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.
