Exam lessons 3 (audiences) Section A A2 Media Exam

1. A2 G325:
Critical Perspectives
in Media
Theoretical Evaluation
Of Production
1b) Audiences

2. Question 1b
• This question asks you to write about one of
your media productions – in this case your
SOAP OPERA TRAILER and ancillary tasks can
also be referenced.
• You will be asked to write about the
production by applying ONE media concept

3. AUDIENCE
What should be done in terms of your
coursework is three things:
1. You must detail the target audience for your
product.
2. Detail what the audience might identify
with in your product
3. What meanings/uses they might make from
consuming/interacting with the product.

4. TARGET AUDIENCE
• For your production you had to create a
‘Target audience profile’ – refer to this along
with concepts and relevant theory

5. • Audiences can be defined by their
TARGET AUDIENCE

6. • Primary and Secondary Audience
• Fanatics / Ironics / Non-commited / Dismissives
• The traditional segmentation model (ABC)
• (Young & Rubicam’s 4Cs model) cross cultural
consumer characterization model
TARGET AUDIENCE

7. The traditional segmentation model

8. (Young & Rubicam’s 4Cs model) cross cultural consumer characterization model

9. Young & Rubicam 4 Cs model
Cross-Cultural Consumer Characterisation model
A more useful audience segmentation model than the traditional ABC1
categorization.
It acknowledges the global nature of media audiences
Divides audiences into 7 types of consumer
4 main categories are (MARS)
MAINSTREAMERS, ASPIRERS, REFORMERS, SUCCEEDERS
The other categories to be added to this are (ERS) EXPLORER RESIGNED
STRUGGLER
It takes the following as consumer motivations: SECURITY, CONTROL, STATUS,
INDIVIDUALITY, FREEDOM, SURVIVAL and ESCAPE
Clear links with Maslow

10. AUDIENCE
• Over the course of the past century or so, media
analysts have developed several “effects models”,
which are explanations of how humans ingest the
information transmitted by media texts and how this
might influence (or not) their behaviour.
• Some people see media audiences as being easily
manipulated masses of people There have also been
fears that the contents of media texts can make
audiences behave in different ways. On the other hand
there have been other critics who have seen the media
as having much less influence and working in more
subtle ways.

11. AUDIENCE THEORY
• Audience theory falls into two camps
EFFECTS
THEORY/MODELS
PASSIVE
ACTIVE
RECEPTION
THEORY
Emphasizes the audiences reception
or interpretation in making meaning
from media text.
What the media
does to us
What we do
with the media

12. THE EFFECTS MODEL
• The consumption of media texts has an effect
or influence upon the audience
• It is normally considered that this effect is
negative
• Audiences are passive and powerless to
prevent the influence
• The power lies with the message of the text

13. Hypodermic Needle Model Uses & Gratifications Model
Audiences are passive
Easily led, influenced & manipulated
Gullible, sheep-like fashion-followers
Media consumption influences
the attitudes and behaviour of
audiences
Sometimes called ‘magic bullet’ theory
Linked to propaganda & advertising
Behaviourist models of human behaviour
Audiences are active in
choosing media for their own
‘gratifications’ (pleasure)
Links to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Developed by Blumler & Katz
PASSIVE
ACTIVE
This approach focuses on why
people use particular media
rather than on content.
RECEPTION
THEORY

14. o Dating from the 1920s and being one of the most simple theory's to understand the
hypodermic needle theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might
react to mass media. According to the theory the media is like a syringe which injects
ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience who as a powerless mass have little
choice but to be influenced
o But remember that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were
still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. Governments had
just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced
propaganda to try and sway people to their way of thinking.
o So this theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of
media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-
makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. It is used to
explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts for
fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them
out themselves.
The Hypodermic
Needle Theory

15. o The Frankfurt School, a group of German Marxists, who in the 1930s witnessed
first hand how Hitler used propaganda to influence a nation.
o The Bobo Doll experiment This is a very controversial piece of research that
apparently proved that children copy violent behaviour.
o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHHdovKHDNU
Evidence for the Hypodermic Needle
Theory

16. MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
You will pick or be attracted to media that
satisfies these needs

17. o According to uses and gratification theory, we all have different uses for the media and we make
choices over what we want to watch.
o In this model the individual has the power and they are able to select the media texts that best suits
their needs and their attempts to satisfy those needs. The psychological basis for this model is the
Hierarchy of Needs identified by Maslow.
o The theory suggests that we as an audience may use the media for the four following purposes:
o Diversion – Escaping from everyday problems and routine.
o Personal Relationships – Using the media for emotional and other interaction (substituting soap
operas for family life.
o Personal Identity – Finding yourself reflected in the media, learning behaviour and values.
o Surveillance – Information which could be useful for living (weather reports, financial news, holiday
bargains)
Uses and Gratification Theory
In contrast to the concern of the 'media effects' tradition with 'what media
do to people' (which assumes a homogeneous mass audience and a
'hypodermic' view of media), U & G can be seen as part of a broader trend
amongst media researchers which is more concerned with 'what people do
with media', allowing for a variety of responses and interpretations*

18. U & G BREAKDOWN
• Information/Surveillance
• finding out about relevant events and
conditions in immediate surroundings,
society and the world
• seeking advice on practical matters or
opinion and decision choices
• satisfying curiosity and general interest
• learning; self-education
• gaining a sense of security through
knowledge
• Personal Identity
• finding reinforcement for personal values
• finding models of behaviour
• identifying with valued other (in the
media)
• gaining insight into one's self
• Integration and Social Interaction/ Personal
Relationships
• gaining insight into circumstances of others; social
empathy
• identifying with others and gaining a sense of
belonging
• finding a basis for conversation and social
interaction
• having a substitute for real-life companionship
• helping to carry out social roles
• enabling one to connect with family, friends and
society
• Entertainment / Diversion
• escaping, or being diverted, from problems
• relaxing
• getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment
• filling time
• emotional release
• sexual arousal

19. U&G applied to Soap Operas
• Watching TV Soap Operas A major focus for research into why and how
people watch TV has been the genre of soap opera. Adopting a U & G
perspective, Richard Kilborn (1992: 75-84) offers the following common
reasons for watching soaps:
• regular part of domestic routine and entertaining reward for work
• Launch pad for social and personal interaction
• fulfilling individual needs: a way of choosing to be alone or of enduring
enforced loneliness
• identification and involvement with characters (perhaps cathartic)
• escapist fantasy (American supersoaps more fantastical)
• focus of debate on topical issues
• a kind of critical game involving knowledge of the rules and conventions of
the genre

20. RECEPTION THEORY
• Given that the Effects model and the Uses and
Gratifications have their problems and
limitations a different approach to audiences
was developed by the academic Stuart Hall at
Birmingham University in the 1970s
• This considered how texts were encoded with
meaning by producers and then decoded
(understood) by audiences

21. RECEPTION THEORY
• The theory suggests that:
• When a producer constructs a text it is encoded
with a meaning or message that the producer
wishes to convey to the audience
• In some instances audiences will correctly decode
the message or meaning and understand what
the producer was trying to say
• In some instances the audience will either reject
or fail to correctly understand the message

22. ENCODING/DECODING
• the moment of encoding: 'the institutional practices
and organizational conditions and practices of
production' (Corner 1983, 266);
• the moment of the text: 'the... symbolic construction,
arrangement and perhaps performance... The form and
content of what is published or broadcast' (ibid., 267);
and
• the moment of decoding: 'the moment of reception
[or] consumption... by... the reader/hearer/viewer'
which is regarded by most theorists as 'closer to a form
of "construction"' than to 'the passivity... suggested by
the term "reception"'

23. ENCODING/DECODING
• Stuart Hall stressed the role of social positioning in the
interpretation of mass media texts by different social
groups. Hall suggested three hypothetical
interpretative codes or positions for the reader of a
text
• Stuart Hall identified three types of audience readings
(or decoding) of the text:
1. Dominant or preferred
2. Negotiated
3. Oppositional

24. ENCODING/DECODING
1. Dominant
• dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading: the reader fully
shares the text's code and accepts and reproduces
the preferred reading (a reading which may not have
been the result of any conscious intention on the
part of the author(s)) - in such a stance the code
seems 'natural' and 'transparent';
• Where the audience decodes the message as the
producer wants them to do and broadly agrees with
it
• E.g. Watching a political speech and agreeing with it

25. ENCODING/DECODING
2. Negotiated
• negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the
text's code and broadly accepts the preferred
reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a
way which reflects their own position, experiences
and interests (local and personal conditions may be
seen as exceptions to the general rule) - this position
involves contradictions;
• Where the audience accepts, rejects or refines
elements of the text in light of previously held views
• E.g. Neither agreeing or disagreeing with the
political speech or being disinterested

26. ENCODING/DECODING
3. Oppositional
• oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading: the
reader, whose social situation places them in a
directly oppositional relation to the dominant code,
understands the preferred reading but does not
share the text's code and rejects this reading,
bringing to bear an alternative frame of reference
• Where the dominant meaning is recognised but
rejected for cultural, political or ideological
reasons
• E.g. Total rejection of the political speech and
active opposition

27. QUOTES
• Clarke (2007) states that in media industries it
is important to carry out ‘regular audience
research’ using methods such as rating
collection, questionnaires, surveys and screen
tests. By doing this you are able to find the
most recent interests of an audience and
develop a film that they will enjoy and that
will engage them.

28. QUOTES
• John Hartley’s audience theory talked about the idea
that media institutions need to communicate with
audiences more to gain the ability to create a film
that can strongly target an audience, this being
shown through quotes John Hartley has said such as:
• ‘The media institutions must know their audiences if
they are able to effectively target them.’
• ‘Invisible fictions of the audience which allow the
institutions to get a sense of who they must enter
into relations with.’
• ‘Institutions are obliged not only to speak about an
audience, but – crucially for them – to talk to one as
well; they need not only to represent audiences but
to enter into relations with them.’
• These quotes basically suggest the idea that
interactions with audiences are strongly required to
create a strong film that has the ability to effectively
target an audience.

29. • Ien Ang detailed that media
producers have an imaginary
entity in mind before the
construction of a media product.
"Audiences only exist as an
imaginary entity, an abstraction,
constructed from the vantage
point of institution, in the
interest of the institution.”
• Ien Ang states that 'audience-
hood is becoming an even
more multifaceted, fragmented
and diversified repertoire of
practices and experiences'
There is a lot more to audience –
it’s not just about their
demographics such as gender, age
and social class but rather it’s
about the psychographics such as
the audiences hobbies, habits and
interests. Audience is not a big
lump of the same people – it’s
made up of different individuals

30. SOAP OPERA STUDIES
• Making Sense of Television: The Psychology of
Audience Interpretation – Sonia Livingstone (1988)
• “…the generic conventions of particular media forms
establish a framework within which audience
interpretation occurs. For the continuous serial or soap
opera, the meanings negotiated between text and
reader are not bounded by any single episode, and
hence, second, the soap opera may offer considerable
opportunity for an interpretative role for the long-term
reader/viewer.”

31. SOAP OPERA STUDIES
• Making Sense of Television: The Psychology of
Audience Interpretation – Sonia Livingstone
(1988)
• The way in which an audience member comes
to an interpretation of meaning “…involves
their understanding of the genre, their
motivation for viewing and their sociogonitive
resources for making sense of character and
narrative.”

32. SOCIAL COGNITION
• an individual's knowledge acquisition can be
directly related to observing others within the
context of social interactions, experiences,
and outside media influences. The theory
states that when people observe a model
performing a behavior and the consequences
of that behavior, they remember the sequence
of events and use this information to guide
subsequent behaviors.

33. SOAP OPERA STUDIES
• Making Sense of Television: The Psychology of
Audience Interpretation – Sonia Livingstone
(1988)
• “Soap opera, peculiar among television drama
genres, has no heroes but a multiplicity of
equivalently important characters. Hence it
invites not an exclusive or passive identification
with a central figure but rather an active and
participatory involvement based on ‘parasocial
interaction’ (Horton and Wohl, 1956) with a
community of characters.”

34. PARASOCIAL INTERACTION
• as originally hypothesized by Horton and Wohl
(1956), offers an explanation of the ways in which
audience members develop their one-sided
relationships with the media being consumed. PSI
is described as an illusionary experience, such that
media audiences interact with personas (e.g., talk
show host, celebrities, characters) as if they are
engaged in a reciprocal relationship with them, and
feel as though a mediated other is talking directly
to them (Rubin, Perse, & Powell, 1985). PSI can be
developed to the point where media audiences
begin to view the mediated others as “real friends”
(Stern, Russell, & Russell, 2007).

35. SOAP OPERA STUDIES
• Making Sense of Television: The Psychology of
Audience Interpretation – Sonia Livingstone
(1988)
• “Cultivation research (Gerber et al, 1986)
examines the hypothesis that exposure to
television is positively correlated with
endorsement of beliefs which are more
representation of the world .”

36. SOAP OPERA STUDIES
• Women and Soap Opera: A Cultural Feminist
Perspective – Dannielle Blumenthal (1997)
• “In a very real sense, then, the better one
“knows” a soap opera, the greater reason one
has for wanting to watch… Conversely, the less
involved one is in a given soap opera’s textual
network, the more that soap opera appears to be
merely a series of plot lines that unfold so slowly
that virtually “nothing happens” in any given
episode (Allen 1987:86).”

37. SOAP OPERA STUDIES
• Women and Soap Opera: A Cultural Feminist
Perspective – Dannielle Blumenthal (1997)
• “Sonia Livingstone has also found that
audience members ascribe different meanings
to the same soap narrative depending on their
feelings about the characters (1990:72)”