Introduction To Audience

 Audience Identification and Groupings:


Component 1 Section A: Analysing media language and representation.

Component 1 Section B: Analysing media industries and audiences.


Media studies is so preoccupied with audience because there's no point in media without the audience. Also the audience fund the media product.
Also the audience effects the producer.

Target Audience: The audience who the producer is aiming the media product at. Target audience is often very specific. 

Primary Audience: First specific audience that the producer aims the media product at.

Secondary Audience: The rest of the audience that the product is aimed at, which may not be who the product was intended for but still appeals.


T.A.P: 

T- Text

A- Audience

P- Producer 

Key Words:

• Targeting: What the producer wants to get/aiming to get

• Attracting: Giving the product aspects of appeal/ how the producer draws in the audience

• Reaching: The producer promotes their media product to a certain group of people and obtain a wider audience

• Addressing: (like mode of address) How the producer/media product talks to the audience

• Constructing: The audience will be constructed so the product appeals to them

The last of us (PS3 advert):

Primary target audience: Young males, male gamers, young adults, heterosexual  

We know this because...

Dark gloomy mise-en-scene appeals to young men

Use of guns and background shows it is based in a run down area implying its a survival game

Challenges stereotypes of women as the female on the front cover is holding a gun, the female isn't sexualised

Implies more of a family relationship between characters

Secondary target audience: Teen males 

We know this because...

Symbolic code with camera angle as its suggesting something is going to go wrong

Direct mode of address as the character is facing the audience which involves them

Hermeneutic code, The setting, What happened? Who are they? Are they father and daughter?

Breaking down of audience:

• Gender
• Age 
• Sexuality
• Stereotypes
• Interests 
• Statistics preferences 
• Hobbies
• Social classes- Middle class, Working class
• Social status 
• Demographics 
• Beliefs 
• Religion 
• Culture 
• Ideology of the audience
• Location

Demographics- A way of classifying a group and identifying people.

Issues: 

Change on a daily basis 

Misinterpreted 

Can overlap

All based on money 

Not well defined 

Reductive 

Stereotypical

Tells us very little about the audience 

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

Pickle advert (Mcdonalds):

• Lower middle class
• C2,D
• Strugglers
• mose-en-scene is dark- implies lower class based in a suburb