How the industry represents its audience, other social ..

1
Unit 1Industries, Texts Audiences

• Unit 1.3 How Media Texts are constructed in
  relation to their audiences

2
Things you need to know

• How the industry thinks about its audiences.
• How products are tailored to audiences.
• How the industry represents its audience, other
  social groups or social issues of interest to its
  audience.

3
Why are audiences important?

• Without them - why would media texts be created?
• Size reaction measure success.
• People who buy provide income for production
  companies.
• Advertising.

4
Disney

• High School Musical
• Movie DVD-stage show ice show
• CD - Stationary Karaoke
• Sticker Album lunch boxes
• Dance Mat Dolls clothing
• Sing a long showings - competitions

5
BBC

• Programmes / brands often have off shoots
• educational magazine series / comics
• audio books books
• DVDs
• Toys ie Tellytubbies / tweenies

6
How the industry thinks about its audiences.
7
Target audiences

• Media producers and institutions view audiences
  as an imaginary entity, a mass rather than
  individuals. They will however have a typical
  audience member in mind. (len Ang 1991)

8
Doreen

• Typical listener
• Age, likes, dislikes, habits, household, husband.
• Educated intelligent
• Half listens
• Does not necessarily understand long words or
  discussions.
• Make sure understands and is engaged with.
• Talk to personally, as if known.

9
Imaginary Entity

• Subjectives used to help define the social
  position of the audience member
• Self image Gender
• Age group Family
• Class Nation
• Ethnicity Education
• Politics Religion
• Location (geographical local)

10
Mode of Address

• The way in which a text will address or speak to
  its audience.

11
DEMOGRAPHICS
12
Television Scheduling

• Breakfast
• Daytime
• Teatime
• Primetime
• Grave yard

13
Channel 4 Schedule
14
Audience Theories

• Hypodermic needle effect.
• Two step flow
• Uses Gratifications
• Reception Theory
• Effects debate

15
Hypodermic Needle Effect

• Suggests media is capable of mass manipulation
• Audience believe what they see
• Gullible audience
• War of the world s (1938 radio broadcast)
• April fools BBC Panorama spaghetti tree!!!

16
Two Step Flow Model

• Paul Lazarsfeld Elihu Katz
• Mass media information is channeled to the
  "masses" through opinion leadership. The people
  with most access to media, and having a more
  literate understanding of media content, explain
  and diffuse the content to others.
• They pass on their opinions and interpretations.

17
Uses Gratifications

• Jay G. Blumler and Elihu Katz
• Audience has a set of needs that are met by the
  media.
• Diversion
• Surveilance
• Personal identity
• Personal relationship

18
Reception Analysis

• Text is not passively accepted - audience
  interpret meaning based on individual cultural
  background or life experience.
• Programme is encoded by the producer and decoded
  by the audience.
• Opositional / negotiated readings
• Stuart Hall CCCS (Centre for Contemporary
  Cultural Studies, Birmingham)

19
Effects Debate

• Moral Panic Stan Cohen 1972
• Mods Rockers 1960s
• mass response to a group, person or an attitude
  that becomes defined as a threat to society
• Threat identified panic created through press
  other media.

20
Video Nasties

• Jamie Bulger Murder Case 1993
• Childs Play 3
• BBFC consider influence as well as content.
• Bowling For Columbine
• Internet You tube videos

21
Counting Audiences

• Film
• Figures based on box office receipts. tickets
  sold, then DVDs bought/ rented
• Subtract production costs to find profit
  success
• Print
• Circulation copies read
• Audit Bureau of Circulation www.abc.org.uk
• Radio / TV
• Viewing figures. Sample of population,
  viewing/listening habits monitored for 7 days.
• Broadcast Audience Research Board www.barb.co.uk
• Radio Joint Audience Research www.rajar.co.uk

22
Key Audience Studies

• The Nationwide Audience
• Ien Angs Dallas Study

23
The Nationwide Audience

• David Morley, 1980
• BBC Nationwide programme
• Broadly based on Gramscian model of hegemonic
  power.
• Draws on semiotics argued that audiences worked
  at decoding media texts.
• http//www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/TF33120/morley
  nw.html

24

• Dominant / Hegemonic
• Reader recognises and agrees with preferred
  reading.
• Oppositional
• Reader recognises but rejects preferred reading
  (for cultural/political/ideological reasons)
• Negotiated
• Reader accepts, rejects or refines elements of
  the programme due to previously held views

25
Ien Angs Dallas Study

• 1985
• Reactions to and reasons for watching Dallas
• 3 response types
• Ideology of mass culture
• Watched because it was high profile piece of US
  popular culture
• Ironic/detached position
• watch because wanted to see what other people
  were watching, even though knew it was bad
• Ideology of popularism
• got pleasure from watching even though knew it
  was trash

26
Representation

• Do the media suggest to large audiences that x or
  y character is typical of that group, and
  therefore that the whole group should be viewed
  in certain ways?

27
Stereotypes

• Negative / Positive
• Coronation Street / Eastenders
• Cultures - corner shop owners
• Sean Camp
• Battersby family.
• Hugh Grant
• Notting Hill, 4 Weddings a Funeral, Love
  Actually.