Different views and definitions:

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• A variety of different groups to which you belong- gender / ethnic / class / age / sexuality/ etc

• A target market or a particular type of consumer which a media producer wants to reach/ sell to

• A group of people who consume a particular film, TV show, album, ad, etc

• Something you DO rather than something you ARE

• A set of individual readers of a text who actively make their own meanings

• Individuals, who use the media to satisfy their own needs

• Couch potatoes who passively consume the media without challenge

• Members of a society who might at some point use the media

 

Pretty much everything we do in Media is done with an audience in mind, Everything from writing an essay to making a poster to planning a music video should be done in the sure knowledge that you know who your audience is and what they want.

 

Everything is made for at least one TARGET AUDIENCE. Your job is to understand how to describe audiences, how to find out what they want and how to make it for them.

 

MOST OBVIOUS WAY TO DESCRIBE AUDIENCE IS THROUGH AGE AND GENDER.

 

Demographic table

A

Upper middle Class

Higher managerial, administrative or professional job employment

B

Middle Class

Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional job employment

C1

Lower Middle class

Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional job employment

C2

Skilled working class

Skilled manual workers

D

Working class

Unskilled manual workers

E

Casual / Lowest Grade Workers

Pensioners and others who depend on the welfare state for their income.

 

Psychographics

7 different audiences:

• The Mainstream

• The Aspirer

• The Reformer

• The Explorer

• The Succeeder

• The Resigned

• The Struggler

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AUDIENCE THEORY

There are a few ideas- theories - we often use to explain how the media address or seek to attract audiences.

 

Hypodermic Needle Theory

The oldest, simplest and least useful idea. This theory states that information is simply ‘injected’ into the audience’s head; that there is a direct, TRANSMISSIONAL relationship between media and audience.

 

Simple Example: with some texts, this direct link probably does exist: here, for example, there is a very simple direct message with little room for misinterpretation. (we call such texts, with little or no connotation, CLOSED TEXTS)

However, most texts are considerably more complex than this and as such nobody really thinks the hypodermic needle theory is a very good explanation of how texts convey their meaning.

 

TWO STEP FLOW THEORY

Introduced by Lazarsfield and Katz in 1955, suggests that audience can be divided into ‘opinion leaders’ and ‘opinion followers’.

 

Opinion leaders are those who seek out information, learn about subjects and thus create their own, well-informed opinions. They then influence the opinion followers.

 

Example: a student in a school who knows a lot about music (or computers, or fashion, or gaming) is very likely to influence the opinions of those he interacts with.

 

So it makes sense for advertisers, or other sectors of the media, to target the opinion leaders since it is actually them who persuade the majority to think and behave in certain ways.

 

BMW EXAMPLE

Ad appeals in a number of ways, but in terms of two-step flow we probably need to look at the text at the bottom.

Contains (slightly) technical information about transmission and acceleration timdx; information that most people won’t really know how to interpret

It is aimed at those opinion leaders who understand what the claims being made actually mean: the idea is that they will then inform the opinion followers, either by word of mouth or via reviews, online forums and so on.

 

USES AND GRATIFICATIONS (MOST USEFUL THEORY)

Theory starts by assuming audiences are active as opposed to passive which is what transmissional theories like the hypodermic needle theory is doing

 

The notion that audiences actually look for things in texts as opposed to simply receiving what they are given- Something we are trying to do in Media Studies

 

Many models: based around Uses and gratifications - we tend to go with McQuail and Blumler.

 

MCQUAIL & BLUMLER (if you use mention this in your essay you’ll have a higher chance of earning an a*)

Identifies 4 things audiences look for (which of course a clever advertiser will seek to provide)

 

• Diversion - Entertainment (escapism, humor, star appeal, sex appeal, more dramatic than life)

• Personal Relationships - to form relationships with people who consume the media (watching popular shows, discussing shows with others, watching with others, to some extent relating to fictional characters as though they are real)

• Personal Identity -to express or explore ideas about their own identities (recognising yourself or your own life in the show, comparing yourself to characters, imagining yourself in similar situations, discovering your emotional or intellectual response to situations or ideas)

• Surveillance -to learn about the world. Direct information about real life Finding out about new places, historical periods, jobs, environments.

 

AUDIENCE EFFECTS

• Most controversial area of Media studies

• Possible effects that media consumption might have on the audience

• Several high profile cases- the murder of Jamie Bulger- The columbine killings

• Seemed to suggest that there is a link between observing violence in the Media and being violent in real life

• We can identify several possible outcome of media consumption if we choose to agree with the effects model

 

Modelling- copying what we see

Conditioning/ Cultivation- our psychological state is affected and possibly permanently ‘damaged’ by the Media we consume

Mean world syndrome- a type of conditioning whereby we become convinced that the world is more threatening or dangerous than it actually is.

Catharsis- an alternative suggestion whereby we argue that tendencies towards violence, for example, are actually satisfied (or ‘purged’ - that’s what catharsis means) by watching violent things. That if we watch them we're less likely to do them.

 

-Problems with this type of model- assumes the audience is PASSIVE- and will mindlessly copy what they are told

-Generally only popular culture is to blame- not books like the Bible or Catcher in the Rye.

 

CULTURAL CAPITAL:

Pierre Bordieu formulated the idea of Cultural Capital. He said that people consume or adopt certain elements of culture because they are associated with affluent or successful social groups. Likewise, they avoid those elements of culture which are associated with the ‘lower’ classes.

 

Twin Peaks: The return

(Showtime, CBS) is a mystery/ crime drama. It was directed by the highly-respected film director David Lynch. The narrative is complex and demanding and it explores a range of mature and challenging themes. It is a continuation of the 1990-1991 series and thus audiences will need to go back and watch that first. All of this means it offers a very high level of Cultural Capital; it suggests the audience

 

REFLECTION THEORY:

Idea that our knowledge reflects the ‘real world’ and society