Introduction to audience

Component 1- Sections A and B

Component 1, section A: Analysing media language and representation (Very broad anything can come up).

Component 1, section B: Analysing media industries and audiences.

Introduction to audience 

Why is media studies so preoccupied with audience?
An audience allows the media product to exist and the producer can make money that way.
Audience reaction helps with a media product. 

What is a target audience?
The audience that the producer is aiming for.
(Target audiences can sometimes be very broad).
  • Primary audience- The specific group that the producer is aiming for.

  • Secondary audience- The second main group the producer is aiming for. 

T.A.P- Text, Audience, Producer. (Producer encodes text). (Audience decodes text).

Audience:
  • Targeting: Creating a media text, aiming for a particular audience. 
  • Attracting: How the media product attracts a certain audience.
  • Reaching: How the producer promotes its product to reach a wider audience.
  • Addressing: Mode of address used to communicate with the audience. (its how the producer talks to the audience).
  • Constructing: Putting together a completely new audience.

The last of us (video game)

Target audience:  Heterosexual males, age: 17-30, gamers.

How do we know that this is the target audience?
  • Mise-en-scene shows dark colours and an abandoned area (males stereotypically like dark colours). The abandoned area implies that the game is a horror or action genre. 
  • There is an age at the bottom showing this game is for people aged 17 and over.
  • The girl in the picture has a gun, showing us that there is some action involved in the game. 
Secondary audience: 13-16 year olds. They might like this video because of the girl on the cover.
The target audience could also be young women.  
  • Proairetic code: There is a slanted camera angle, showing that something bad is about to happen next.
  • Hermeneutic code: The setting (how did the area get destroyed?), the characters (how do they know each other?).

How do we break down audience?
  • Age
  • Class
  • Gender
  • Race
  • Sexuality 
  • Religion
  • Ethnicity 
  • Interests and hobbies
  • Beliefs
  • Culture
  • Location
  • Demographics (putting people into social status groups in order to identify them).
Issues with demographics:
  • Its not very well defined.
  • Unfair and unethical.
  • It reduces people to a small group.
  • It tells us ver little about the audience.



Psychographics- The classification of people according to attitudes, aspirations and other psychological criteria.


Mcdonalds pickle advert

Who is the target audience?
  • Working class (they were watching football on the TV, something that working class stereotypically watch) The area the man was in looked like a working class neighbourhood.
  • Middle aged adults
  • Males and females
  • Pregnant
  • Heterosexual couples, shows Mcdonalds can be romantic 
  • Food lovers
  • Ethnic minorities
  • Theres a binary opposition between Mcdonalds and other fast food places. In the advert it shows Mcdonalds as the "light" or the break through because its the only place thats open and the staff seemed friendly. They are trying to paint a positive image of Mcdonalds. 


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