Understanding audiences and target audiences
- 1. Understanding Audiences and Target Audiences TASK THREE Clare Dodkins
- 2. When a media text is being planned, perhaps the most important question the producers consider is "Does it have an audience?" If the answer to this is 'no', then there is no point in going any further! Audience research is a major part of any media company, using questionnaires, focus groups, and comparisons to existing media texts In researching our audience we have looked at a number of comparisons to existing media texts. We have looked at the consumption habits of our target demographic, we have used our own experience as young people in taste and preferences. We have looked at the different genres of music which are most popular amongst our age group. We have an in-depth understanding of what our target audience expects in terms of code and conventions of our main product. A great deal of time and money is invested by the industry in finding out if the idea/artist (band) will be successful and attract a lucrative audience.
- 3. A method of categorising a potential audience is known as demographics. This initially highlights the spending power of an audience. DEMOGRAPHIC CHART A Top management , bankers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals B Middle management , teachers, many 'creatives' E.G graphic designers etc C1 Office supervisors , junior managers, nurses, specialist clerical staff etc C2 Skilled workers , tradespersons (white collar) D Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (blue collar) E Unemployed, students, pensioners, casual workers Depending on the genre of music the target audience could be found from a range of these demographics.
- 4. There are other categories that divide up a target audience: age gender race location Arguably the most important category for choosing a target audience is race. At the moment race divides and dominants the UK music chart as reflected in the popular genre of RnB For example: Lady Gaga targets the young teenage audience, men, women and homosexuals (homoerotic imagery) Location has always been important with associating a genre Despite this, we must remember that musical taste is a very personal thing and younger audiences may choose music as a way of showing they belong to a group (community) or choose music or a more “underground nature” to highlight their growing sense of expression and individualism.
- 5. Record companies also consider very carefully how that audience might react to, or engage with, the text or product they intend to produce . The following are all factors in analysing or predicting this reaction: AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT This describes how an audience interacts with a media text. Different people react in different ways to the same text. (Stuart Hall) AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS These are the advance ideas an audience may have about a text. This particularly applies to genre pieces. Don't forget that producers often play with or deliberately shatter audience expectations. AUDIENCE FOREKNOWLEDGE This is the definite information (rather than the vague expectations) which an audience brings to a media product. AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION This is the way in which audiences feel themselves connected to a particular media text, in that they feel it directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle. (attitude, age, clothes, direct address etc) AUDIENCE PLACEMENT This is the range of strategies media producers use to directly target a particular audience and make them feel that the media text is specially 'for them‘ (way in which you make your audience react-direct address, with T.V bards also lyrics, creating a relationship with audience). AUDIENCE RESEARCH Measuring an audience is very important to all media institutions. Research is done at all stages of production of a media text, and, once produced, audience will be continually monitored. !However people are going to react to your product in different ways !
- 6. Once a media text has been made, its producers need to ensure that it reaches the audience it is intended for . All media texts will have some sort of marketing campaign attached to them. Elements of this might include posters print advertisements trailers promotional interviews (eg stars appearing on chat shows) tie-in campaigns (eg a blockbuster movie using McDonalds meals) merchandising (t-shirts, baseball caps, key rings) Promotional video , CD cover and back cover, poster, magazine, Radio 1 coverage would be a good place to promote the single, the poster will be placed in NME, KERRANG!, Q, BLENDER, The band will perform in the Friday night project , be on podcasts, a promotional website ( www.nenahmusic.com Itunes, Spotify, Youtube, LastFM, AmazonMP3 . Merchandise (T-shirts for gigs) Viral marketing campaigns – remix game online. Marketing campaigns are intended to create awareness of a media text. Once that awareness has been created, hopefully audiences will come flocking in their hundreds of millions. Creating Audiences
- 7. Counting Audience Different types of media texts measure their audiences in different ways. Music channels our video would be shown on include: MTV Radio channels include:
- 8. THE HYPODERMIC NEEDLE In order to evaluate and discuss our audience reactions and feedback, we have considered several theoretical approaches: The Hypodermic Needle The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciousness of the audience unmediated , ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (shoot’em up films in the 1980s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves. The Hypodermic model quickly proved too clumsy for media researchers seeking to more precisely explain the relationship between audience and text.
- 9. The Two-Step Flow Suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence.
- 10. Uses and Gratifications: Katz and Blumer During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways . It was suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society : Researchers expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes (ie uses and gratifications): Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine. Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg) 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 eg) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains Since then, the list of Uses and Gratifications has been extended, particularly as new media forms have come along (eg video games, the internet)
- 11. Reception Theory Extending the concept of an active audience still further, in the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text , and how their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading. Stuart Hall's explored the encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader , and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known as a preferred reading.
- 12. A Preferred Reading The audience respond to the producers intentions. For example in a comedy film the audience laugh) An Aberrant Reading If the audience reject and do not respond to what has been created A Negotiated Reading The audience interpret things in a different way to what the producers expect, they create a new reaction and respond to the media text differently.