What is audience theory?
- 1. WHAT IS AUDIENCE THEORY?
- 2. All media products have a target audience! They also sometimes try to construct an audience (like propaganda). Products can have a mass audience or a niche audience. The producer of your text (independent or mainstream) will be important regarding the makeup of your audience.
- 3. DAVID MORLEY In a significant study of audience representation to a popular news magazine programmed in the early 1980’s, he suggests that there are three main different kinds of ‘reading’ audience members can produce: Dominant: - The reader shares the programmed ‘code’ (its meaning, system of values, attitudes, beliefs and assumption) and fully accept the programmed ‘preferred reading’. Negotiated reading: – The reader partly shares the programmed code and broad accepts the preferred reading, but modifies in it a way which reflects their position and interests. Oppositional (counter-hegemonic) reading: – The reader does not share the programmed code and rejects the preferred reading, bringing to bear an alternative interpretation.
- 4. Hart 1991 Texts need audiences in order to realize their potential for meaning. So a text does not have a single meaning but rather a range of possibilities which are defined by both the text and by its audiences. The meaning is not in the text, but in the reading. Stuart Hall Hart’s theory relates to the work of Stuart Hall which states that texts are encoded with a preferred meaning by the producer but as audiences are active that meaning can be interpreted in various ways.
- 5. Structuralism A structuralist would argue that how an audience member makes sense of a media text is dependent upon the cultural and moral beliefs. Stuart Halls work suggests that the audience interpretation is dependent on a number of frameworks outside the text. These include socio/economic frameworks such as class, gender, age, education and ethnicity. They include the individuals past experiences and also include previous knowledge and experience of the medium (reception theory). Hypodermic Needle The contents of the media were injected into the thoughts of the audience, who accepted the attitudes, opinions and beliefs expressed by the media without question. A potential problem? The audience are purely passive.
- 6. An alternative However, theorists since have thought that media could not have such direct effects on the audiences. Audiences are not blank sheets of paper on which media messages can be written; members of an audience will have prior attitudes and beliefs which will determine how effective media messages are. David Gauntlettt identifies 10 things wrong with the effects model. Bulmer and Katz (1974) suggested that there were four main needs of television audiences that are satisfied by television. · Diversion · Personal relationships · Personal identity · Surveillance Another criticism Another criticism is that of the tendency to concentrate solely on why audiences consume the media rather than extending the investigation to discover what meanings and interpretations are produced and in what circumstances i.e. how the media are received.
- 7. Pick & Mix Readers David Gauntlett proposes a pick and mix reader. His research stems from primary research with female magazine readers but his theory, I would argue, can be applied to any media text. Gauntlett suggests that audience members “take the bits they like and disregard the rest”. Again, this relates back to the work of Stuart Hall and the criticisms of media effects – social backgrounds, culture and consumption context needs to be considered. John Fiske Audience power:- Fiske also goes against the notion of the media indoctrinating audience members. He argues that ‘popular culture is made by the people, not produced by the culture industry;. Basically he is suggesting that the power of audience interpretation far outweighs the ability of an institution to send a particular message or ideology.