Audience Investigation

1. Audience Investigation

2. The audience is an individual or collective group of people who consume any media text. Media
producers ain their product at a certain target audience.
A media text can be aimed at a mass or niche audience. A mass audience is when the media targets
a media product at a large group of people who consume mainstream and popular texts. A niche
audience is much smaller but very influenced. They are a more smaller, selected group of people with
a very unique interest.
There are different types of people that consume the media product. The audiences can be sorted
into certain categories such as the demographics and psychographics of the target market.
Demographics information is used in media marketing to classify an audience into age, gender, race
and other categories. It is broken into bands depending on peoples jobs or status.
Psychographic segmentation divides the market into groups based on social class, lifestyle and
personality characteristics. It is based on the assumption that the types of media products will reflect
the persons characteristic and patterns of living.

3. Grade Social Class Occupation
A Upper middle class Higher managerial, administrative or
professional.
B Middle class Intermediate managerial, administrative or
professional
C1 Lower middle class Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial,
administrative or professional
C2 Skilled working class Skilled manual workers
D Working class Semi and unskilled manual workers
E Those at the lowest levels of
subsistence
Causal or lowest grade workers, pensioners
and other who depend on the welfare state for
their income.

4. Uses and Gratifications
The Uses and gratifications theory was developed by Bulmer and Katz in 1974.
This theory is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media
to satisfy specific needs. Audiences use certain media tests for the following reasons:
- Entertainment/ Diversion
- Social relationships
- Personal identity
- Information/ Surveillance
Hypodermic Syringe
From the 1920’s this theory was the first attempt to explain the way in which mass audience react to
media products.
The hypodermic syringe theory implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on
its audiences and is perceived as a powerful influence on behaviour change. The consumer is
vulnerable from being manipulated by producers of media texts, This results in the consumer
accepting ideologies as the norm.

5. Two Step Flow
Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters' decision-making
processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign and published their results in a paper
called The People's Choice.
Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its
audience unmediated but is filtered through opinion leaders who then communicate it to their less
active associates. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with
the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, therefore being influenced not by a direct
process, but by a two step flow
Reception Theory
In 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text
different media texts, and how their individual circumstances such as gender, class, age, ethnicity
affected their interpretation.
Stuart Hall decided that audience take their own theories from a media text as all people are
different, meaning that they all have different ideologies.
The Male Gaze
Laura Mulvey developed the term ‘Male Gaze’ in 1975. She believed that in film
audiences have to view characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male.

6. The audience theories that I have stated can be associated to the horror genre. This included the
theories Uses and Gratifications, Hypodermic Syringe model, Two Step Flow, Reception theory and
the Male Gaze. Many people do believe there is a truth behind the theory Hypodermic syringe. It is
believed that violence used in horror films can influence the audience and allow them to think that
using violence in every day life is ok. For this reason the TV trailer advertising the film Saw 3D was
banned after a 10-year-old complained that it was "distressing" and "inappropriately scheduled“ as
well as the film being banned from the cinemas when released. Horror genre film are known to
having controversial films.
1978’s ‘I Spit On Your Grave‘ remains to this day one of the most controversial films ever made, and
certainly one of the most hated because of the graphic violence throughout the film and the
shocking rape scene. Films like this that include violence towards women which can be influenced
through films such as I Spit on your Gave and The Last House on the Left. As well as the
Hypodermic Syringe the Male Gaze can also be strongly associated with the horror genre. In horror
films they have an persistence on the objectification of female characters which creates a sense of
weakness and vulnerability forwards the women in the film. It shows that the female relies strongly
on the male character in the film.