTANT?

• Without an audience there would be no media.

• Media organisations produce media text to make profit, without an audience there would be no profit.

• Media texts are constructed with an audience in mind.

• The mass media is becoming more competitive than ever to attract more and more audiences in different ways and stay profitable.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AUDIENCE AND AUDIENCE THEORY

• Audience theory describes the different ways of thinking about the audience.

• Audience research tries to produce evidence between the relationship between audience and media; it is always linked closely to an audience theory.

• Audience research doesn’t necessarily produce facts about the audience; instead it is usually informed by strong assumptions about the audience.

It is a theory made my Abraham Maslow which suggests there are 5 stages people go through in life.The theory says that there are different motivations that drive us.

When applied to media we can use them to try and understand the motivations behind our target audience.

Pro’s and cons?

FOLK DEVILS AND MORAL PANIC 1972

• Theorist Stanley Cohen suggested in his book, that a moral panic occurs when a “condition, episode, a person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.”

• Instigating that the media can play a massive role in enforcing moral panic.

• It works by the media overreacting to an aspect of behaviour which may be seen as a challenge to the existing social norms.

• So the moral panic by society represented in the media fuels further socially unacceptable behaviour.

Hypodermic needle model Uses and gratifications model Audiences are passive. The audiences are also easily manipulated and

led. They can be seen as gullible followers.

Media consumption influences the attitudes and behaviours of audiences.

Sometimes called ‘magic bullet theory.’ Linked to propaganda and advertising.

Audiences are active In choosing media for their own ‘gratifications’ – pleasure.

Links to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Their main reasons for using media:• Personal identity – to define who we are.• Information • Entertainment – includes their escape.• Social interaction – to help socialise with like

minded people

USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORY

RECEPTION THEORY• Jamaican Sociologist Stuart Hall introduced the idea that all media texts contain meaning which are

encoded by the producer (placed in the text) and decoded by the audience (understood within the text.)

• The audience decodes messages in different ways.

Dominant or hegemonic ways

Reader shares the texts ‘code’. Negotiated reading

The reader partly shares the texts ‘code’.

Oppositional readingThe reader does not share the texts ‘code’.