Unit G321: Foundation Portfolio In Media

Audience Theories
 Unit G321: Foundation Portfolio In Media

• What should be done in terms of your

coursework is three things:
1. You must detail the target audience
for your product.
2. Detail what the audience might
identify with in your product (could
link to the construction of identity?)
3. What meanings/uses they might
make from consuming/interacting
with the product.
Ien Ang (1991) detailed that
media producers have an
imaginary entity in mind before
the construction of a media
product.
“Audiences only exist as an
imaginary entity, an
abstraction, constructed from
the vantage point of the
institution, in the interest of the
institution”.
Ang (1991) states that 'audiencehood
is becoming an ever more
multifaceted, fragmented and
diversified repertoire of practices and
experiences'.
You must detail the social demographic
of this target audience (gender, age,
ethnicity, social class).
John Hartley (1987) “institutions are
obliged not only to speak about an
audience, but –crucially, for them – to
talk to one as well; they need not only to
represent audiences but to enter into
relation with them”
Hartley (1987) also suggests that
institutions must produce “invisible
fictions of the audience which allow the
institutions to get a sense of who they
must enter into relations with” .
e.g. they must know their audience so
they can target them effectively.
For your magazine work, for example, you used
information from the National Readership
Survey (NRS) in order to help detail the
demographic for your audience (most consumer
magazines have a target readership of ABC1)
In terms of your music videos – you must relate
this back to sub-cultures (Sarah Thornton,
1995).
 Gaining Feedback from your Audience

• You attempted to gain feedback from your

target market in order to get their opinions,
• You used the blogs, forums etc in order to
share ideas and images.
• You also conducted polls to tailor the
product better for your audience.
• Write down how you did this.
McQuail’s Uses And Gratifications Theory
Dennis McQuail (1972)

1. Diversion/Escapism
2. Personal Relationship: A talking point
3. Personal Identity: identifying with the
representations on display
4. Surveillance: Information
• Parkin’s/Hall’s Audience Readings Theory
• Frank Parkin (1972) and later Stuart Hall
(1980) analysed the readings within
audiences as either:
• 1.Dominant or Preferred Reading: The meaning
they want you to have is usually accepted.
• 2.Negotiated Reading: The dominant reading is
only partially recognised or accepted and
audiences might disagree with some of it or find
their own meanings.
• 3.Oppositional Reading: The dominant reading is
refused, rejected because the reader disagrees
with it or is offended by it, especially for political,
religious, feminist, reasons etc.