Enzymes

• Audience


  The perceived receiver, the viewer, and the end user of the media texts that will come out of the production cycle
• In 1938, the Rockefeller Institute sponsored what is now known as the Radio Research Project led by Frank Stanton, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Theodor Adorno
• The Radio Research Project sought to know more about the listeners of radio
• Research questions the Radio Research Project wanted to answer


  • Who listens?
  • When and to what do they listen?
  • Why do they listen?
  • How are they affected by what they hear?
• John Marshall of the Rockefeller Institute underscored that "the project will study that audience not in terms of what it buys, but rather in terms of its needs, interests, and capacities"
• The Radio Research Project was a pioneering endeavor and could have jumpstarted the field of mass communications research by introducing tools for probing audiences
• Technologies for broadcasting have changed tremendously since 1935, and yet today's network executives are still asking the same questions: how do we reach out to our audiences?
• The desire to know the audience has endured through time, but the methods and tools to get to know them have dramatically improved to respond to the changing landscapes in the media industry
• We are all audiences. Even the producers and creators of media and information—the creative people, media executives, marketers, those who decide on what should be shown and distributed, and those who decide what should not be—are audiences too of their own work and of the work of others
• The audience is a highly valued concept in media and information production
• Some media networks take on the services of market research firms to probe audience behavior so they can be more responsive to their preferences
• Passive Theories


  Media and information messages emanate from powerful structures, and the audiences are passive recipients
• Active Theories


  Audiences create or generate their own meanings from the media and information texts and are therefore considered active
• Hypodermic Needle Theory


  Media and information messages, like a hypodermic needle, injected messages directly to their audiences. Media was described as powerful conduits of messages and audiences as passive recipients
• The hypodermic needle theory was developed in the 1920s and the 1930s when communication researchers observed how propaganda messages were utilized to serve the ends of war in the recently concluded World War I and in the following years leading up to World War II
• Harold Lasswell (1902-1978) introduced the hypodermic needle theory in his 1927 book, Propaganda Technique in the World War, and sought to systematize understanding of the mechanisms of persuasion
• The Payne Fund conducted research in the late 1920s and early 1930s to assess the effect of media on children, concluding that films indeed bear a strong influence on children, creating panic among the public and thus paving way for the formulation of a governing code for the movie industry
• By the 1950s, the weaknesses of the hypodermic needle theory became apparent. It does not allow for freedom of choice and diminishes the capacity of individuals to make choices and decide what media they will consume
• Two-Step Flow Theory


  Voters did not access information directly from the media but through opinion leaders, a group of people who exerted particular influence on the voters. The media was the first step and the opinion leaders were the second step
• Uses and Gratifications Approach


  Audiences accessed media with their needs and desires, which in turn structured the way media is received. Audiences have the power to select the media texts that best suit their needs and wants to derive gratification
• Types of gratification that can be derived from the media


  • Information
  • Personal Identity
  • Integration and Social Interaction
  • Entertainment
• Cultivation Theory


  Television cultivated in its viewers a way of sensing and seeing the world. Regular usage of television over extended periods of time can shape people's opinions, views, and behavior
• Cultivation theory regards the role of television in shaping the viewers' perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and values
• Dominant Reading


  The reader fully shares the text's code and accepts and reproduces the preferred reading
• Negotiated Reading


  The audience partly shares the text's codes and broadly accepts the preferred reading but modifies it in a way that reflects one's own position, lived experiences, and even opinions
• Oppositional Reading


  The audience takes a directly oppositional stance to the dominant code of the media and information texts and resists it completely
• Something is constructed when there is a deliberate attempt and effort to turn an idea into material
• With luscious hair, or some production technique must have given her that "crowning glory." Still, she buys the product and uses it sparingly because, to her mind, there are other factors that can give one's hair that shine and glow
• Women may enjoy the character of a scorned woman, but somehow, they know they can do better, that they can summon a better part of themselves against such behavior
• The viewer might totally see the advertisement as a sham, a blatant attempt to turn women into passive consumers aspiring for something they can never have because the whole advertisement is a scam
• They make extend their engagement by refusing to buy the product or refusing to watch soap operas that represent women in that manner
• Constructed audiences


  The audience for a teleserye does not exist per se, but the creators and producers build in their minds the kind of people the teleserye will attract
• Target audience


  A specific group of people identified and aggregated from selected population segments who are the intended users
• Media executives do not think of target audiences in the same way that the target audiences think of themselves
• The characteristics that should properly describe Maribel is something that the advertising executive can exploit when they map out potential users of a whitening soap
• The information generated from the online surveys that pop out on your computer screen is processed, consolidated, and given to advertisers to attract them to buy advertising space in their magazine
• Audiences are as diverse as the population of a certain geographic scope
• Demographic audience analysis


  Enables media producers to tap into similarities and differences, so they can narrow down their target audiences
• GEARS


  • Gender
  • Ethnicity
  • Age range
  • Region or nationality
  • Socio-economic group
• Audience research is traditionally about first, gaining insight on audience preferences, however fluid and ever-changing these could be in the present period, and second, calibrating audience sizes and reach