Week 2: Audiences

Question 1

Audiences

Answer 1

Receivers (readers, viewers, listeners of a media)

- Part of the sender message receiver effect

Question 2

Problems of the word Audience

Answer 2

• audiences are increasingly complex and diverse
• subject to many interpretations
• '’the breakdown of the referent’’ - the audience is disappearing or has ceased to exist
• the word is debatable (cannot be seen, could mean ‘society’ or ‘public opinion’

Question 3

How do we interpret audience?

Answer 3

• social context: audiences that share interests (eg comic books)
• patterns (time, availability, everyday routines eg: best time to post on FB is during office hours)
• place, content, time (important for advertisers)
• people (gender, political beliefs, class, age)

Question 4

History of the Audience

Answer 4

• often localised
• always live
• less dispersed, specialised and privatised compared to current times
• popular in the Greco-Roman times (public theatres, music, games)
• physical gatherings of people
• involves organisation of viewing and listening (how the stage is set, how things would be seen and heard by viewers)
• printing press gave rise to the reading public
• film and cinema distribution –> return of locatedness - yet, gave rise to what mass comms understands to be the first mass audience (film is not live, cannot interact with film but can interact with each other)
• broadcasting (development of technology of distribution - created competition for existing audiences)

Question 5

Newspapers vs Television

Answer 5

newspapers: can be carried everywhere
tv: seen as a private affair, dangerous (addictive, invasive- of time, social and cultural space), creates passivity (privatisation of the TV experience)

Question 6

Herbert Blumer

Answer 6

• Sociologist
• “Mass” differs from groups, crowds and the public
• Mass phenomenon is a product of modern society
• Group: everyone knows each other
• Crowd: larger, temporary, has a shared identity and mood
• Public: relevant to democracy, involves free discussion of public issues, advances opinions, interests, policies, proposals for change

Question 7

The Audience Experience

Answer 7

• personal
• media can be local and embedded in local cultures
• many make ‘‘free choices’’ and do not feel manipulated by the media
• media can also give rise to social interaction which brings together rather than alienate us

Question 8

The Audience as a Market

Answer 8

• market economics useful to media institutes
• problematic as viewer can be ‘‘calculated’’ rather as one the institution would have a relationship with
• ignores internal relations between consumers
• focuses on consumption than reception
• prioritises socioeconomics

Question 9

New Media and the Audience

Answer 9

• cable and satellite - implications for radio and broadcasting
• new technological possibilities for recording, storage and retrieval (reproduction and redistribution - impact on news and music industries, Netflix/ reduction in homeogeneity of audiences/ increase in spontaneity and fleeting audiences)
• transnationalisation of TV (marketing of international stars/ vulnerability of local cultures to international influences)
• computer based systems (creation of communities/ uncertainty of extent to which such communities wish to interact)