Key Concepts/ Terms - Audience Question Flashcards
What is an Active Audience?
An audience who responds to and interprets media texts in different ways and who actively engages with the messages (e.g. oppositional and negotiated readings).
What are Aspirers?
A psychographic group who seek status and need to live up to the standards set by the media.
What is Cultivation?
The way in which the media influences our perception of the real world.
What is Cultural Competence?
The cultural competence of the audience is the shared knowledge, related to their cultural understanding, of that audience meaning that they will take particular pleasure from that text.
What are Demographics?
Measurable characteristics of media consumers such as age, gender, race, education and income level. These will shape the way an audience interprets a text.
What is Desensitisation?
It’s what some theorists argue that happens to audiences when they recieve a constant flow of media containing violence and suffering, that it desensitises audiences (makes them less sensitive) to real human suffering.
What is Gatekeeping?
The process through which information is filtered for dissemination (spreading of info, widely).
What is a Mainstreamer?
A psychographic group who seek security through following the latest trends and consuming ‘safe’, mainstream brands.
What are Opinion Leaders?
Those in positions of power who aim to persuade the audience of their point of view (ideology).
What is an Oppositional Reading?
The resistant interpretation of a text where the audience finds themselves in conflict with text due to their own beliefs/ experiences. The audience does not agree with the ideology of the text.
What is a Passive Audience?
An audience that does not engage actively with the text. They are more likely to accept the preferred meaning of the text without challenge. They are more likely to be directly affected by the messages contained within the text.
What is Pick and Mix?
When audiences are not adversely affected by unrealistic representations. Instead they pick the bits of a text that are appropriate to them, and ignore others (active audiences).
What is Positioning?
Where the media language (camera, editing, audio, linguistic codes) place the audience in a particular position.
This may be emotionally to empathise more clearly with a character or to have expectations of how the narrative will develop or to encourage a particular ideological position.
What is the Preferred Reading?
Where the audience accepts the dominant discourse of a text or the intended message of the encoder. This is usually the case if the text reflects the ideas and beliefs of the audience.
What are Psychographics?
A more sophisticated form of demographics that includes information about the psychological and sociological characteristics of media consumers such as attitudes, values, emotional responses and ideological beliefs.
