AudienceBy Matt, Harry, Cian, Jack and Harambe

Audience An audience is a group of people who participate in a show, encounter a work of art or mediaThere is a large variety of audiences depending on what is being viewed such as: viewers, readers, players, consumers and audience participation

Implied audience- the audience pictured by the creator of the media. Similar to target audience.

Actual audience- the viewer of the media

Potential audiences can access media in a variety of ways such as through technology (phones, tablets, websites), radio, tv, theatre, film, magazines and more.With greater access to different variety of media there is now mass media consumption by a variety of audiences.

In order to appeal to their target audience, media outlets often aim to appeal to certain audiences, these can be categorised into different groups based on class and income :

Group A: those in a high profession, well paid e.g. doctors

Group B: lower income still fairly well paid e.g. teachers

Group C1: people in professions such as nurses and junior managers

Group C2: lower paid professions e.g. plumbers

Group D: manual workers e.g. drivers

Group E: low pay/unemployed e.g. students, pensioners

Audience theoryThere are three theories of audience that we can apply to help us come to a better understanding about the relationship between texts and audience.

The Effects Model or the Hypodermic Model

The Uses and Gratifications Model

Reception Theory

The Effects ModelThe consumption of media texts has an effect or influence upon the audience. It is normally considered that this effect is negative

Audiences are passive and powerless to prevent the influence. The power lies with the message of the text, Media influence and media effects are terms used in media studies, psychology, communication theory and sociology referring to mass media and media culture effects on individual or audience thought, attitudes and behavior.

Example: BOBO doll experiment.

BUT…...

The Hypodermic modelThe effects model can also be called the hypodermic model, here, the messages in media texts are injected into the audience by the powerful, syringe-like, media.

The audience is powerless to resist therefore, the media works like a drug and the audience is drugged, addicted, doped or duped.

History The "hypodermic needle theory" implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences. The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence on behaviour change.

Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of communication, including: * the fast rise and popularisation of radio and television *the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising and propaganda * the Payne Fund studies of the 1930s, which focused on the impact of motion pictures on children * Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to unify the German public behind the Nazi party

The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.

Uses and gratification theory.The Uses and Gratifications Model. It is still unclear that there is any link between the consumption of violent media texts and violent imitative behaviour.

It is also clear the theory is flawed in that many people do watch violent texts and appear not to be influenced. Therefore a new theory is necessary.

The Uses and Gratifications Model is the opposite of the Effects Model. The audience is active. The audience uses the text & is NOT used by it. The audience uses the text for its own gratification or pleasure.

Here, power lies with the audience NOT the producers. This theory emphasises what audiences do with media texts – how and why they use them. Far from being duped by the media, the audience is free to reject, use or play with media meanings as they see fit.

Audiences therefore use media texts to gratify needs for:

Diversion

Escapism

Information

Pleasure

Comparing relationships and lifestyles with one’s own

Sexual stimulation

The audience is in control and consumption of the media helps people with issues such as:

Learning

Emotional satisfaction

Relaxation

Help with issues of personal identity.

Help with issues of social identity

Help with issues of aggression and violence

Controversially the theory suggests the consumption of violent images can be helpful rather than harmful

The theory suggests that audiences act out their violent impulses through the consumption of media violence

The audience’s inclination towards violence is therefore sublimated, and they are less likely to commit violent acts

Reception TheoryGiven that the Effects model and the Uses and Gratifications have their problems and limitations a different approach to audiences was developed by the academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham University in the 1970s.

This considered how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded (understood) by audiences.

The theory suggests that:When a producer constructs a text it is encoded with a meaning or message that the producer wishes to convey to the audience<br />In some instances audiences will correctly decode the message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say.

In some instances the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message

Stuart Hall identified three types of audience readings (or decoding) of the text:

Dominant or preferred

Negotiated

Oppositional

Dominant

Where the audience decodes the message as the producer wants them to do and broadly agrees with it. E.g. Watching a political speech and agreeing with it

Negotiated

Where the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views. E.g. Neither agreeing or disagreeing with the political speech or being disinterested.

Oppositional

Where the dominant meaning is recognised but rejected for cultural, political or ideological reasons. E.g. Total rejection of the political speech and active opposition

Producer

Encodes

Meaning

Dominant or preferred

Negotiated

Oppositional

Audiences decode/denote meaning and messages

Key terms listAudience - The assembled spectators or listeners at a public event such as a play, film, concert, or

meeting.

Uses and Gratifications – ideas about how people use the media and what gratification they get from it. It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives.

Stereotype – representation of people or groups of people by a few characteristics eg hoodies, blondes

Representation – The way in which the media ‘re-presents’ the world around us in the form of signs and codes for audiences to read.

Regulation – bodies whose job it is to see that media texts are not seen by the wrong audience (eg British Board of Film Censors) or are fair and honest (EG Advertising Standards Association)

Popular Culture – the study of cultural artefacts of the mass media such as cinema, TV, advertising.

Multimedia – computer technology that allows text, sound, graphic and video images to be combined into one programme.

Mode of Address – The way a media product ‘speaks’ to it’s audience. In order to communicate, a producer of any text must make some assumptions about an intended audience; reflections of such assumptions may be discerned in the text (advertisements offer particularly clear examples of this).

Media product – a text that has been designed to be consumed by an audience. E.G a film, radio show, newspaper etc.

Demographics – Factual characteristics of a population sample, e.g. age, gender, race, nationality, income, disability, education

Hegemony – Traditionally this describes the predominance of one social class over another, in media terms this is how the controllers of the media may on the one hand use the media to pursue their own political interest, but on the other hand the media is a place where people who are critical of the establishment can air their views.

Unlike most approaches to the mass media Marxism acknowledges the importance of explicit theory. Marxist 'critical theory' exposes the myth of 'value-free' social science. Marxist perspectives draw our attention to the issue of political and economic interests in the mass media and highlight social inequalities in media representations.

Theories - Marxism

Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's social roles, experience, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as society, literature and media.

Theories - Feminist

Love me or leave me aloneThe short film 'Love me or leave me alone' was directed and written by Duane Hopkins and produced by Samm Haillay. The film was created in 2003, and is about two teenagers in a relationship. Set in a small rural village, the film is all about the two young people understanding how to express their feelings for one another. A study of the limits and emotions of first love. Love me or leave me alone was funded by FilmFour and the UK Film Council. The short film was shown at a number of festivals including the Edinburgh Short Film Festival, the International Short Film Festival and the Oberhausen Short Film Festival. The film has also won awards such as the Best Short Film award at the Edinburgh Short Film Festival and was nominated by Best British Short at the BIFA awards in 2004. The short was distributed on DVD in a series of other well known short films called 'Cinema Extreme Green Lit Projects' in 2008. The film also won a number of other awards. The director and writer Duane Hopkins went on in 2008 to write and direct his first feature film called 'Better things'. The film won one award and was nominated for another. Hopkins then went on to producer two other short films, one in 2008 which was called 'Lamb' and another in 2009 called 'Jade'. The short Jade was nominated for a BAFTA , one other award and also won one award. Love me or leave me alone depicts an average teenage relationship between a boy and girl. The short delves into the hormonal rage of puberty that teenagers experience through how the two characters treat each other. The short begins with the boy and girl arguing on what seems to be a school football field, evoking the teenage age of the two characters due to the location being linked to education. In a medium shot a boy spits onto a girls face. The girl reacts by shouting at the boy and pushing him in medium shot also. The girl then walks away from the teenage boy to a shelter. The short then cuts to a wide shot communicating the sudden distance the two characters have made between each other.