Audience is what form a target audience and how audiences interpret and respond to media, also how members of audiences become producers as well. Audience could be categorised in two ways a mass audience which is a large general audience and a niche audience which is a small specific audience. An example of where there would be a mass audience could be the news and an example of when there would be a niche audience could be fishing magazines
Audiences help the media to cater and adapt to their audience to make sure the media th
Audiences can be defined or grouped by
- age
- gender
- nationality
- ethnicity
- background
- class
Psychographics can be defined as a qualitative methodology used to describe consumers on psychological attributes. Psychographics have been applied to the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. A consumer psychographic is a profile of a potential consumer based on interests, activities and opinions. It is a snapshot into a consumer's lifestyle.
Cultivation Theory
The cultivation theory examines the long term effects of television. It says the more time people spend in the tv world the more likely they are to believe social reality aligns with reality portrayed on TV. It also states that there is a link between childhood TV viewing and social beliefs in young adulthood. It was developed by George Gerbner and Larry Ross in 1976. The core assumptions are that TV is different from other mass medias, TV shapes the way individuals in society think and relate to each other and TVs effects are limited. An example of the cultivation theory in action is a survey of about 450 New Jersey schoolchildren, showed that children who were heavy viewers were more fearful about walking alone in a city at night. They also overestimated the number of people who commit serious crimes. This effect is called ‘mean world syndrome’.
The Hypodermic Model
Suggests that the mass media are powerful, oppressive and control the passive audience by injecting their minds with messages to think in a particular way. It suggests producers control it to an extent but as humans we can reflect. The public essentially cannot escape from the media's influence, and is therefore considered a "sitting duck". An example of the hypodermic needle is the 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds and the subsequent reaction of widespread panic among its American mass audience.
Gratification Theory
This theory states that you have control of what you watch and how you receive it. We could choose to watch media to be informed, educated, entertained, escapism, identify and find role model. The assumptions of the theory are,
- The audience is active and its media use is goal oriented
- The initiative in linking need gratification to a specific medium choice rests with the audience member
- The media compete with other resources for need satisfaction
- People have enough self-awareness of their media use, interests, and motives to be able to provide researchers with an accurate picture of that use.
- Value judgments of media content can only be assessed by the audience.
Mobile phones, a comparatively new technology, have many uses and gratifications attached to them. New research on the motivations behind using mobile phones show in general, people use mobile phones for the following uses and gratifications
- Affection/sociability
- Entertainment
- Instrumentality
- Psychological reassurance
- Fashion/status
- Mobility
- Immediate access
Reception Theory
A basic acceptance of the meaning of a specific text tends to occur when a group of readers have a shared cultural background and interpret the text in similar ways. It is likely that the less shared heritage a reader has with the artist, the less he or she will be able to recognise the artist's intended meaning, and it follows that if two readers have vastly different cultural and personal experiences, their reading of a text will vary greatly.
The reception theory indicates that people will receive media one of three ways
- dominant
- negotiate
- oppositional
If you are negotiable you know you do not like it but you indulge anyway.
If you are oppositional you disagree with the media and reject it.
Impact of new technologies on audience
New technologies change and shape audiences.For example the introduction of iplayer and catch up TV mean that audiences can be plit up and not all in one place. Companies must strive to maintain audiences. We have fragmented audiences
- mass audience
- niche audience
this divison is due to the variety of medias
Representation
Representation is how a media text portrays events, issues, individuals and social groups. It is normally set on a perfect ideology - a set of ideas or beliefs.
The choices made by producers of what to include and what to exclude help to construct these representations. For example a cosmopolitan magazine cover purposefuly includes sexualised images and content whilst purposefully exuding content about other topics to build this representation women.
In our society immigrants are generally represented as a burden on our society and a drain of our resources. In the media a clear us and them divide is shown because immigrants are shown as the only source of blame for our issues. Gilroy's theory was the post colonial theory and he says that our love of the nostalgic mostly white world war two England is what encourages this hatred of immigrants. It shows the inflated sense of Britain's importance and the fact we are unable to let go of the fact we are no longer the power we were back then and the only source of blame the media can find is immigrants because they have increased massively since that period. It shows how Britain has an attitude of superiority towards other ethnicity.
Another important representation misconception is Black people in the media. Black people are often represented in the media as criminals. Often when black people commit crimes their race is mentioned frequently throughout articles, however when Caucasian people commit crimes it is rarely mentioned in the articles about their race. This creates a narrative to the audience that enforces the stereotype of black people being criminals.
Furthermore teenage boys are often only represented in the media in a negative light. Often words to describe them used are 'yobs' 'hoodies' and 'louts'. Studies have shown one of the only main reasons teenage boys get represented in the media in a good light is when they die. This reinforces the stereotype that all teenage boys are thugs and criminals.
Finally the representation of women in the media is often not great. Women can be portrayed to be perfect, nurturing, beautiful and sexualised.
Laura Mulvey says that women in the media are mostly for visual pleasure of the male gaze. Male characters are the 'bearers of look' which aim at sexually submissive female characters. Men do the looking and women are to be looked at.
However to counter this Mary Anne Doane says flaunting female sexuality is empowering and women are in control of their bodies and how they want to be represented without being less dominant and still holding a powerful presence.
Van Zoonens idea is the patriarchal media narrative which shows men to be individual, hardworking, rational and the bread winners, women however are social, family oriented and emotional. This is a very outdated way of presenting men and women and roots back to when women would look after the family and men would provide, however in modern day media this narrative still appears often like on magazine covers and in movies.
The 'Bechdel test' is a method for evaluating the portrayal of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added. Many movies have failed this test such as The lord of the rings, Ratatouille, avatar and 21 jump street. Ratatouille is particularly interesting because this is a children's film and this is portraying to young girls that men should be of constant importance to women if that is all women talk about in the media.
