Audiences

All forms of media are created with an audience in mind as different forms of media are targeted at different groups of people. Audiences are essential for media as any form of media needs an audience to see or hear their productions, whether they are advertisements aimed towards a general populace or a film aimed towards a more niche audience. Advertisers also use different broadcast institutions to aid them in reaching whatever audience they are trying to target, for example; advertisements for toys will be shown on the network ‘Cartoon Network’ as that institution already attracts a young, impressionable audience who can be sold on the idea of the product if it is related to the programmes being aired.

Audience profiling is a commonly used method of categorising audiences into groups known as demographics (shown in the blue box), this helps the media’s marketing team to identify and target the demographic(s) most likely to buy or use their product, and these demographics can be identified by the letter associated with them. 

Another way for marketing teams to group and categorise audiences is by using ‘Psychographics’, psychographics (shown in the white box) are used to separate audiences based on personality traits rather than profession; this use of personality traits is arguably more useful than the audience profiling by profession as there could be a person who is ‘successful’ and in group A however does not seek control and instead seeks for less control in films for a kind of escapism.

Models of Audiences as Passive Consumers:

The ‘Media Effects’/ ‘Hypodermic Syringe’ model of mass media’s effect on audiences suggests that the audience will passively accept the message of whatever form of mass media you are using as if they were having the message ‘injected’ into them. This model also suggests a direct association between violent or aggressive behaviour being shown on TV, videogames, movies (any kind of media) and violent or aggressive acts in real life. Based on the logic of this model there have been numerous requests and calls out for violent media to be censored and there have been psychologists both proving and disproving this model.

Supporting Study:

 A researcher who conducted an experiment, the result supported this model, was Albert Bandura; Bandura conducted an experiment in 1961 where young children were shown a film of a small child attacking an inflatable Bobo clown with their fists and toy weapons, and when the children who were subjected to the film were sent into a room where there was an inflatable Bobo clown, the young children attacked it, just as they had seen in the film.

A moral panic is an exaggerated social reaction caused by the activities of groups/ individuals. These activities are seen as extremely important, at least at the time, these activities are considered as major social concerns and the media only magnifies these concerns and a social panic begins.

 

There have been several crimes attributed to being influenced by different films:
Childs Play 3 apparently influenced the murder of James Bulger in 1993
Manhunt apparently influenced the murder of Stefan Pakeerah in 2004
A Clockwork Orange apparently influenced a number of murders and rapes in 1971

Audiences as Active Consumers:

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

The Two Step Flow Theory
The Two Step Flow Theory suggests messages from the media move in two distinct ways.

First, individuals who are 'opinion leaders', such as critics, receive messages from the media and pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content. 

 

The information is then filtered through these opinion leaders and then are passed on to a more passive audience, the information also now contains any bias or comment that the opinion leader may have, therefore this is indirect influencing that has two steps, hence the name.

Reception Theory

Reception theory focuses on the scope in textual analysis for 'negotiation' and 'opposition' on the part of the audience. This means that a text; books; films; adverts; posters or other creative works; are not passively accepted by the audience but that the reader/viewer interprets the meanings of the texts based on their unique background or their common cultural background. 

  Stuart Hall’s encoding decoding model; dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings; why Hall says he studies culture instead of media specifically, and media hegemony. Audiences are no longer considered passive recipients.

Exit Polls

The BFI carries out exit polls to assess audience response at film screenings. An example of an exit poll I have participated in was of Disney Pixar's Moana

The Role of the BBFC