Welcome to Media Audiences: Understanding the Audience
Hello! This chapter is all about the people who matter most in media: the audience! Without us, media products don't make money, and media industries collapse. Understanding the audience is crucial because it explains *why* media products look the way they do, and *how* they try to influence us.
Think of the media industry as a giant marketplace. We, the audience, are the customers. In this chapter, we explore how producers try to sell their goods, and how much power we actually have over what's produced. Let's dive in!
3.5.4.1 The Nature and Significance of the Audience
The Media Industry's Dependence on the Audience
The first and most fundamental concept is that media companies cannot survive without a steady flow of consumers.
The relationship is simple: media industries are dependent on creating and continuing to satisfy audiences. If audiences stop buying magazines, watching adverts, or subscribing to streaming services, the industry loses its income.
Analogy: The Oxygen Tank
The audience is like the oxygen tank for the media industry. If the oxygen (attention, subscription money, eyeballs for advertising) runs out, the entire system stops working.
Strategies to Maintain Audience Demand
Since media companies rely so heavily on us, they use specific strategies to stimulate and maintain audience demand. These are techniques designed to keep us interested, returning, and, crucially, spending money.
- Trailers, Teasers and Tasters: Short, exciting glimpses of a product designed to build anticipation (e.g., the 30-second clip released months before a film, or the "taster" episode of a new series).
- Promotional Campaigns: Large-scale advertising across multiple platforms (print, social media, billboards) to ensure the product is unavoidable.
- Creation of Ongoing Series or Genre Products: Creating a product that encourages habitual viewing or consumption (e.g., episodic TV shows, daily news broadcasts, or sticking strictly to successful genres like superhero films). This builds loyalty.
The core goal of a commercial media industry is profit. To achieve this, they must constantly use strategies (like trailers and ongoing series) to ensure the audience remains satisfied and engaged.
The Power Struggle: Audience vs. Content
A major debate in Media Studies is whether the audience holds the power (active), or whether the media content holds the power (passive).
1. The Power of Media Content to Influence Audiences (Passive View)
This traditional view argues that media products are powerful tools that can directly influence our thoughts, values, and beliefs. The audience is seen as mostly passive – simply receiving the message without challenging it.
Key Concepts from Effects Theory (Brief overview):
- Hypodermic Syringe Theory: This scary-sounding theory suggests that media messages are "injected" directly into a passive audience, instantly changing their behaviour or attitudes. (E.g., watching a violent film makes you immediately more violent.)
- Cultivation Theory and Desensitization: Suggests that prolonged, heavy exposure to certain media content (like violence or specific representations) slowly "cultivates" a view of the world that mirrors the media, leading to desensitization (where we become less sensitive to real-world issues).
Key Takeaway: If media content has the power, it means producers can shape society's beliefs (ideology) through audience positioning – guiding us towards the preferred reading (the meaning the producer intended).
2. The Power of Audiences to Influence Media (Active View)
The modern, critical view argues that audiences are active. We are not empty sponges; we interpret, challenge, and use media to suit our own needs.
This power manifests in two key areas:
A. Audience Behaviour
Audience behaviour significantly influences media industries, often forcing change. This includes:
- Feedback: Reviews, social media comments, and critical responses. If a product gets bad feedback, the industry might cancel the series or change the formula.
- Purchasing or Cancelling Subscriptions: The ultimate power. If enough people cancel Netflix, Netflix has to change its content strategy.
- Participation in Content Creation: Audiences today are often prosumers (both consumers and producers), feeding their own content, fan fiction, or reaction videos back into the media ecosystem, which industries then try to monetise or incorporate.
B. Reception and Interpretation
We actively decide how to interpret a text based on our personal context (age, gender, culture, etc.). This leads to different types of readings (based on Stuart Hall’s reception theory, briefly mentioned in the syllabus):
- Preferred Reading: Accepting the message the producer intended.
- Negotiated Reading: Accepting the main message but disagreeing with some parts or modifying it to fit your own life.
- Oppositional Reading: Completely rejecting the intended message and challenging the underlying ideology.
Did you know? The success of films like "Deadpool" was heavily influenced by audience feedback and demand on social media years before the studio was convinced to produce it. That's audience power in action!
Targeting: From Mass to Niche
In the past, media was dominated by the mass audience—millions of people consuming the same product at the same time (e.g., a national news broadcast).
Today, this situation is changing rapidly due to technological context (streaming, thousands of channels, social media).
The Declining Mass Audience
The syllabus notes the declining size of the mass audience for single media events or products. We no longer all watch the same things at the same time. This fragmentation makes it harder for advertisers to reach everyone at once.
Example: In the 1980s, nearly everyone in the UK watched the same Christmas TV special. Today, people are watching different shows on different streaming services, at different times.
The Rise of Niche Audiences
Because of this decline, media producers now often focus on niche audiences—small, specialised groups with specific interests.
- Definition: A niche audience is a small, specific segment of the population that is highly engaged with a particular type of content.
- Why Niches are Valuable: Although they are small, niche audiences are extremely valuable to advertisers and producers because they are highly targeted. A company selling high-end video equipment would rather advertise on a small podcast for professional filmmakers than on a general national TV channel.
This shift means products are increasingly aimed at a range of audiences, from small, specialised audiences to large mass audiences, depending on the producer's goal (e.g., a blockbuster film aims for mass audience, while a specific video game streamed on Twitch aims for a niche audience).
Key Takeaway: The Significance of the Audience
The audience is significant because they are the economic engine of the media industry. Whether media products aim to influence a mass audience passively (Hypodermic Model) or cater to an active niche audience (Uses and Gratifications), the entire structure of the media framework revolves around getting, keeping, and satisfying the consumer.