• John Hartley’s view of audience

• Jul ian McDougall ’s view of audience

AUDIENCE THEORY

RESEARCH

By Millie

Price

Hartley has made major research contributions to the study of popular culture and democratization, media content analysis (contemporary and historical) media and citizenship, journalism and modernity, and methodological innovation (audience theory and textual analysis).

John Hartley in his best sell ing book ‘reading television published in 1978 and co-authored with John Fiske, was the first to analyze television from a cultural perspective, and is considered a defining publication in the field.

JOHN HARTLEY

THE HARTLEY CLASSIFICATION

There are 7 social ly grouped categories when i t comes to ident i fy ing audience:

Self - what sor t of ambitions or interests might your audience have ?

Gender - is your audience mainly male or female, or both ?

Age group - what sor t of age group would your main audience be in? Remember that dif ferent things appeal to dif ferent age groups.

Class - dif ferent social classes are seen to have dif ferent priorit ies. You need to target a specific group in order to of fer appropriate motives, e.g. save money, look sophisticated etc. the majority of the country are middle or working class. Are you targeting a specific social class group?

Ethnicity - the ethnic grouping of your audience may play a role in your choice of images/actors and messages. Are your audience members of a particular ethnic group?

• http://cbscasmedia.blogspot .co.uk/2010/02/audience-theories.html

JULIAN MCDOUGALL

Julian is an Associate Professor specialising in education,

media / digital l iteracies and pedagogy.

He is a founding co-editor of many books e.g. Media

education research journal, co-author of ‘the media teachers

book, Julian has also published a range of student textbooks.

Including (Auter) and the AS/A2 media for OCR course

companions (Hodder)

http://www.cemp.ac.uk/people/julianmcdougall.php

Julian McDougall (2009) suggests that in the online age it is getting harder to conceive a media audience as a stable, identifiable group.

However, audiences still clearly make sense and give meaning to cultural products.

An audience can be described as a ‘temporary collective’ (McQuail, 1972)

http://www.slideshare.net/ecclestona/audience-4428681

JULIAN MCDOUGALL