1. Media Audiences
Understanding Audience?
Media audience is how we understand the relationship between the media
product and the audience and how the relationship is changing. Unlike the past,
this is no longer assumed to be only one way of interpreting a product and only
one audience response. Audiences are not just categorised as mass audiences as
their responses are complex and sophisticated, on top of this their responses are
influenced by more than one factor.
Audiences are made up of individuals whose social and cultural experiences may
effect how they respond to a variety of media texts. Industries that produce
media products are well aware of their audience and the strategies they need to
take to attract their audience.
There’s a range of different theories that help to explain the different ways in
which audiences respond to media texts and the reasons for this. For example
Clay Shirky proposed a theory, which is an idea that the Internet and digital
technologies have a profound effect on the relations between media and
individuals, therefore we, as consumers, are more likely to use the Internet and
other technologies to respond to texts. With this idea in mind, we have reached
out to our target audience through three main social media platforms, Twitter,
Facebook and YouTube, which are all commonly used by teenagers and young
adults.
Types of Audience
There are four types of audiences, target/ primary audiences, secondary
audiences, mass audiences, and niche audiences.
A primary audience is a group of individuals, which a product is directly aimed
at. I order to reach this audience, the owner of the product or the industry
responsible for the product would have to consider the needs, characteristics,
preferences, and consumption habits of the primary audience.
A secondary audience is the second most important group of consumers an
industry targets. The secondary audience is just below the primary audience, but
what makes the secondary audience owner than the primary audience is the fact
that this audience has fewer demands and might have less money to spend on
your product.
A mass audience, sometimes known as a broadcast audience, consists of people
who frequently consume popular/ mainstream products or texts.
A niche audience is smaller audience, which consists of a selected group of
people with a unique.
2. Out of all of these types of audiences, our product is aimed towards a mass
audience as the genre, which is drama, appeals to a large amount of people. Not
only this but our short film also deals with a topic which is relevant and
mainstream, which will appeal to a larger audience.
