This document discusses theories of audiences for media producers. It describes theories of passive audiences that are directly influenced by media versus active audiences that interpret media through their own experiences. It also discusses targeting mass audiences versus niche audiences and gaining feedback from the intended audience. Common audience motivations like diversion, social interaction, and information are examined.

1. AUDIENCE
G325 Section A 1b

2. Audience?
• Media producers need to ensure they can
readily define a target audience for a
particular product and then create a product
which will appeal directly to that target
audience.

3. Hartley (1987)
Suggests that institutions must produce ‘invisible
fictions of the audience which allow the
institutions to get a sense of who they must enter
into relations with’
e.g. they must know their audience so they can
target them effectively.

4. Types
• Mass Audience: large audiences- often termed
as ‘broadcast’ audiences, who consume
mainstream or popular culture texts. E.g. soap
operas, sit-coms, reality TV shows etc
• Niche Audience: smaller than mass-
influential- dedicated-loyal- BBC four aimed at
a niche audience interested in artistic
programmes.

5. Gaining Feedback from your
Audience.
• You attempted to gain feedback from your
target audience in order to get their opinions,
You used the blogs, social networking etc in
order to share ideas and images.
• Write down how you did this.
• What type does your audience belong to
(mass or niche?) why?

6. Types
• Passive and Active Audiences
• There are basically two different schools
of thought concerning how audiences
consume media texts, those that believe that
audiences are ‘passive’ and those who
believe that audiences are ‘active’.

7. Passive Audience Theory
• The idea that the media ‘injects’ ideas and
views directly into the brains of the audience
like a hypodermic needle, therefore,
controlling the way that people think and
behave.

8. Passive Audience Theory
• ‘Passive’ audience/hypodermic theory are
sometimes referred to overall as ‘Media
Effects Theory’, i.e. the media has a direct
and powerful effect on its audience.
• For your coursework this can relate directly
to music videos debate at the moment
concerned with rap/gangster videos.

9. Pluralist Model and the Active
Audience Theory
• This is the idea that the audience have an
active role to play in the understanding of,
and creation, of meaning within a media text.
• A pluralist model argues that there is
diversity in society (everyone is different) and
therefore there is also choice (we can choose
what to believe and what not to believe.)

10. Pluralist Model and the Active
Audience Theory
• So in media terms, because the audience
(society) is diverse, with different points
of view, the media is influenced by society .
• Because the media need to please the audience
they will try to reflect the values and beliefs that
are predominant in society.
• In other words, they give us what we say we
want rather than telling us what to think and
believe, in order to make us stay ‘in our place.’

11. Uses And Gratifications Theory Dennis
McQuail (1972)
• 1. Diversion/Escapism
• 2. Personal Relationship: A talking point
• 3. Personal Identity: identifying with the
representations on display
• 4. Surveillance: Information

12. Place the following genres into their
correct category
• The News, EastEnders, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?,
Friends, Cribs,The Bill, Holyoaks, Life On Mars, I’m A
Celebrity..., Escape To The Country, X Factor, Coronation
Street.
• Information
• Identity
• Social interaction
• Diversion
• Which of the above programmes might be guilty of
employing the ‘Hypodermic Model’

13. The active audience
• More recent developments still suggest that
there is a decoding process going on among
the active audience who are not simply using
the media for gratification purposes.

14. The active audience
• The audience accept or agree with the
encoded meanings, they accept and refine
parts of the text's meanings or they are aware
of the dominant meaning of the text but
reject it for cultural, political or ideological
reasons

15. Ways of decoding
• Preferred/dominant reading The preferred reading is
the reading media producers hope will take from the
text.
• Oppositional reading Audience members from outside
the target audience may reject the preferred reading,
receiving their own alternative message.
• Negotiated Reading The ‘third way’ is one in which
audiences acknowledge the preferred reading, but
modify it to suit their own values and opinions.

16. Ways of decoding

17. Ethnographic model
• The latest research into audience has resulted in
an ethnographic model, which means that the
researcher enters into the culture of the group.
• What seems to be emerging from this work is
a) the focus on the domestic context of reception of
media texts
b) the element of cultural competence
c) technologies.

18. The focus on the domestic context of
reception of media texts
• Engagement with the media is often
structured by the domestic environment
• The home is not a free space and there are
issues about finance for purchase of media
goods, control of the remote, the gendered
nature of watching TV

19. The element of cultural competence
• Texts that can be identified as belonging to a
genre that has gender appeal.
• The male preference for news and more
factual forms can be seen as a feature of
cultural competence because men occupy
more public space than domestic space and
therefore feel the need to be aware of the
public worlds reflected in such texts.

20. Technologies.
• Relates to the way we engage with the hardware in order to enjoy
the output of the media.
• There seems to be a strong gender divide here with computers and
complex technology fitting into the category of 'boys’ toys'.
• If present trends in technology continue then there is a real danger
that there will be a further demarcation along gender lines.
• Save the balance- TV use females in less traditional roles as a way
of redressing the balance (think Suzie Perry on the ‘Gadget Show’).

21. Shift
• Overall the shift in the models for audience
has gone from mass audience to individual
viewer with stress on the active audience
rather than the passive model. The level of
activity in the implied audience is related to
the uses, pleasures, cultural competence,
situation and available technology for the
particular audience.