What is audience theory?

1. WHAT IS AUDIENCE THEORY?

2. All media products have a target audience!
They also sometimes try to construct an audience
(like propaganda).
Products can have a mass audience or a niche audience.
The producer of your text (independent or mainstream) will
be important regarding the makeup of your
audience.

3. DAVID MORLEY
In a significant study of audience representation to a popular news magazine
programmed in the early 1980’s, he suggests that there are three main different
kinds of ‘reading’ audience members can produce:
Dominant: - The reader shares the programmed ‘code’ (its meaning, system of
values, attitudes, beliefs and assumption) and fully accept the programmed
‘preferred reading’.
Negotiated reading: – The reader partly shares the programmed code and
broad accepts the preferred reading, but modifies in it a way which reflects their
position and interests.
Oppositional (counter-hegemonic) reading: – The reader does not share the
programmed code and rejects the preferred reading, bringing to bear an
alternative interpretation.

4. Hart 1991
Texts need audiences in order to realize their
potential for meaning. So a text does not have a single
meaning but rather a range of possibilities which
are defined by both the text and by its audiences. The
meaning is not in the text, but in the reading.
Stuart Hall
Hart’s theory relates to the work of Stuart Hall which
states that texts are encoded with a preferred meaning
by the producer but as audiences are active that
meaning can be interpreted in various ways.

5. Structuralism
A structuralist would argue that how an audience member makes
sense of a media text is dependent upon the cultural and moral
beliefs. Stuart Halls work suggests that the audience interpretation
is dependent on a number of frameworks outside the text. These
include socio/economic frameworks such as class, gender, age,
education and ethnicity. They include the individuals past
experiences and also include previous knowledge
and experience of the medium (reception theory).
Hypodermic Needle
The contents of the media were injected into the
thoughts of the audience, who accepted the attitudes,
opinions and beliefs expressed by the media without
question. A potential problem? The audience are purely
passive.

6. An alternative
However, theorists since have thought that media could not have such
direct effects on the audiences. Audiences are not blank sheets of
paper on which media messages can be written; members of an
audience will have prior attitudes and beliefs which will determine how
effective media messages are. David Gauntlettt identifies 10 things
wrong with the effects model.
Bulmer and Katz (1974) suggested that there were four main needs
of television audiences that are satisfied by television.
· Diversion
· Personal relationships
· Personal identity
· Surveillance
Another criticism
Another criticism is that of the tendency to concentrate solely on why
audiences consume the media rather than extending the investigation
to discover what meanings and interpretations are produced and in
what circumstances i.e. how the media are received.

7. Pick & Mix Readers
David Gauntlett proposes a pick and mix reader. His research stems
from primary research with female magazine readers but his theory, I
would argue, can be applied to any media text. Gauntlett suggests
that audience members “take the bits they like and disregard the
rest”. Again, this relates back to the work of Stuart Hall and the
criticisms of media effects – social backgrounds, culture and
consumption context needs to be considered.
John Fiske
Audience power:-
Fiske also goes against the notion of the
media indoctrinating audience members. He argues that ‘popular
culture is made by the people, not produced by the culture industry;.
Basically he is suggesting that the power of audience interpretation
far outweighs the ability of an institution to send a particular message
or ideology.