media audience

Question 1

Demographic Profiles:

Answer 1

• Age* Gender* Ethnicity* Socio-economic status* Sexuality* Religion

Question 2

Active Audiences

Answer 2

Stuart Hall’s RECEPTION THEORY explores the notion that audiences are active readers of media texts, interpreting the messages within media texts based on their own cultural background. He states there are three ways an audience can read a media. text:1. Preferred/Dominant: how the producer wants the audience to respond.
2. Negotiated: the audience recognise the preferred reading, but do not necessarily agree or accept it.
3. Oppositional: the audience reject the preferred meaning

Question 3

George Gerbner’s Cultivation Theory

Answer 3

Writing in the 1970s Gerbner argued that the more an audience has contact with the media the more likely it was that their perceptions of reality would be altered.

Question 4

Audience Key Terms

Answer 4

Primary Research - research conducted first hand by the producer of a media text, this can be qualitative or quantitative data, and is an essential part of the pre-production planning.
Secondary Research - research that has already been conducted by academics into a particular field

Question 5

Richard Dyer’s Utopian Solutions

Answer 5

Dyer argues that the media products construct themselves as offering audiences solutions that will solve their problems and lead them to their utopian. This is commonly seen in the medium of advertising.

Question 6

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Answer 6

physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem and self- actualization

Question 7

Defining an Audience

Answer 7

Media producers often use psychographic profiling when defining their target audiences.
Psychographic profiling takes into account the personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests and lifestyles of a target audience. Psychographic Profile categories:
* Mainstreamers
* Aspirers
* Succeeders
* Resigned
* Explorers
* Strugglers
* Reformers