2. ‘Audience’ defined:
1. The spectators or listeners assembled at a performance, for
example, or attracted by a radio or television program.
2. The readership for printed matter, as for a book or magazine.
3. A body of adherents; a following.
Over the years audience’s have been categorized, theorized and
disputed.
Julian McDougall(2009) suggests that in the online age it is getting
harder to conceive a media audience as a stable, identifiable
group.
3. What is a target audience?
• In marketing and advertising,
a target audience is a specific
group of people within the
target market at which a
product or the marketing
message of a product is
aimed at.
4. • Why is a target audience necessary?
A target audience is essential for industries because it
helps them decide on how to market and advertise their
film. An industries target audience can depend on many
things, such as genre, age of cast, storyline, ect. For
example, if an industries target audience was teenagers,
the best way of promoting that film would be through
television adverts and social networking. All of which
teenagers regularly use, so it would be a fast and
effective way of targeting them. It also allows them to
not target the wrong audience, for example, an 18
certificated horror film, could not be advertised on
Disney Channel, because t would reach the wrong
audience.
5. • We have chosen our target audience to be
teenagers/young adults (aged 15-24). We have
chosen this age group as our target audience
because of the storyline of our film(cyber bullying
of a teenager) and the age of our actors.
• Both Male and Female,
English and Working Class.
We will make our film a 15
rated certificate.
6.
7. • Social networking sites. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. We would use
pages, adverts and pictures to promote the film using these sites.
-This is an essential promotional base to use because 98% of 16-24 year olds use
social networking.
-22% of teenagers log in and out of Facebook over 10 times a day.
-The total amount of page views YouTube receives each month is 92 billion.
• Film posters and billboards
- The amount of people in the UK that drive cars is 75%. This means placing
billboards in popular places in the country will help reach a larger target market.
- There are thousands of universities in the UK, placing film posters around
campuses will help boost promotion and advertise our film to our specific targeted
age group.
• Film festivals
- BFI London Film Festival and other film festivals across the country. Showing a
preview release of our film at a film festival will increase the popularity and hype of
our film and promote it further.
• TV Advertisements. Nearly every household across the country owns a
television, meaning, the television adverts are a good way to promote our
film, with teenagers and young adults watching at least an hour of television per
day.
8.
9. This theory was the first attempt
to explain how mass audiences
might react to mass media. It
suggests that audiences
passively receive the
information transmitted via a
media text, without any attempt
on their part to process or
challenge the data.
However, this theory was developed in an
age when the radio and cinema were only
two decades old - so the mass media was
quite new.
It was especially seen in Europe during
the First World War when the
government produced the propaganda
which they used to try and sway the
masses into their way of thinking.
10. The Two-step Theory
assumes that the
information does not flow
directly from the media texts
into the minds of its
audience unprocessed, but
is filtered through 'opinion
leaders' who then
communicate it to their less
active associates, over
whom they have influence.
For example, think of film
critics and how influential
they can be about what you
decide to go and see in the
cinema.
View this link for more information about this theory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csGHExeP3uA&feature=player_embedded
11. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively
consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways. In 1948 Lasswell suggested that
media texts had the following functions for individuals and society:
* Surveillance
* Correlation
* Entertainment
* Cultural transmission
Researchers Blumer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating
that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes (uses and
gratifications):
- Diversion/Escapism - escape from everyday problems and routine.
- Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, for example;
substituting soap operas for family life.
- Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour, morals and values
from texts.
- Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living such as; weather reports,
financial news, adverts ect.
12.
13. …suggests that in the online age it is
getting harder to conceive a media
audience as a stable, identifiable group.
…an audience can be described as a
“temporary collective”.
