Newspaper’s Target Audience

By Fatima Iftikhar

A target audience, is a specific group of people within

the target market at which a product or the marketing message of a product is aimed at....

For example, if a company sells new diet programs for men with 

heart disease problems the communication may be aimed

at the who takes care of the nutrition plan of her husband and child.

A target audience can be formed of people of a certain age group, gender, marital status, etc., e.g.

teenagers, females, single people,

Target Audience

In this presentation I have presented research and knowledge in order to explore and determine the right group of audience for my

newspaper.

The target audience of a newspaper varies based on a number of different factors. The best way to identify the target audience of a newspaper is to use the technique 'RIVALING' which stands for Representation, Institution, Values, Audience, Language, Ideology, Narrative and Genre.

Representation -

is the denotation of people, places and events to convey hidden connotations in newspapers. It is how the audience is represented to themselves within a newspaper by expressing their interests, needs and points of view.

Institution -

A media institution is a large group of people who work for the same company to produce various platforms of media. Newspaper institutions are usually responsible for the production, publishing and distribution of a newspaper. Examples of famous media institutions include Apple, Sony, Nike, Disney etc.

Values -

The values of a newspaper are constructed by the interests of its target audience. The quality, structure and content of a newspaper are adapted to the needs of the target audience.

Who are the target audience of Newspapers?

Audience -

An audience is the most vital aspect that ultimately decides the successfulness and survival of a newspaper. There is a powerful bond between a newspaper and its readers and without that target audience, a newspaper would have no market to appeal to.

Language -

The language of a newspaper is designed upon the demographics of its target audience. Semiotics is also a convention that describes how a newspaper is constructed through the careful use of signs, codes and symbols.

Ideology -

is a set of aims, beliefs or morals a newspaper and audience share. Modern-day newspaper ideologies focus particularly on political influences because in recent years, politics has become more and more popular amongst a much wider audience demographic.

Narrative -

is how a newspaper can be read as a text in a particular format. Has the newspaper purposefully reported its news in a way that supports the interests of the target audience? Does the newspaper begin with 'hard' news or soft news?

Genre -

describes the classification of a newspaper/story. For example, my newspaper can be classified as a local tabloid newspaper and my lead story can be classified as a story regarding teenage health.

According to the demographics and my knowledge I have taken the group from 18

onwards as my target audience taking an aim of reviving the print media among the youth

and people in the society otherwise. I want to create a powerful bond between my

newspaper and its readers with my designing and use of media’s components.