AUDIENCE

for those that consume….

Audience

Can be described by the following factors

Location - where they consume it, ,home, cinema etc

Consumption – by what they consume, eggenre

Size – mass or niche

Subjectivity – what membership of pre-existing groups will have e.g gender ethnicity, age, sexuality ,religion etc

Why is audience important?

Metz (1975) brings to our attention that no one is forced to go to the cinema and pay for a ticket. Yet without that money the institutions would not have the money to make other films. So what has to be set up is a system where the spectator has a desire to visit the cinema and pay for his ticket.

TV

Has the same issues around audience

Ien Ang “ It is not surprising then that a constant need is felt within the institution to ‘catch’, ‘ capture’ or ‘lay hold of an audience’. Audiences must be constantly seduced, attracted , lured”

Raymond Williams (1974) there is a ‘deep contradiction between centralisedtransmission and privatised reception’

Audience theory – overview

There are 3 main theories

The Effects Model

Uses and Gratifications Model

Reception Model

Effects Model

The consumption of media texts has an effect or influence upon the audience.

Normally considered to be negative.

This models considers the audience to be passive and powerless to resist media message.

That messages are injected into the audience and that’s why also called the Hypodermic Model

Evidence

Comes form two sources

The Frankfurt School who theorised in the 1920s and 30s that media acted to control audience for benefits of capitalism and governments. Marxist approach.

The Bobo Doll experiment- apparently showed children copying violent behaviourthat they had seen in media

The Frankfurt School

Herbert Marcuse thought that the mass media defined the terms in which we may think about the world ( Bennett 1982)

The means of... communication..., the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers... to the producers and, through the latter to the whole [social system]. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood... Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behaviour. (Marcuse, cited in Bennett 1982: 43).

Marcuse in a nutshell

The media, the advertisers and institutions work together to quieten any opposition to the dominant system, to the way things are. So there is no intellectual debate on the big issues which then leads to a very one dimensional society.

Frankfurt School - critique

I think it is hard to contradict this idea of agenda setting back in the day but now with so many means of expression it becomes weaker, but not completely discreditied.

Many critics of this school feel that this represented a reintroduction of Marx’s ideas about mediation, or media as purveyors of a dominant ideology that destroyed the possibility that audiences for mass media were able to work against these ruling ideas.

Effects Model blamed

The film Childs Play 3- murder of James Bulger1993

The film Clockwork Orange 1971 for a series of rapes and violent attacks

The film Severance ( 2006) in the murder of Simon Everitt

Turning us into couch potatoes mindlessly consuming its output

Producing ‘copycat’ behaviour eg violence, shopping

Uses and Gratifications Model

This is in contradiction to Effect Model

A term coined by Blumler and Katz in the 1970s

Considers the audience to be active

The audience uses the text and not the other way round

The audience uses the text for its own needs and will gain gratification or pleasure from it

The audience is free to reject ,use or play with the texts meaning

Denis McQuail(1987) in Mass Communication Theory- Uses Information – finding out about the world, seeking

advice and opinion, general interest, learning, gaining security through knowledge

Personal Identity – reinforcement for personal values , models of behaviour, identifying with valued other, gaining personal insight

Integration – social empathy, identifying with others sense of belonging, basis for conversation, enabling one to connect with family, friends and society

Entertainment – diversion, ,relaxing, cultural or aesthetic enjoyment, time filler, emotional release, sexual arousal

Denis McQuail

Argues that a persons social circumstances and psychological disposition together influence a persons general habits of media use…beliefs and expectations about the benefits offered by media, will shape consumption followed by an assessment of the value of the experience with consequences for further media consumption

Ien Ang

Argues that the dominant ideology can organise social debate and individual evaluation of popular culture even though it can not determine the U&G the audience puts it to.

Maslow – Hierarchy of needs

implication

Audience use it to help with

Learning

Emotional satisfaction

Relaxation

Help with issues around personal identity

Help with issues around social identity

U&G Model - violence

This model suggests that rather than cause copycat violence, the media can help audience act out their violent impulses through consumption of media violence and are therefore less likely to act out their urges.

Controversial!!

Reception Model

Developed by Stuart Hall in the 1970s

Considered how texts were encoded with a meaning or message by producers and then decoded ( understood) by audience which will sometimes be what the produced intended, or sometimes be misunderstood.

Classic Communication model

A message

Encoded for medium - interference

Transmitted over medium

Decoded ready for receiving – interference

Message received

Three different readings

According to Stuart Hall there are three ways a media text can be decoded

Dominant or preferred reading – audience decode message as producer intended and broadly agrees with it

Negotiated reading – audience accepts, rejects or refines elements in light of held views

Oppositional reading – dominant meaning recognised but rejected for cultural, ideological or political reasons

News Values – a slight diversion

London Riots

To understand the dominant reading you should understand the ideology

BBC – national station with large audience

Selected these as one of the most important stories of the day

The dominant reading therefore constructs youth as out of control

Outdated

All of these models are old and constructed at least thirty years ago when

TV 4 free to air channels

Analogue radio

Press and magazines

Cinemas and VHS

Home video games consoles

Reception

Where and how do you receive media texts?

Are there times when you receive more than one at a time?

What are the different platforms you use to receive media?

Does the emphasis on interactive technology make the audience more or less likely to be passive?

Do the new media technologies provide alternative uses and gratifications?

Putting it all together

What reasons do the audience have to consume your product?

Who is intended audience? How do you know?

What did you do to attract an audience?

How did you take into account the views of your potential audience?

Include your management of the micro elements in your answer.