This document discusses key concepts relating to audience in media studies. It defines audience as the people who consume a media product or text. Media texts have intended target audiences that can be mass/mainstream or niche. Audiences can also be passive or active in how they engage with media. The relationship between producers, texts, and audiences affects how meaning is constructed and understood. Demographic details about audiences like age, gender, social class are important to consider. Theories discussed include uses and gratifications theory, which argues media satisfies audience needs and desires, and Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of how audiences can interpret meanings differently than intended.

1. Audience

2. Some key words
What do they mean and how do they relate to audience?
Mass
Niche
Target
Secondary
Passive
Active
Homogenous
Polysemic

3. What is audience all about?
The people who consume a media product or media text. Any media text will have intended
target audience – a mass/mainstream or niche audience. Products can also have a wider or
secondary audience who are not the target audience but may still consume (buy/watch) the
media text. The relationship between producer, media text and audience affects the way
meaning is produced and how we read and understand texts. Audiences can be passive or active,
homogenous or polysemic.
*homogenous = one big audience who all respond in the same way to the same text
*polysemic = lots of different audiences with different experiences and will respond differently to the same text

4. What theory do you already know?
Theorist Theory

5. Audience Details (demographics)
• Demographics is all about details to consider about an audience:
– Age (babies, toddlers, children, teenagers, young adult, adult, OAP)
– Gender (male/female/transgendered)
– Race/ethnicity (asian, white, black, latino etc)
– Social class (lower class (severe poverty), working class (near poverty), lower middle
(average income), upper middle (above average income), upper (high
earnings)
***(see next slide for categories)
– Values/attitudes (deep concern and care for environment or the treatment of children/education/minority
groups etc)
– Interests, hobbies (clubs, photography, boating, swing dancing, rowing, tattoos)
– Social group (sporty, goth/emo, religion, punk, rocker, hippie)
– Sexuality (straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual)
– Location (country, part of country, city/town….irish/north/south/dublin/belfast)
– Profession/role (mother, carer, teacher, student, business, author, etc.)

6. Psychographics

9. Audience – SOCIAL CLASS
Grade Occupation
A Higher managerial, administrative or professional
B Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1 Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2 Skilled manual workers
D Semi and unskilled manual workers
E
Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others who depend on the state for
their income
Group Description NRS equivalent
1
Higher Professional and
Managerial workers
A
2
Lower Managerial and
Professional workers
B
3 Intermediate occupations C1 and C2
4
Small Employers and non
professional self-employed
C1 and C2
5
Lower Supervisory and
technical
C1 and C2
6 Semi Routine Occupations D
7 Routine Occupations D
8 Long term unemployed E21st century
20th century

10. Genre and audience
• You can’t have a text without an audience!
• Successful genre = register meaning with audience
• Similar films will follow, thus conventions develop
• Example:
• Think of the success of paranormal activity and the impact its had on
horror/thriller genres

11. GENRE AND AUDIENCE
• Audience = the (intended or not) group who will view, participate
or observe a text
• There is a relationship between genre and audience
• Why do audiences find genres satisfying?
• Genre could be a means of satisfying an audience:
– Audiences develop an understanding that certain expectations may be fulfilled and
they may find pleasure in predicting what will happen next
– Audiences know what to expect from a genre but at the same time want some
variations to prevent dissatisfaction and even boredom
– Thus any text in a genre is a combination of the familiar and the unexpected
(inevitable lead into subgenre/hybrids)

12. Audience and film genre
• Example: GENDER
– MALES – sci/fi, action/adventure, gangster, war
– FEMALES – musicals, chick flicks, love story/romance
• AUDIENCE EXPECTATION
– Genre depends on what audience expects to see
– Example: you pay to see a romantic-comedy, with anticipation of light-hearted entertainment, warm/feel
good factor
– The industry is totally aware of audience and aims to make films to satisfy our expectations (needs/wants)
– Marketing of films plays on our knowledge of genre
• Consider movie posters = not just title, denotation/connotation of images (iconography)
• However, iconography is dependant on our exposure to media texts (we acquire knowledge/understanding/familiarity
over time of seeing a variety of similar images)
– Studio profit
• Remember the film industry is a business (especially main stream films): its aims are to firstly make money! They adhere
to genre restrictions because they will sell because they are familiar & recognisable for MASS audiences – it’s a tried and
tested way of securing investments to be able to make films
• More independent labels might have different aims; more artistic for different NICHE audiences
.

13. Audience Theorists
Stuart Hall – encoding and decoding
McQuail – uses & gratifications
Altman – set of pleasures
Effects Theory
Hypodermic Needle Model (effects theory)
Two Step Flow (effects theory)
Cultivation(effects theory)
Reception Theory

14. Stuart Hall
• audience as active participants
• All about encoding and decoding
• producer does encoding ( constructs meaning through technical devices)
• -audience do the decoding (interpreting the meaning)
• quite often there is a difference between the producers intentions and the audience reads.
Hall states the audience can interpret texts in different ways:
1) preferred reading - as producer intended
2) negotiated reading - a combination of what producer intended but some oppositional
3) oppositional reading - a reading/ interpretation from the audience which is the opposite to what the producer
intended (because of their experience/knowledge)
• The idea is that every spectator has their own personal experience and knowledge and are able to
actively question or challenge a texts representation. Everyone's previous experience of media
texts and experience of the world shapes their interpretations of texts.

15. ALTMAN
• Genre also allows audiences to make choices about what products they want to consume through acceptance in
order to fulfil a particular pleasure.
• Theorist Rick Altman (1999) argues that
‘genre offers audiences ‘a set of pleasures’.
• can also be linked to Denis McQuail’s (1972) theory on ‘uses and gratifications’
What pleasures do you get from film genres?
Drama =
Action =
Thriller/Horror =
Do we get any other pleasures do we get from film?

16. USE & GRATIFICATION THEORY
McQuail
• USE = for people to use media texts
• GRATIFICATION = people get gratification from using media texts
(Gratification = satisfaction, indulgence, fulfilment, delight, pleasure)
• Basically, ‘uses & gratifications’ theory is a theory that
argues that media texts are made to satisfy the needs and
desires of it’s audience.
4 categories
• Information – to need to learn/gain info
• Entertainment – the need to be entertained
• Personal identity - need to reinforce sense of self)
• Social interaction - desire to create discussion about the txt

17. USE & GRATIFICATION THEORY
• Why do people use/seek the media?
INFORMATION PERSONAL
IDENTITY
INTEGRATION &
SOCIAL
INTERACTION
ENTERTAINMENT
-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
-finding reinforcement for
personal values
-finding models of behaviour
-identifying with valued
other (in the media)
-gaining insight into one's
self
-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
-escaping, or being diverted,
from problems
-relaxing
-getting intrinsic
(basic/essential) cultural or
aesthetic enjoyment
-filling time
-emotional release

18. Effects theory
• Pg 92/93 in revision book
Effects
theory
Hypodermic
needle
model
Two
step
flow
cultivation

19. Hyperdermic needle model
• Sees audiences as passive as if images/idea
are being 'injected' into the viewers mind and
influenced by what they watch.
• However, it's an outdated view as audiences
are believed to take an active role in their
viewing.

20. Two step flow
• Refines the basic effects theory model
• Assumes a more active audience who will
discuss media texts together
• If text is discussed or taught with someone
‘respected’ then we may be passive enough to
accept their received views. (believe their
opinions)
• Just think of how influential someone can be!

21. Cultivation
• Difficult to prove effects (of media texts) on
individuals
• This is a more refined version of effects theory
• A single text does not have much effect, but
repeated exposure will make audience less
sensitive which is called ‘desensitised’
• For example
– Many films have been banned in the past which are
then shown years later
• This is because social attitudes and expectations
have changed

22. Reception Theory
• Pg 94/95
Hall’s theory is under this
-active audiences who think for themselves
-challenge ideas and texts
-text doesn’t have a single meaning
-texts are interpretative
-tries to understand the reasons why people interpret messages differently
-there are drawbacks/problems to theory however….
Dominant/hegemonic reading
– the reader shares the programme’s codes* and accepts the preferred
meaning
*Code – the meaning system of values/attitudes/beliefs/assumptions – remember ‘dominant ideology’?

23. Revision notes
Theorist/theory Coursework ex 1
Camera/filming
Coursework ex 2
editing
Coursework ex 3
MES
Hall – encoding/decoding
-preferred/negotiated/oppositional
Producer:
Audience: