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G235: Critical

Perspectives in Media

Theoretical Evaluation
of Production

1b) Audience
Aims/Objectives
• To reinforce basic audience theory.
• To have a basic understanding of how
to evaluate your coursework against a
consideration of your target audience.
Audiences
• Julian McDougall (2009) suggests that in the
online age it is getting harder to conceive a
media audience as a stable, identifiable group.
• However – audiences still clearly make sense and
give meaning to cultural products.
• An audience can be described as a “temporary
collective” (McQuail, 1972).
• Key terms:
Mass / Niche & Mainstream / Alternative
Is your text popular for a mass
audience?
• Historically (until the 19th century, at any rate) the term
'popular' was quite a negative thing, with overtones of
vulgarity and triviality. Something not 'nice' or
'respectable'. In the modern world, the term means
'widespread', liked or at least encountered by many
people. It has also come to mean 'mass-produced', i.e.
made for the 'mass' of people. There is a downside to this,
of course, in that it can also be interpreted as 'commercial'
or 'trashy'.
• This leads into a further consideration, which is the
definition of 'popular culture' as 'low' culture,
something not for the elite, but for the 'common'
people. Cultural value ('high' culture) has been
traditionally associated with dominant or powerful
groups - those who have appreciation of classical
music, art, ballet, opera and so on. 'Low' or popular
culture is everything not approved of as 'high'. It is
vulgar, common, or 'easy‘. It is postmodern.
• Another definition of 'popular' is literally 'of
the people', a kind of 'folk' culture and this is
an interesting area, because it encompasses
the idea of an 'alternative' culture which
includes minority groups, perhaps with
subversive values. The 'indie' music scene is
an example of this. So 'popular' culture can
and sometimes does, challenge the
'dominant' cultural power groups.
• What should be done in terms of your
coursework is three things:
1. You must detail the target audience for your
product.
2. Detail what the audience might identify with
in your product (could link to the construction
of identity?)
3. What meanings/uses they might make from
consuming/interacting with the product.
Ien Ang (1991) detailed that
media producers have an
imaginary entity in mind before
the construction of a media
product.
“Audiences only exist as an
imaginary entity, an
abstraction, constructed from
the vantage point of the
institution, in the interest of the
institution”.
Ang (1991) states that 'audiencehood
is becoming an ever more
multifaceted, fragmented and
diversified repertoire of practices and
experiences'.
You must detail the social demographic
of this target audience (gender, age,
ethnicity, social class).
John Hartley (1987) “institutions are
obliged not only to speak about an
audience, but –crucially, for them – to
talk to one as well; they need not only to
represent audiences but to enter into
relation with them”
Hartley (1987) also suggests that
institutions must produce “invisible
fictions of the audience which allow the
institutions to get a sense of who they
must enter into relations with” .

e.g. they must know their audience so


they can target them effectively.
For your magazine work, for example, you used
information from the National Readership
Survey (NRS) in order to help detail the
demographic for your audience (most consumer
magazines have a target readership of ABC1)
In terms of your music videos – you must relate
this back to sub-cultures (Sarah Thornton,
1995).
Gaining Feedback from your Audience

• You attempted to gain feedback from your target


market in order to get their opinions,
• You used the blogs, forums etc in order to share ideas
and images.
• You also conducted polls to tailor the product better for
your audience.
• Write down how you did this.
Audience Reception Theories:
Passive and Active Audiences
There are basically two different schools of
thought concerning how audiences consume
media texts, those that believe that audiences are
“passive” and those who believe that audiences
are “active”.

Passive Audience Theory


 The idea that the media ‘injects’ ideas and views
directly into the brains of the audience like a
hypodermic needle, therefore, controlling the way
that people think and behave.
 
The Frankfurt School’s Hypodermic Theory
(1930s)
This Marxist theory, which was championed by
theorists such as Theodore Adorno, assumes a direct
stimulus-response relationship between audience
reactions and the consumption of media texts.

 
Criticisms Of Hypodermic Theory
 
• Doesn’t allow for resistance or rejection of
media messages.
• Elitist.
• Simplistic.
• ‘Passive’ audience/hypodermic theory are
sometimes referred to overall as ‘Media
Effects Theory’, i.e. the media has a direct
and powerful effect on its audience. – for
your coursework this can relate directly to
music videos – debate at the moment
concerned with rap/gangster videos,
Marylin Manson etc, computer gaming.
• Moral Panics And Folk Devils
• Stanley Cohen in his book Folk Devils And Moral Panics
(1972) defines a ‘Moral Panic’ as:
• “…a mass response to a group, a person or an attitude
that becomes defined as a threat to society.”
• Cohen argues that the media, especially news media,
often create and/or reinforce moral panics in the public.
• The term ‘Folk Devil’ is the name given to the object of
the moral panic, i.e. it is another name for a scapegoat.
Pluralist Model and the Active Audience Theory 
• This is the idea that the audience have an active role to
play in the understanding of, and creation, of meaning
within a media text.
• Predictably enough, the pluralist idea is the exact
opposite of a hegemonic one. A pluralist model argues
that there is diversity in society (everyone is different)
and therefore there is also choice (we can choose what
to believe and what not to believe.)
• So in media terms, because the audience
(society) is diverse, with different points of
view, the media is influenced by society.
• Because the media need to please the
audience they will try to reflect the values
and beliefs that are predominant in
society.
•In other words, they give us what we say
we want rather than telling us what to think
and believe, in order to make us stay ‘in our
place’. 
McQuail’s Uses And Gratifications Theory
Dennis McQuail (1972)

1. Diversion/Escapism
2. Personal Relationship: A talking point
3. Personal Identity: identifying with the
representations on display
4. Surveillance: Information
• Parkin’s/Hall’s Audience Readings Theory
• Frank Parkin (1972) and later Stuart Hall (1980)
analysed the readings within audiences as either:
• 1.Dominant or Preferred Reading: The meaning they want
you to have is usually accepted.
• 2.Negotiated Reading: The dominant reading is only partially
recognised or accepted and audiences might disagree with
some of it or find their own meanings.
• 3.Oppositional Reading: The dominant reading is refused,
rejected because the reader disagrees with it or is offended
by it, especially for political, religious, feminist, reasons etc.
• You must think about the meanings behind
the text and how you encoded and they
decoded (Hall, 1980) according to their
‘situated culture’ (personal, small scale
communications and interactions we have
on a day to day basis).
Essay
“Media texts will never be successful unless
they are carefully constructed to target pre-
established audience needs or desires”.
Evaluate the ways that you constructed a
media text to target a specific audience.

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