Audience and representation

1. AUDIENCE AND
REPRESENATION

2. AUDIENCE
An individual or collective
group of people who read
or consume any media
text.

3. USES AND GRATIFICATIONS
Uses and gratifications is a theory which is focused on understanding
why and how the audiences actively seek certain media to seek their
different needs. This theory is all based around the audience to try
understand mass communication. In addition uses and gratifications
focuses on the actual consumer or audience instead of the actual
message itself, by asking what people do with the media rather than
what the media does to the people. It mentions that members of the
audience are not passive, but they take an active role in the
interpretation of the media.
You can find that the audience can sometimes interpret the media in
the wrong way. For example:

4. MY COURSEWORK
The uses and gratifications theory can be seen in cases such as a
personal music selection. We select music not only to fit a particular
mood, but also in attempts to show empowerment or other socially
conscience motives. There are many different types of music and we
choose from them to fulfil a particular need. This relates to my own
work as I am wanting to create a music video. I will feature a new
band who are in the process of releasing there own music (an EP). So
this video will enable them to see how the audience react to their
music through social media. The main aim for the music video is
mainly to help promote the band. I will only feature them in the music
video which means the audience can get an insight on what to expect
from the band.

5. HENRY JENKINS - FANDOM
This is the idea that fans are active participants in the contraction and
circulation of textual meanings.
Also, that fans appropriate texts and read them in ways which are not
fully authorised by the media producers (textual poaching).
Fans also construct their social and cultural identities through
borrowing and inflecting mass culture images, and are part of a
participatory culture that has a vital social dimension.

6. CLAY SHIRKY
This theory is the idea that the internet and digital technologies have
had a profound effect on the relations between media and audiences.
The idea that the conceptualisation of audience members as passive
consumers of mass media content is no longer tenable in the age of
the internet, as media consumers have now become producers who
speak back to the media in various ways, as well as creating and
sharing content with another.