Audience

1. AUDIENCE
Preparation for Exam Question 1b: Lesson 3 & 4

2. Disney’s
The Jungle
Book
(2016)
Barber
Shop 3: The
Next Cut
Melissa
McCarthy’s
The Boss
Batman Vs.
Superman
Zootopia
$103,261,464$20,242,415 $9,958,855
$9,028,356 $8,142,641
Lesson Task
Put in order the films at this April’s American 2016 box office which films had the
largest audience from biggest to smallest. Can you match the weekend box office
gross also? As a group, pairs or individually Discuss and Rank.

3. The Jungle
Book
Barber
Shop 3: The
Next Cut
Melissa
McCarthy’s
The Boss
Batman Vs.
Superman
Zootopia
$103,261,464
$20,242,415 $9,958,855
$9,028,356
$8,142,641
Lesson Task: Answers
Why do you think these films are ranked in this order? What
factors are involved?

4. Starter Questions & Discussion
 What do we mean by Audience?
 Can you make a list of what defines an ‘audience’?
 Why is looking at audience important?

5. (b) Analyse one of your coursework productions
in relation to the concept of audience. [25]
Example Exam Question

6. WHAT ARE THE ASSUMPTIONS BEHIND
THIS IMAGE?

7. KEY CONCEPT POINTS:
 Again, you would have looked at the idea of the target audience – who are
you aiming at and why.
 You should have also taken feedback from real audience in some way that
involves finding out how the audience really ‘read’ into what you have made.
 How does your video ‘speak’ to your audience?
 You will need to refer to some critics who have written about audience or
theories of media audience and attempt to apply those (or argue with them).
 Key words:
 Genre
 Reception
 Uses and Gratification theory
 Encoding and Decoding
 Dominant/Negotiated/oppositional reading
 Fan behaviour
 Active /passive audience
 For challenge- Dominant ideology, post modernism. Can relate in answer
to an understanding of genre theory

8. Audience…
Media audiences can be defined in terms of location, consumption,
size and subjectivity.
 Location – the domestic consumption of media output raises
questions about regulation and control.
 Consumption – Audiences are defined by what they consume
i.e. are they an audience of a particular genre, medium or text.
Fans can be defined as passionate/ well informed about a
programme
 Size – there is a need to distinguish between mass audiences
that are broadcast to and niche audiences who are involved in
narrowcasting.
 Subjectivity – The impact that membership of pre‐existing
groups will have on audience members. These groups include:
gender, nation, religion, education, to name but a few.

9. Every media product has to have an audience. In your
projects, you would have looked at the idea of a TARGET
AUDIENCE.
Questions to consider when looking at audience:
 Who are you aiming your project at and why?
 How does your product affect the audience?
 What media techniques or technology did you use to appeal
or attract your audience?
 What was it about your product that addressed your
audience?
 What was it about your product that particularly worked to
‘speak’ to your audience?
 How would your project be consumed by an audience?

10. Who do you think the target audience for these films are? Can you
identify any secondary and tertiary audiences? Discuss and feedback.
Think
about
 Age
range
 Gender
 Class
 Ethnicity

11. Who do you think the target audience for these films are? Can you
identify any secondary and tertiary audiences? Discuss and feedback.
Think
about
 Age
range
 Gender
 Class
 Ethnicity

12. THEORISTS YOU MAY WISH TO LOOK AT MORE
CLOSELY:
 Adorno & Horkheimer (Hypodermic Needle Model)
 Blumer and Katz
 Stanley Cohen (Moral Panics)
 Stuart Hall
 Jeremy Tunstall
We will be looking at some of these theorists in more
depth. It will be up to you to go away and find more
information on the others to see what they say.

13. There are three theories of audience that
we can apply to help us come to a better
understanding about the relationship
between texts and audience.
 1. The Effects Model or the Hypodermic
Model
 2. The Uses and Gratifications Model
 3. Reception Theory

14. ‘Passive vs. Active Audience
 One way of looking at audiences is the power that the media
text has over its audience. This point of view is represented by
the whole tradition of the effects studies. There are many
studies including conspiracy theory, the copycat effect and
desensitisation. One model of key significance is:
Hypodermic Needle Model (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1970s)
 This model sees the media ‘injecting’ values, ideas and
information directly into each individual as part of a passive,
powerless audience, thereby producing a direct and unmediated
effect.
 This model is commonly encountered in debates concerning the
mass media and violence. It rarely discusses the positive
outcomes of a direct effect caused by the media, such as the
response to world disasters once the media begins to portray
devastation to its audience.

15. Types of audiences
The main purpose for any media text is to generate an income for
the producer of that text.
MAINSTREAM
A mainstream audience comprises the general population, with
no particular focus on any gender or age.
NICHE
Some films appeal to a certain gender, age or particular interests.
Fans in this bracket are sometimes known to go to conventions,
dressed as the characters from their favourite film or TV series.
This is called cosplay and it is not only the science fiction genre
which attracts the participants.
Star Trek and Star Wars are among the most popular science
fiction characters represented at cosplay conventions.

16. 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

17. This model is also called: The Hypodermic Model
 Here, the messages in media texts are injected into the
audience by the powerful, syringe- like, media.
 The audience is powerless to resist
 Therefore, the media works like a drug and the audience is
drugged, addicted, doped or duped.
 The Effects Model contributes to Moral Panics whereby:
• The media produce inactivity, make us into students who
won’t pass their exams or ‘couch potatoes’ who make no
effort to get a job
• The media produces violent ‘copycat’ behaviour or
mindless shopping in response to advertisements
What do think are the flaws of this theory? Discuss and Feedback
(5min)

18. https://youtu.be/nPEn5k55g-o (2 mins)
Short intro as to what happened
https://archive.org/details/OrsonWellesMrBruns
This is the full radio broadcast
Play (3:15 to 5:30)

19. Why do mass hysteria situations
like this occur?
DISCUSS

20. Audience theories:
the hypodermic needle model
Psychological theories can be applied to explain why
an audience would act as they did in 1938.
The best one which seems to fit The War of the
Worlds ‘mass hysteria’ situation is the Hypodermic
Needle Model.
If you missed the introduction to the radio
broadcast, you could quite easily assume that
something catastrophic had happened.

21. Lesson Task: Applying the Hypodermic Needle
Model
Watch the following videos what how do you feel after
watching the texts?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn9oMA1GQ5Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBQ-IoHfimQ

22. The Uses and Gratifications Model
 The Uses and Gratifications Model is the opposite of the Effects
Model
 The audience is active
 The audience uses the text & is NOT used by it
 The audience uses the text for its own gratification or pleasure
 Here, power lies with the audience NOT the producers
 This theory emphasises what audiences do with media texts – how and
why they use them.
 Far from being duped by the media , the audience is free to reject,
use or play with media meanings as they see fit.
 Audiences therefore use media texts to gratify needs for:
• Diversion
• Escapism
• Pleasure
• Comparing relationships and lifestyles
• Sexual stimulation

23. Lesson Task: Applying Text Gratification
Watch following videos and look at the images what
gratification do you think the producer of these texts
were trying to illicit from the audience?
• Diversion
• Escapism
• Pleasure
• Comparing relationships and lifestyles
• Sexual stimulation
How do you feel? Passive or Receptive?
Island
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBDC7_BnLH4
Blade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNS22xGezSY
Invictus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8lxGGx0R04

24. Reception Theory
Media theorist Stuart Hall argued that the researchers should
direct their attention toward:
 Analysis of that social and political context in which content is
produced (encoding)
 The consumption of media content
The essence of the reception approach is to locate the attribution
and construction of meaning (derived from media) with the
receiver. Media messages are always open and polysemic (having
multiple meanings) and are interpreted according the context and
culture of receivers.
Hall argued that most texts can be read in several ways
but there is generally a preferred or dominant reading
that the producers of a message intend when they create
a message, as a critical theorist, Hall assumed that most
popular media content will have a preferred reading
that reinforces the status quo.

25. Reception models (Can you give any examples?)
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‘.
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.
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 (radical, feminist etc.) (e.g. when
watching a television broadcast produced on behalf of a political
party they normally vote against).

26. Look at the image. What position do
you take in regards to
Dominant (the reader fully shares
the text's code )
Negotiated (the reader partly
shares the text's code and broadly
accepts the preferred reading, but
sometimes resists )
Oppositional (the reader, whose
social situation places them in a
directly oppositional relation to the
dominant code)
Lesson Task: Applying Reception Theory

27. Lesson Task:
Applying Reception
Theory
Look at the image. What
position do you take in
regards to
Dominant (the reader fully
shares the text's code )
Negotiated (the reader
partly shares the text's code
and broadly accepts the
preferred reading, but
sometimes resists )
Oppositional (the reader,
whose social situation places
them in a directly
oppositional relation to the
dominant code)

28. Lesson Task:
Applying Reception
Theory
Look at the image. What
position do you take in
regards to
Dominant (the reader fully
shares the text's code )
Negotiated (the reader
partly shares the text's code
and broadly accepts the
preferred reading, but
sometimes resists )
Oppositional (the reader,
whose social situation places
them in a directly
oppositional relation to the
dominant code)

29. Lesson Task:
Applying Reception
Theory
Look at the image. What
position do you take in
regards to
Dominant (the reader fully
shares the text's code )
Negotiated (the reader
partly shares the text's code
and broadly accepts the
preferred reading, but
sometimes resists )
Oppositional (the reader,
whose social situation places
them in a directly
oppositional relation to the
dominant code)

30. Lesson Task:
Applying Reception
Theory
Look at the image. What
position do you take in
regards to
Dominant (the reader fully
shares the text's code )
Negotiated (the reader
partly shares the text's code
and broadly accepts the
preferred reading, but
sometimes resists )
Oppositional (the reader,
whose social situation places
them in a directly
oppositional relation to the
dominant code)

31. David Gauntlett – Producer as
Consumer (Prosumer):
“Media Studies students regularly
make their own short film
productions but are also regular
consumers of the media – in doing
so they are both producer and
consumer blurring the boundaries of
traditional media consumption”.

32. Stuart Hall
Reception Theory

33. Stuart Hall – Audience Positioning
and Dominant, Negotiated,
Oppositional Readings:
“Some texts, like The Mighty Boosh
may have a number of readings,
dependent on audience – a dominant
reading could be that it is a
postmodern representation of celebrity
culture while a negotiated reading
could be that it is simply surreal and
funny while an oppositional reading
could be that it is childish, subversive
and offensive”.
The Mighty Boosh was a
TV show about Vince Noir
and Howard Moon have
surreal adventures while
working at a Zoo run by the
deranged Bob Fossil and
pursuing a career as
musicians and living with
the mystic Naboo the
Enigma and his ape familiar
Bollo.

34. Audience address theories
Stuart Hall’s 3 theories of how media audiences
‘receive and understand’ texts:
Preferred readings: when the audience can relate
and empathise directly with the media text.
Negotiated readings : when the audience do not
directly relate to the media text and have to place
themselves into the ‘world of the text’.
Oppositional readings: when the audience and their
life experiences have no relationship with the text and
are actually resistant to it. This can often lead to an
oppositional reading.

35. Blumler and Katz
The Uses and Gratifications Model

36. Blumler and Katz – Uses and Gratifications
Theory:
“Different audiences gain different pleasures from
a media text e.g. Gravity can be enjoyed via
diversion or escapism, it can use surveillance to
give information to audiences and can also be
discussed on forums and blogs as a form of
developing personal relationships (common also in
video games). Personal identity can be developed
with audiences who relate to certain characters
more than others”.

37. Audiences can be identified as Primary, Secondary or Tertiary but also the
site or conditions of reception e.g. consuming media as a collective group
or individually.
Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Audience Engagement: “Watching
films in a cinema involve a primary mode of audience engagement as the
spectator is immersed with the narrative; while watching a programme at
home on television may involve eating a meal at the
same time, texting, using social media or other additional activities.
Tertiary audience engagement is using the text as background media like
music radio”.
Reception Theory - Jeremy Tunstall
Primary (Immersion in the
narrative)
Secondary (Engaged in
other activities while
‘watching’)
Tertiary (TV/film on in the
background while doing
something else)

38. Applying Audience
Who is this film
aimed at (the
target
audience)?
Why do you
think this
poster (may)
speak to its
audience?
Would this
poster be
affective to its
target audience
and why?
What model do you think would be most effective with this
poster and audience?
Who is the
secondary
target audience
for this poster?
Is there a third
target audience
for this poster?
If so you?
How would this
particular
audience
consume this
film i.e. where
can the audience
be found?
Lesson Task: 3

39. Lesson task
Choose one of your projects and create a table to analyse it
in relation to audience answering the questions below:
Who are you aiming your project at and why?
How does your product affect the audience?
What was it about your product that addressed your audience?
What was it about your product that particularly worked to ‘speak’
to your audience?
How would your project be consumed by an audience?
If time, do the same analysis with another of your projects

40. AUDIENCE
Preparation for Exam Question 1b: Lesson 3 & 4
Lesson 4: Essay Planning

41. REMINDER OF KEY CONCEPT POINTS:
 Again, you would have looked at the idea of the target audience – who are
you aiming at and why.
 You should have also taken feedback from real audience in some way that
involves finding out how the audience really ‘read’ into what you have made.
 How does your video ‘speak’ to your audience?
 You will need to refer to some critics who have written about audience or
theories of media audience and attempt to apply those (or argue with them).
 Key words:
 Genre
 Reception
 Uses and Gratification theory
 Encoding and Decoding
 Dominant/Negotiated/oppositional reading
 Fan behaviour
 Active /passive audience
 For challenge- Dominant ideology, post modernism. Can relate in
answer to an understanding of genre theory

42. SECTION A: Theoretical Evaluation of Production
1 (b) In question 1(b) you must write about one of your media
productions.
(b) Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the
concept of audience. [25]
Example Exam Question
How might you now go about planning for
this question?

43. Concept: Audience
Project Name: Look at your two productions and choose the best one
Summary: This will form the basis of your opening summary for question 1b). Write a description
of your project. If you are using the same project for another concept then you can use this but then
mention the concept you will be using and how you aim to look at it.
Target Audience: Identify the target audience of your project
Secondary Audience:
Tertiary Audience:
Target Audience
(Describe your
audiences)
What are the audience
appeals of your trailer
in regards to this
audience?
Which Theorist can you
apply to this point and
why?
Examples in your
work
Target audience
described as…
My trailer appeals to
this audience
because…and then
explain why it targets
this…
… audience
identification,
realist/non realist
representations,
narrative themes, focus
on youth culture (if
relevant) but still
‘retaining the
conventions of your
genre. Additional
appeals could also
include narrative action
codes, strong
characterisation, and
aspirational, escapist
representations.
Jeremy Tunstall’s primary,
secondary and tertiary
target audience – primary
(see above) but secondary
would be older, male, 35-
55 who, in terms of
audience identification and
intertextual targeting
focuses on narrative and
characterisation. Tertiary –
female, 14-19 (intrigue,
cool, exciting, star
marketing/secondary
persona).
Blumler and Katz in 1975.
This theory suggested
audiences are active and
gain different pleasures
from different media texts.
Identify examples in
your work where
these appeals and
theories can be
found.
Secondary audience
described as…
Tertiary audience
described as…
For example
you may want
to start with an
‘Essay planning
table’
which could
look something
like this.
You now have 20 min to plan your essay on AUDIENCE…

44. (b) Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to the
concept of audience. [25]
Now using your lesson plan attempt
the question:
….You have 30 mins
Good luck!

45. HOMEWORK TASK:
 Take a look at your media theorists hand-out.
Research other theories that may use to apply to
your texts. Find quotes for each theorist you
research:
 Adorno & Horkheimer (Hypodermic Needle Model)
 Blumer and Katz
 Stanley Cohen (Moral Panics)
 Stuart Hall
 Jeremy Tunstall