audiences

• What does Media Audiences focus on?

  The people who consume the media
• Demographics


  The physical qualities of an audience including age, gender, race, nationality, socio-economic status and sexuality
• Psychographics


  The mental and emotional qualities of an audience such as personality, interests, hobbies, beliefs and values
• Bandura's Media Effects


  the media directly impacts the actions of its audiences; the audience observes the media and then acts out similar patterns in real life
• Katz and Blumler's Uses and Gratifications Theory

  Audiences use the media to gratify specific needs that they have. If the media successfully gratifies this need it makes it more likely they will consume the product again. These needs are escapism, surveillance, personal identification and social interaction.
• Escapism


  audiences wish to escape the mundane and repetitive elements of their life by experiencing things outside of their normal lives. This can include humour, excitement, fear, romance and other elements outside of the norm
• Surveillance


  audiences need to know about the world around them and seek texts that offer knowledge of the world. This is often seen in texts that give the news or show parts of the world that are unknown to the audience
• Personal Identification


  audiences need to explore and develop their own identities via observing others that are similar and seeing how they respond to situations
• Social Interaction


  audiences need interaction with other people and to develop bonds with others. Social media offers this
• Hypodermic Needle Theory [Lasswell]

  suggests audiences are passive and do not think while consuming media
• Two-Step Flow [Lazarsfeld]


  suggests audiences are passive and do not think while consuming media

  Step One: The media presents their message through a media text

  Step Two: Opinion leaders decode the media and repeat the message they believe to the audience
• Moral Panic


  a feeling of fear spread among a large number of people (usually by the media) that some evil threatens the wellbeing of society
• Cumulation


  through continued viewing of media, the views expressed in the media gradually build up to create an impact on the audience
• Media Literacy


  the skill with which an audience member can use the practices that allow them to access, critically evaluate, and create media.
• Social Learning/Imitation [Bandura]


  individuals learn through observing, replicating and trialling the actions of others
• Gerbner's Cultivation Theory


  suggests that audiences who are heavy consumers are effected more by the media than those who are light consumers. This in turn suggests that the media has a cumulative effect where the continued exposure to media will shift the views of an audience and impact them a greater amount.
• Socialisation


  the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society
• Standardisation


  the setting of rules that must be conformed to by a group
• Enculturation


  the process by which people learn the requirements of their surrounding culture and acquire values and behaviours appropriate or necessary in that culture
• Bardic function


  suggests that the media and society have a unique relationship where both media and society reflects both its separate views back at each other
• Cultivation differential


  the percentage of difference in response between light and heavy television viewers. Heavy TV viewers are affected more by the messages of the TV than light viewers.
• Mainstreaming


  the blurring, blending, and bending process by which heavy media consumers from disparate groups develop a common outlook on the world through constant exposure to the same images and labels
• Resonance


  when reality reflects the ideas of the media or vice versa
• Mean World Index


  long-term exposure to television in which violence is frequent cultivates the image of a mean and dangerous world. Heavy Viewers reported that most people "cannot be trusted" and are "just looking out for themselves".
• Reception Theory


  Audiences receive and understand the media in different ways based on their backgrounds and beliefs; their decoding of the text is effected by their pre-existing biases and beliefs that alter how they understand the text
• Agenda Setting


  describes the ability to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda. If a news item is covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important. This allows the producer of news media to influence what issues an audience may see as more important
• Framing


  suggests that how something is presented to the audience (called "the frame") influences the choices people make about how to process that information
• Myth Making


  The media is responsible for the making of 'myths' in our society through its framing and agenda setting.
• Conditions of consumption


  A range of factors that can affect how a media text is interpreted by the audience
• Encoding


  the processing of information into the memory system
• Decoding


  interpreting and trying to make sense of the message
• Dominant Reading


  the intended reading of the producer; the way the media is meant to be read and the way that most people will receive the text
• Negotiated Reading


  the audience understand the intended meaning but instead read the text somewhere between the intended and oppositional readings
• Oppositional Reading


  the audience understand the intended meaning but reject this meaning and instead take a contradictory or contrasting reading of the text
• Fandom


  a collective group that have a strong interest in a single topic (or media product)
• Prosumer


  a producer consumer [they become one]
• Interactivity


  the amount an audience member can act upon the media product; this may include altering the state of the product or simply be responding to the product
• Participatory Culture


  The act of producing or acting as part of a cultural movement; this could involve making memes, singing songs, cosplaying or just joining groups and discussing the texts
• Textual Poaching


  the act of an audience taking creative ownership of an existing media text and altering it to match their own needs; this may include producing original content with the original text as a strong influence all the way to bricolage replications of the original where it is used in new or different ways.
• End of Audience


  refers to the end of traditional, passive audiences who simply consumed media texts without acting upon the text in any way