What questions are important when thinking about audience?

You were asked to construct a short questionnaire for homework. What questions

are important when finding out about audiences?

AUDIENCES: Reception and Appeal

L.O: to develop our knowledge of media audiences by applying theories and discussing relevant examples.

STARTER: How many different ‘audience groups’ were you part of over the weekend? What media did you consume? Make a short list.

How do these vary? Do you have different examples to your partner? Why are they different?

What do we already know?

What do you already know about media audiences?

• Add at least one idea to the mind map on the whiteboard.

• Key words: effects theories, uses and gratifications, demographic.

Audience: Key Areas

• How we process texts (encoding/decoding).• How we are affected by texts (media effects).• What we get from texts (uses and

gratifications).

Re-capping Media Effects

• Theories developed by Frankfurt School (Adorno and Horkheimer c. 1930s-1950s). Closely linked to Nazi ideology and power relations.

• Passive audience positioning.• Manipulation and power of media to ‘inject’

audiences with own ideologies.• Hypodermic Syringe Theory• Two-Step Flow Theory • Cultivation Theory

Are we really that passive?

What can media offer an audience?• Means to create an identity• Goals and aspiration• Communication• Entertainment• Information…

Uses and GratificationsBlumler and Katz (1975)

• Theory which determines audiences as ‘active’ compared to media effects theory.

• Audiences seek out and consume media texts to satisfy and gratify needs.

• Think about a media item you have consumed today. Why did you choose this?

• …however, limitations of model: can we really know what an audience wants? How?

• Surveys, focus groups, interviews (but what might be wrong with these?)

How have audiences changed?

• Broadcasting – few to many (mass audience).• Narrowcasting – few to few (determined on

demographic choices).• Peer-to-peer – many to many, file sharing,

audience distribution.

Audience consumption

• Media consumption – drastic change. • TV/radio no longer centre of home, multiple rooms,

accessible from computers, tablets, mobile phones.• Raymond Williams concept of “flow” (1974). TV

consumption located within personal culture and context (i.e. TV on for background noise or company).

• Our media consumption is not always a deliberate set of choices to gratify a need (habit, etc).

READINGS:How audiences process texts

• Different audiences react to texts in different ways. We don’t all see the same message.

• Producers “construct” texts to attract specific audiences.

• Audiences “READ” media texts. • Stuart Hall (a media researcher who focused on

television in the home) proposed the theory of Encoding and Decoding in the 1970s.

Stuart Hall: Encoding and Decoding• ENCODERS (producers) create texts with a PREFERRED

READING (the meaning they WANT the audience to take from it) which the audience then DECODE: e.g. Nike symbol (“Just do it”).

• However, audiences may not take the preferred reading. They may take an:

• OPPOSITIONAL READING• NEGOTIATED READING• ABERRANT READING

Oppositional Readings

• When someone makes a conscious rejection or subversion of the preferred meaning.

• E.g. a feminist reading of the charming (and thankfully disbanded. Or did it come back?) UniLad website.

Can you think of a text you have had an oppositional reading to?

Negotiated Readings• When someone understands the meaning but

doesn’t fully agree with it, such as if it doesn’t relate to them so it is of no interest to them to decode it.

• E.g. a teenager with no political interest watching Question Time may understand the points but be neither persuaded or dissuaded by either POV.

Aberrant Readings

• When someone misreads or misunderstands the message the producers are trying to portray.

• E.g. a parent looking at a teenage magazine and believing them to be inappropriate or pornographic due to their ‘sex advice articles’, without putting the articles into context.

How audiences process texts• Pick one TV advert, watch it carefully thinking about the

representation of different groups, the topics and the codes used by the producers.

• What do you think the preferred reading is?

Which audience groups do you think take away a:1. Preferred Reading2. Oppositional Reading3. Negotiated Reading4. Aberrant Reading

MODE OF ADDRESS

Producers will construct a particular mode of address in order to aim their media text at a specific audience group.

Mode of Address is… the way in which the text “speaks” to the audience. It is a construction using a number of codes from all elements of the text for example technical codes (camera, lighting, sound, etc) and symbolic codes (language, colour, etc)

Alternative Modes of AddressMode of Address Audience

relationshipAudience Role Example

Direct Semi-Formal(Informative)

Acquaintance/Client Consumer Affairs i.e. Watchdog

Objective Formal (but equal) Listener Documentaryi.e. Wildlife Docs.

Authoritative Formal/ Submissive Learner TV News

Familiar Friendly Friend Game Show/ Docu Soap

Familiar (Participant) Illusion of Social Interaction

Participant-egging on contestants or taking part

Game Shows i.e. Who wants to be millionaire/ Big Brother/ Pop Idol

MODE OF ADDRESS• Look at a range of TV programmes and decide what the

mode of address is for each. Why have the producers chosen this mode? Think carefully about who the audience is.

• In today’s society the familiar mode is becoming far more popular and people are having a huge input into what they see on TV (Big Brother/ Pop Idol etc ) and now even on film.

• Do you think this “participation” is REAL or purely an ILLUSION?

Homework

• Pick a short media text (an advert, the opening to television programme, a film trailer, a magazine advert, etc).

• Can you apply the audience theories that we have looked at today?

Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding.Media effect theories and uses and

gratifications.