AUDIENCEPertemuan 4

Matakuliah : Sosiologi Komunikasi MassaTahun : 2009/2010

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• Define the audience• Reflect on the media’s view of the audience• Consider the various ways in which the audience

has been imagined by academic research– varieties of cultural pessimism, ‘liberal-pluralist’,

‘encoding/decoding’, media ethnography• Consider how different theories, methods and

concepts shape our understanding of the media audience

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Defining ‘the audience’C14th -15th ‘the act of hearing’; a formal or judicial

‘hearing’ (the court of audience); a formal interview with a superior (‘granted an audience’)

C 17th – 18th – those physically, and collectively, present at a sermon, speech or theatrical production

C 19th -21st – consumers of ‘mass’ forms of communication

From New Keyworks: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Bennett et. al 2005.

The Audience

– Mass media distinguished from other social institutions by necessary presence of audience

– Identifiable, finite group or a much larger, undefined group

• Who Is In the Audience?

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The Audience

– Increasingly, media market themselves to a particular audience

– The role of audience members as opinion leaders intrigues social researchers

• The Segmented Audience

Opinion leader: someone who, through day-to-day personal contacts and communication, influences opinions and decisions of others

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The Audience

– Response often influenced by social characteristics:• Occupation• Race• Education• Income

• Audience Behavior

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The media’s view of the audience• Measuring the size and composition of audiences• Quantitative methods and indicators • Nielsen (US) BARB (UK)• Qualitative methods to gauge meaning and

reaction• The audience a product made by the commercial

media to sell to advertisers

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Approaching audience research‘The history of academic research in this field is best characterised as a continuing dialogue between perspectives which stress the power of the media over their audiences on the one hand, and perspectives which stress the active dimension of how audiences respond to the messages they receive on the other’ (Morley in Bennett et.al 2005: 10)

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The audience 1) Cultural pessimism

• Hypodermic model• Critical Marxist accounts (Frankfurt School) –

culture as industry & explotation• Effects tradition (social conservatism?)• One-way process – passive audience

Media producers (state or industry) Media audience

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The audience 2) ‘Liberal-pluralist’

• Media communication is still one-way but other factors can get in the way (Katz and Lazersfeld 1955)

• Influence, rather than effects – ‘two-step flow’• Audience is selective. • ‘Uses and gratifications’ – company, distraction, the relief of

tension, catharsis, social solidarity, education

sender (other factors) message (other factors) receiver

From Livingstone in Gillespie (ed) Media Audiences

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Frameworks of Knowledge

Relations of Production

Technical Infrastructure

Frameworks of Knowledge

Relations of Production

Technical Infrastructure

EncodingMeaning structures 1

DecodingMeaning structures 2

Programme as meaningful discourse

The audience 3) Encoding/Decoding

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Encoding/Decoding• Media messages are ideological• Textual analysis & audience analysis (Morley,

Nationwide)• Negotiation – or struggle – between

– dominant– negotiated– oppositional readings

• Hegemony (Gramsci)

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The audience 4) Media ethnography

• Inspired by feminist accounts of the media audience

• The politics of pleasure• Uses of media in everyday life• Qualitative accounts – meaningfulness of

audience engagement (Dallas, The Young and the Restless)

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Conclusion• Media industries operate with a particular vision

of their audience.• Audiences are ‘made’ through

– Research methods (quantitative and qualitative)

– conceptual approaches to society (liberal-pluralist, Marxist, feminist)

• ‘The audience’ does not exist!