Audience Theroy

AUDIENCE THEORY

What is an audience?

• All media products have a target audience
• They also sometimes (particularly in the case of propaganda) try to construct an audience.
• Products can have a mass audience or a niche audience.
• The products texts need to know the importance of their audience when making products.

The first audience theory… The Frankfurt School

• The Frankfurt school (a group of media theorists in the 1990s and 1930s) were concerned about the possible effects of mass media.
• They proposed the ‘effects’ model, which considered society to be composed of isolated individuals who were susceptible to media messages.
• The Frankfurt school envisioned the media as a hypodermic syringe
• Content was accepted without question.
• Linear communication theory
• Passive audience
• No individual difference 

The Two Step Flow

• Developed by Lazerfeld and Katz in the 1940s and 1950s
• Two steps…
• First- Opinion leaders get information form a media source
• Second- Opinion leaders then pass the information along with their interpretation to others (friends, family, acquaintances, etc.).
• More likely to be influenced by other people rather than mass media (The People’s Choice- Lazerfeld).
• Katz created a book called Personal Influence where he presented further evidence to this theory.
• According to the study news on twitter finds its way to people through a diffuse layers of opinion leaders.
• We’re more likely to buy a product if it’s been recommended by a member of the family or a friend.
  Strengths…

• Audiences are active and seen as a part of society
  Weaknesses…
• More than two steps on the flow of communication?

Moving on from the two step flow audiences becoming active

• During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grownups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts.
• Far from being a passive mass audience were made up of individual who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways.
• This later become the ‘Uses and gratification’ theory
  Uses and gratification’ theory
• Researchers Blumer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974 stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purpose (i.e. uses and gratifications).
• Diversion- escape from everyday problems and routine
• Personal Relationships- using the media for emotional and other interactions e.g. substituting soap operas for family life
• Personal identity- finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts.
• Surveillance- information which could be useful for living e.g. weather reports, finical news, and holiday bargains.

Since then the list has become longer… instant messaging, relaxation, to be entertained, for inclusion, sociability, fashion, escape, affection.

• For heavy users are most affected by affection and sociability, whereas light users are more motivated by fashion.
• Women chat long and more sociability reasons.
• Men chat less and more for reaction.
• Online gaming… for success

David Morley (more modern)

In a very significant study of audience response to a popular news magazine programme in the early 1980s, The Nationwide Audience, David Morley suggests that there are three main different kinds of ‘reading’ audience member can produce…

David Morley: The Nationwide Audience, 1980

Suggests there are three difference kinds of ‘reading’ audience members can produce:

• Dominant – The reader shares the programme’s code (the meaning, system of values, attitudes, beliefs and assumptions) and fully accepts the programmes ‘preferred reading’
• Negotiated – The reader partly shares the programmes code and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but modifies it in a way which reflects their position and interest
• Oppositional – The reader does not share the programmes code and rejects the preferred reading, bringing it to bear an alternative frame of interpretation