Lesson 2

• AUDIENCE THEORIES

  1. Audience
  2. Media Corporation
  3. Topnotch Executives
  4. Politicians
  5. Advertising Companies
  6. Social Institutions
• Audience


  a highly valued concept in media & info production. From the side of the creators and producer, they are the perceived receiver, the viewer, and the end- user of media and information text.
• Media Corporations


  spend a huge amount of corporate funds trying to learn about their target audiences.
• Topnotch Executive


  prioritize audience research as a prerequisite before embarking on any media project.
• Politicians


  on the campaign trail conduct poll studies to fine-tune their campaign messages to amass bigger share of the voting population.
• Advertising Companies


  ay ahead in the use of state-of-the-art technology to render their media campaigns more attractive to the target audiences of the products they sell.
• Social Institutions


  keep warning parents about the dangers of extended television viewing carrying the thought that too much sex and violence will bear on their consciousness.
• PASSIVE AUDIENCE THEORIES

  1. Hypodermic Needle Theory
  2. Payne Fund
  3. Two-Step Flow of Communication
  4. Uses and Gratification Approach
• Hypodermic Needle Theory


  -emerged in the late 1920s and gained prominence until after W orld War II.

  ● It asserts that media and information messages, like a hypodermic needle, inject their messages directly to the audience.

  ● media is described as powerful conduits of messages and audiences will believe anything told to them by the media.

  ● introduced by Harold Laswell in 1927
• Payne Fund


  ● A private institution between the late part of the 1920s and the early part of the 1930s conducted research to assess the effect of media on children.

  ● the research concluded that films indeed had strong influence on children
• Two-Step Flow of Communication


  ● Emerged from the studies of Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet when they analyzed how voters make their electoral decisions in the 1940 United States Presidential Campaign.

  ● The findings revealed that voters do not access information directly from the media but through what is referred to as opinion leaders.
• The media


  as the first step
• the opinion leaders 


  as the second step
• Uses and Gratification Approach


  ● Argued that the audience access media and information bringing with them their own needs and desires, which in turn structures the way how the media is received
• Kinds of Gratification:

  1. Information
  2. Personal Identity
  3. Integration and Social Interaction
  4. Entertainment
• Information


  ● We want to know about the society we live in.

  ● We want to sense the world.
• Personal Identity


  ● Watching the television to validate our understanding and appreciation our identities.

  ● Women may identify with characters they see in a romantic comedy.

  ● Man may identify with characters in an action flick.
• Integration and Social Interaction


  ● Media as a mean of providing us with the information we need so we can integrate and interact with social groups..
• Entertainment


  ● Media for enjoyment, relaxation, or just to fill time.
• Cultural Effects Theory


  ● Introduced by George Gerbner in 1976.

  ● Television cultivates in its viewers a way of sensing and seeing the world without judging television viewing as good or bad.

  ● States that regular usage of television over extended time can shape people’s opinions, views & behavior.
• ACTIVE AUDIENCE THEORY


  ● Argues that media audiences do not just receive information passively but are actively involved.

  ● Encoded in the construction of media text are the organizational and contextual factors surrounding the production of media and information text.
• Polysemic Text


  ● “Poly” implies multiplicity, while “semic” is derived from the Greek word sema, meaning audiences see various meanings in the signs that are in the media and information text.

  ● an individual’s interpretation of a media text is shaped by the social circumstances surrounding him or her and by the contexts that govern his or her existence, usually summing up the social factors as the triumvirate of class, gender, and ethnicity.
• Reception and Resistance


  ● In 1980, David Morley, deriving much from Stuart Hall, articulated three modes of reading media texts on television.

  ● Morley argues that audiences can in fact resist the messages of media and information texts in very creative ways and this is done through the social positioning of the audience.
• Dominant Reading 


  ● The reader fully shares the text’s code and accepts and reproduces preferred reading.
• Negotiated reading


  ● The audience partly shares the text’s code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in a way which 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.
• THE NOTION OF CONSTRUCTED AUDIENCES


  ● Something is constructed when there is a deliberate attempt & effort to turn an idea into a material reality.
• Media Institutions


  ● Run by executives who chart the strategies and tactics of attracting potential audiences.
• Target Audience


  ● A specific group of people identified and aggregated from selected population segments who are the intended users.

  ● The information generated from them helps publishers and producers develop media messages that will attract this group or, in case of advertisers, help them recommend products that will be potentially attractive and useful to this target audience
• Shaun Moores (1993) 


  ● the audience is not a homogeneous category and that it is best to see it in its plurality as audiences.

  ● They are disparate group categorized by how they receive the media(in the privacy of their homes or out in the shopping malls) and other identity markers such as gender, race, ethnolinguistic group, class status, and other positions in society.
• Ralway (1988) 


  ● the word “audience” has indeed evolved from face-to-face interaction in one shared physical space to include now consumers of electronic media and information.

  ● Audience now becomes difficult to pin down their specific characteristics as audiences, because they are widely dispersed in different settings and contexts.

  ● Audience holds a firm place in media and information texts can actively construct audiences.
• Attributes of the Audience: GEARS

  ● Gender

  ● Ethnicity

  ● Age Range

  ● Region or Nationality

  ● Socio-economic Group
• Traditional Segmentation Model

  
• Cross Cultural Consumer Characterization Model 


  ● An advertising agency in the west, Young and Rubicam LTD has conceptualized what is now commonly referred to as the 4Cs Cross Cultural Consumer Characterization Model.

  ● Sees the audience as a group of people who will be the receiving end of media products and what they should be getting should appeal to a complex set of traits which they possess.
• There are seven types of people and their core motivations are what define each type

  ● Aspirer, Reformer, Explorer, Mainstream, Succeeder, Struggler, Resigned
• THE ASPIRER


  Their core need in life is for status.
• THE REFORMER


  Their core need in life is for enlightenment
• THE EXPLORER


  Their core need in life is for discovery.
• THE MAINSTREAM


  Their core need in life is for security.
• THE SUCCEEDER


  Their core need in life is for control.