Key Aspect - Audience

Heavy Theory Warning!!!

Audience – Lesson Intentions  Learn about how media companies construct audiences Three Theories on Audience - Hypodermic Theory - Uses and Gratifications - Audience Reception Theory  Learn about the use of Audience in “Little Miss Sunshine”

Audience  'Audience' is a very important concept throughout media studies.  All media texts are made with an audience in mind.  Money

Constructing Audience  "Does the text have an audience?"  If no one is going to watch/read/play/buy the text, the producers aren't going to make any money or get their message across.  Audience research

Audience Research Demographics  income bracket/status  age  gender  race  location  Education  Marital status By finding this information out about possible audiences they can use this to inform the creative process and the marketing of that product.

Income Bracket  Look at the following income brackets and I will ask you to place professions in the bracket you think they belong to.  In a game I like to call “ Mmm I wonder how rich my parents are compared to my friends’ parents”

A B C1 C2 D E

A Top management, bankers, lawyers, doctors and other highly salaried professionals B Middle management, teachers, many 'creatives' eg 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

Audience Research – What different ways to research audience can you think of?  Questionnaires,  Focus groups,  Comparisons to existing media texts  Blogging and Social Network sites  Media companies spend a great deal of time and money finding out if there is anyone out there who might be interested in their idea.

Audience Theories

Audience theories - Hypodermic Theory  Idea that audience is passive:  Media is so powerful it can inject audiences with message  Assumes audience is an empty vessel, “sitting back”, waiting to be entertained  Media presents few challenges to the audience  Audience can be easily influenced, e.g. violent movies will cause them to act violently

Task – Can you think of any high profile examples of films that have been accused of effecting behaviour?

Image of a British World War One recruiting poster  Origin: A British recruitment poster which would have come out before conscription was introduced in January  Motive: To encourage men in Britain to enlist in the New Armies.

Who do you think is the target audience for this poster?  Audience: Men who are eligible to enlist and who are in the right age group. This changed over time but ranged from years.  This poster would not be aimed at skilled workers in occupations required by the Government.

What features or techniques are used to appeal to the target audience? Content:  The symbol - John Bull represents the British people, note the Union Jack waistcoat.  Personal appeal - Use of Question -'Who's Absent? Is it You?'  The finger pointing at the reader -'You'. Soldiers waiting in the background for 'your' response.

Other features to note:  Brevity of language.  Simple message - easy to comprehend by a reader walking past.  The poster's message is obvious because many people would not stop to read a poster.

Audience Theory – Uses & Gratifications  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.  Consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways:  surveillance  correlation  entertainment  cultural transmission

Audience Theory – Uses and Gratifications Researchers Blulmer and Katz 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  Personal Relationships  Personal Identity  Surveillance Since then, the list of Uses and Gratifications has been extended, particularly as new media forms have come along (eg video games, the internet)

Uses and Gratifications  Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.  Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction.  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  Task – Can you think of any programmes/films that you use for each of the above Uses/Gratifications and list them in your jotter.

The Uses and Gratifications Approach has five basic assumptions.  The audience is conceived as active.  The initiative in linking need gratification and media choice lies with the audience member.  The media competes with other sources of need satisfaction.  Many of the goals media use can be derived from data supplied by the individual audience members themselves  It is the individual audience members who make the decision to view the media; therefore, they place the value on it by their individual decision to view it.

Reception Theory (Stuart Hall)  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 affected their reading.  Gender  Class,  Age  Ethnicity

Reception Theory - The Encoding/decoding Model Audiences vary in their responses to media messages:  social position,  age,  gender,  ethnicity,  occupation,  experience  beliefs  where they are  what they are doing

Audience Reception Theory – Preferred Reading  However, by using recognised codes and conventions, the producers can create a certain amount of agreement on what meaning should be taken from a text.  Preferred Reading – The meaning the film makers want you to agree with them from the text.

Audience Reception Theory An audience may not always accept the preferred meaning Below are three kinds of audience response:  Preferred – this position is established when the audience takes full preferred meaning offered by the text. (this is the hope of producers)  Negotiated – This position is established when there is a mixture of adaptation and opposition to the dominant codes.  Oppositional – this is established then the preferred reading is understood but rejected. It may also be reconstructed drawing on alternative values and attitudes.

Polysemy  Idea that a number of different readings are possible.  Some texts are more open to different readings than others and, consequently, referred to as polysemic.

McDonalds want you to think....

You may agree Or..... You may disagree

Or..... You may think that big macs do taste good, but I’ll only have them every now and again

So here we have three separate readings of that one advert

Hello, my name is David Morley. In 1980 I did a study of audience responses when watching the BBC TV show Spotlight. As a result of my research, I reckon that audiences tend to fall into three groups based on their interpretation of the text..... Preferred Reading Negotiated Reading Oppositional Reading

The preferred reading is the reading media producers hope audiences will take from the text.

Audience members from outside the target audience may reject the preferred reading, receiving their own alternative message.

Negotiated reading is when audiences acknowledge the preferred reading, but modify it to suit their own values and opinions.

Audience - theories 2) Uses and Gratifications  Audience is active: they use the media text to satisfy needs for entertainment, information and identification.  Audiences engage, “read” the text, do something with it.  Audiences are not simply influenced by the text – they make their own use of it.

Audience - theories Modern Ideas:  Audience decodes the text – the message (preferred reading) may not arrive as intended.  Same text can be received differently  Accepted  Negotiated  Opposed/rejected.  Texts are constructed to produce a preferred reading but because the text exists in the real world and is read by individuals with different experiences and backgrounds, it can be challenged and modified.

Measuring a Film’s Success  Figures are based on box office receipts, rather than the number of people who have actually seen the movie. Subtract the production costs of a movie from the box office receipts to find out how much money it made, and therefore how successful it has been in the profit-driven movie business. Be aware that a film which does not cost much to make and takes even a modest amount at the box office can be considered a greater success than a big action movie which cost more, has a bigger set of box office receipts (ie lots more people went to see it) but has a smaller profit margin.  Also be aware that film companies are very coy about publishing production costs of a movie, and that they rarely include the cost of a film's marketing budget, which is probably at least a third again of the production costs, and is frequently more. in some cases, the marketing budget may exceed the cost of originally making the film, especially for an indie hit that is picked up for mainstream distribution

Little Miss Sunshine – Box Office Figures  Total Lifetime Grosses  Domestic: $59,891, % + Foreign: $40,632, % = Worldwide: $100,523,181 Foreign:  Domestic Summary  Release Dates: July 26, 2006 (limited) August 18, 2006 (wide) Limited Opening Weekend: $370,998 (#20 rank, 7 theaters, $52,999 average) Wide Opening Weekend: $5,610,845 (#7 rank, 691 theaters, $8,119 average) % of Total Gross: 9.4% > View All 35 Weekends Widest Release: 1,602 theaters Close Date: March 29, 2007 In Release: 247 days / 35.3 weeksJuly 26, 2006August 18, 2006Limited Opening Weekend: Wide Opening Weekend:> View All 35 Weekends