AUDIENCE THEORYHANNAH HALLIDAY

AUDIENCE THEORYThe audience theory includes the study of:• The construction of audience (who is watching)• The way audiences view the text (how they

watch)• The audience motivation (why they watch it)• The effect on the audience (what happens to the

audience)

THE CONSTRUCTION OF AUDIENCE This is broken down into many categories. These include:• Age• Gender• Cultural/religious baggage• Sexuality• Social class• Income • Ethnicity• Educational background • Regional identity

WHY?Media producers want to know the all of these factors of their potential audience, a method of categorising known as demographics. Once they know this they can begin to shape their text to appeal to a group with known reading/viewing/ listening habits.One common way of describing audiences is to use a letter code to show their income bracket:

WHAT PROFESSIONS COME FROM THIS?

A- managers, senior doctors, head teachers.B- teachers, doctors, lawyers.C1- banking, managers of small companies.C2- skilled electrician, plumber, etc.D- semi-skilled electricians, plumbers, etc.E- people with no job or are earning very little money.

They also consider very carefully how that audience might react to, or engage with, their text. Here are some of the other factors that they will consider when thinking about their audience that they require.

Table from: http://www.mediaknowall.com/gcse/keyconceptsgcse/keycon.php?pageID=audience

THE WAY AUDIENCES VIEW THE TEXT• Today, audiences interpret the media text they are seeing

and reading in many different ways. The audiences bring in social and cultural experiences which means the idea from the text will be different to someone else's because they have different experiences.

• Stuart Hall (1973) suggested that the creators of the media text deliberately placed certain meanings into them that would then mean viewers would ‘decode’ them and get their own personal meanings from them related to their experiences.

• It is all mainly down to the experiences and values and beliefs that the audience hold in which they interpret a media text and gain meaning from it.

THE AUDIENCE MOTIVATION This links with uses and gratification theory because this is an approach to find out why certain people seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs that they have.The uses and gratification theory needs to fulfil one of the following when we choose a form of media:• Identify- being able to recognise the product or person in front

of you, role models that reflect similar values to yours, aspiration to be someone else.

• Educate- being able to acquire information, knowledge and understanding.

• Entertain- what you are consuming should give you enjoyment and also some form of being able to escape from any worries that we may have.

• Social interaction- the ability for media products to be a conversation starter, having something to talk about with other people. (e.g. who has won ‘I’m a Celebrity…Get me out of here’.)

THE EFFECT ON THE AUDIENCE- DAVID MORLEYDavid Morley was a media theorist who specialised in audience theory. He studied a television programme called Nationwide, this was a news programme that told the news of the day from London and it also included human interest stories from the region. He studied the programme to see if he could find a way of seeing how the audience decoded and interpreted it to get a meaning of their own from that one initial message that was sent out to a number of audiences.

WHAT DAVID MORLEY FOUNDMorley outlined three hypothetical positions which the reader of a programme might occupy• Dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading: The reader shares the

programme's 'code' (its meaning system of values, attitudes, beliefs and assumptions) and fully accepts the programme's 'preferred reading' (a reading which may not have been the result of any conscious intention on the part of the programme makers).

• Negotiated reading: The reader partly shares the programme's code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but modifies it in a way which reflects their position and interests.

• Oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading: The reader does not share the programme's code and rejects the preferred reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of interpretation.

POLYSEMIC SIGNSPolysemic refers to a sign whether that sign is represented by a person, place or object, it has many meanings or connotations attached to it.An example of polysemy is:John was a good man. He donated a lot of money to charity.Bill was a good painter. His drawings always were excitingto look at.Another example of polysemic is a rose: it is red, vibrant looking, a type of flower denotatively but connotatively it could signify passion, romance, love etc.