Media Audiences

12 Key excerpts on "Media Audiences"

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  Digital Broadcasting

  An Introduction to New Media

  • Jo Pierson, Joke Bauwens(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  How we understand ourselves and build our identities, how we are able to take advantage of the world around us, is intrinsically shaped by our audience affiliations and practices (Nightingale 2011a: 1). Reflection: Identifying Audiences For many people, the notion of ‘audience’ simply means ‘people’. However, different media define their audiences distinctively. In what way do you see yourself as part of different audiences? In which context would you identify yourself as part of an audience of viewers, listeners, movie fans, gamers, downloaders, customers, citizens, device users or any other type of audience? 9 0 d i g i t a l b r o a d c a s t i n g AUDIENCE APPROACHES Audience research can be seen as a diverse and complex subject, and has resulted in numerous and often-conflicting theoretical approaches (Awan 2007). McQuail (1997) discerns three main schools of thought within audience analyses, which are also discernible in connection with digital broadcasting. First, there is the struc-tural approach of audience measurement, most often starting from quantitative research. Besides measuring the size of audiences, this also involves charting the socio-demographic characteristics of audiences or users. This is typically linked to the industry perspective, where it is crucial for advertisers and channels to know how many people are listening to radio or watching television. From the industry point of view, audiences are conceived as a commodity that are bought by and sold to the advertisers (Ang 1996; Smythe 2006). Within the structural approach, audiences are often presented as monoliths, where viewing and listening rates are the ultimate criteria of audiences’ experiences. With the advent of new delivery technologies (cable, satellite, VCR, internet), especially by the end of the 1980s (Ang 1996), the measurability of audiences has increasingly been put into question.

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  Dynamics Of Mediatization

  Institutional Change and Everyday Transformations in a Digital Age

  • Olivier Driessens, Göran Bolin, Andreas Hepp, Stig Hjarvard, Olivier Driessens, Göran Bolin, Andreas Hepp, Stig Hjarvard(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  This may appear to be a strange project to launch at a time when audi- ences (so it has been argued) are largely a thing of the past (Rosen 2006). However, other scholars have argued forcefully that if audiences are liber- ated from the conceptual shackles of the television culture, in which audi- ences were seen as passive couch potatoes, audiences must be seen as a central agent of a mediatized participatory culture (Carpentier 2011). In developing this perspective, I define the audiences of mediatization processes as those individuals or groups who are attending to or engag- ing with media, in their double articulation as technological devices and symbolic content, and who are acting in that capacity, or as a conse- quence of that attention or engagement, in a way that exerts power on players in the media landscape. This is a definition which does not distinguish sharply between audi- ences as viewers, readers, listeners and spectators, and audiences as social agents, or between audiences and publics. In this respect, the defini- tion is in agreement with the argument of Livingstone that “where once people moved in and out of their status as audiences, using media for specific purposes and then doing something else […] in our present age of continual immersion in media, we are now continually and unavoid- able audiences at the same time as being consumers, relatives, workers, and […] citizens and publics” (Livingstone 2013: 22). 2 We could also phrase this by saying that in a digital, mediatized society, we can define the term “audience” as the people who, in their capacity as social actors, are attending to, negotiating the meaning of, and sometimes participat- ing in the multi-modal processes initiated or carried out by institutional media (Schrøder and Gulbrandsen, in press). Similarly, and more radically, Livingstone has suggested that “in a thoroughly mediated world, audiences and publics, along with

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  Political Communication

  A Critical Introduction

  • Heather Savigny(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  54 Chapter 3 Who are the Audience(s)? Introduction If there was no audience to read, listen, watch and consume media, then media would struggle to function or, indeed, to exist. This claim makes audiences central to the process of political communication. Not only in the communi-cation of formal politics, the actions of political elites (as discussed in Chap-ter 4 ), but also in the sense that the existence of an audience and its relations to media implies a negotiated political relationship. Communication relies on a receiver; and so media rely on audiences. In order to make sense of the way power may be distributed and operates we need, therefore, to also understand what is meant by the term ‘audience’. Indeed, this is an ontological question as we need to begin by asking, is there such a thing as ‘the’ audience? To suggest there is a singular audience assumes that there is an homogenous group that exists ‘out there’. We might, therefore, think that there are multiple audiences with differing interpretations of the same content. Moreover, these multiple audiences may use different media platforms and bring different beliefs and behaviours to the media content that they consume. This matters because if media rely on audiences, then surely media will need to respond to audience demand. It is often assumed that audiences comprise the masses (again imply-ing a homogeneity) but if Media Audiences are elites, what does this mean for the masses? As such, the ways audiences are positioned, constructed and communi-cated to are of central concern in this chapter (and throughout the book). An underlying premise throughout is that each act of communication con-stitutes political action; power relations are reinforced, negotiated, recon-structed and sometimes challenged.

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  The Production of Culture

  Media and the Urban Arts

  • Diane Crane(Author)
  • 1992(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  For example, science fiction fans are said to form a social community consisting of organizations of writers and organizations of readers, often centered around amateur publications known as fanzines and periodic conventions (Bainbridge, 1986). Some fanzines use a special science-fiction slang called Fannish. Social networks have also been identified among the audiences for Citizens Band (CB) radio (Kerbo, Marshall, & Holley, 1978), and readers of romance novels (Schiffman & Schnaars, 1980). Audience Responses to Media Definitions The characteristics of actual audiences do not correspond en-tirely to the ways in which they are defined by various media. The nature of the audience for a particular film, series, or genre is related in part to the way in which a particular set of culture organizations defines or targets its audience and in part to the ways in which audiences define themselves (Cantor & Cantor, 1986). In 45 Social Stratification and the Media other words, if a particular set of cultural organizations defines its audience inappropriately or incompletely, the potential audience may respond by withdrawing its attention or by exerting pressure on the organizations to alter their products in various ways. For example, readers of romance novels developed tastes for erotic and feminist themes much more rapidly than publishers were able or willing to provide such material (Schiffman & Schnaars, 1980). In some cases, new audiences for a particular genre may appear unexpectedly, in which case its producers may find it necessary to make radical changes in content within a relatively short period of time. For several decades, the audience for soap operas consisted largely of lower-middle-class housewives and upwardly mobile housewives isolated from family and friends in the suburbs.

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  Media, Institutions and Audiences

  Key Concepts in Media Studies

  • Nick Lacey(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  180 7 D EFINING AND P ERSUADING A UDIENCES AIMS OF THE CHAPTER ➤ To see how audiences are classified. ➤ To examine how media texts can attempt to persuade audiences. ➤ To consider how scheduling is used to attract audiences. ➤ To consider modes of address. ➤ To consider sub-cultural groups. 7.1 Introduction The audience has always been an essential feature of a media text. While there are examples of acclaimed works not being released in the lifetime of the creator (Schubert’s Ninth Symphony and John Kennedy Toole’s The Confederacy of Dunces , 1980), most texts do, at least initially, reach an audience. For some media, the audience is self-evident, for example, in the number of units sold for DVDs or how many seats are taken in the cinema or theatre. Broadcasters, however, do not have this luxury and terrestrial radio and television stations do not know that they are actually being listened to or watched. So when broadcasting began in the early twentieth century it became immediately necessary to find out if the audience did exist and who they were. The need to define audiences has been driven by commercial prerogatives. As we saw in Chapter 1, many media businesses need to deliver audiences’ eyeballs, or ears, to advertisers in order to be profitable and so the audience needs to be quantified. In order to be quantified, audiences need to be measured; in order to measure them, definitions are required for the various sub-groupings. D EFINING AND P ERSUADING A UDIENCES 181 However, audiences are not simply commodities to be sold to advertisers; public service broadcasters (see Chapter 2) must address their audiences as the general public: The audience-as-public consists not of consumers, but of citizens who must be reformed, educated, informed as well as entertained – in short, ‘served’ – presumably to enable them to better perform their democratic rights and duties.

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  Media and Society

  Power, Platforms, and Participation

  • Nicholas Carah(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  9 Making and Managing Audiences Media organizations make and manage audiences.

  • * How are audiences made?
  • * What work do audiences do?
  • * How have platform media changed the production and management of audiences?

  In this chapter we:

  • Examine how audiences are produced
  • Identify forms of audience work
  • Explore how audiences are becoming more fragmented and flexible as media organizations assemble, watch and respond to them in real time.

  Producing audiences

  Media institutions are organized around the strategic production of audiences. Professional communicators cultivate, channel, direct, segment and track audience attention as part of the process of assembling markets and shaping public opinion. Their task is to get audiences to pay attention to media, consume messages and incorporate them into their identities and ways of life, and to manage audience participation in the creation and circulation of ideas. There are four basic questions we can ask about audiences:

  1. What do media do to audiences?
  2. What do media mean to audiences?
  3. How do audiences use media?
  4. How do media produce audiences?

  Asking what media do to audiences involves examining how media effect, shape or cultivate attitudes, behaviours, beliefs and actions. Asking what media mean to audiences or what audiences do with media draws our attention to how audiences take media symbols and texts and use them to make sense of their world, organize their everyday lives and construct their own identities. The use of media to shape meaning-making unfold within the rationalized production of audiences.

  Audiences do not just exist ‘out there’, they are made and managed by media organizations. Making audiences is resource intensive. Media organizations and professional communicators construct audiences because they are useful and valuable. Resources and creativity are invested in creating particular kinds of audiences. The content and connectivity that advertiser-funded media organizations produce is not the end product, it is a device for attracting the attention of individuals who are then packaged into an audience. Commercial media produce audiences to sell to advertisers. Public, private, state or community media produce audiences to shape cultural and political life.

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  Balance and Bias in Journalism

  Representation, Regulation and Democracy

  • Guy Starkey(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  When negotiating meaning, some competing perspectives cannot be reconciled: as in the polarization of the popular and mutually exclusive descriptions of unorthodox combatants as to some, ‘terrorists’ and to others, ‘freedom fighters’. Using audiences in media research These problems are particularly acute when choosing ‘typical’ members of an audience for any kind of academic study of their reactions to media texts (Gunter, 1987: 301–6), for producers hoping to validate their own work in the manner described by Burns (1977: 137) and also when ‘representatives’ of an audience are to be incorporated into the product itself, such as when compiling letters pages, editing online fora or producing broadcast debates (Amber, 2000: 149–50). The invisibility of mass Media Audiences presents those who would work with them with particular difficulties that do not apply to other groups in the cultural sectors: for instance visitors to a museum, cinemagoers and in short anyone who enters premises to see a play, an exhibition or some other literary or artistic work. They can be seen, phys-ically counted and if necessary surveyed in some way that promises high levels of validity in the data collected. By contrast, listening to, viewing and reading the output of the print and broadcast mass media normally occurs away from the point of exhibition, being transmitted or distributed over great distances to audiences who cannot be seen or even individually counted (Starkey, 2004c: 3–6). Broadcasters have consistently disagreed over the size and nature of audi-ences to their services, often routinely producing contradictory audience figures to sell advertising time or to justify public funding spent on their output. In the UK, the BBC and the commercial radio sector established a single company, Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR), to produce a ‘gold standard’ survey from 1992 on which they could both agree, and its findings 73 In the Eye of the Beholder

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  The Flow of Management Ideas

  Rethinking Managerial Audiences

  • Stefan Heusinkveld, Marlieke van Grinsven, Claudia Groß, David Greatbatch, Timothy Clark(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  The focus on mass Media Audiences is of particular signifi- cance given the omnipresence of mass media (and mass marketing) in contemporary society, as well as the related audience roles as a key component of its members including those in management roles. The use of mass media perspectives on audience is also valuable given the recurrent societal debates on the potential negative impact of media messages on individuals and society as a whole as well as the role of new media on management practitioners (cf. Piazza and Abrahamson, 2020). 22 Overall, and in line with Abercrombie and Longhurst’s (1998) view, our use of multiple perspectives on audiences is essential to deal with the inherent complexities of conceptualising audiences. Generally, audiences are too large to observe each member directly, and in its totality. Moreover, given that individuals cannot be considered audience mem- bers on a continuous basis (Butsch, 2008), their experiences not only relate to media exposure alone. The remainder of the chapter will first provide an outline of the relevant research on live speaker-audience interaction and mass Media Audiences and then explain how these per- spectives may generate a number of critical questions that allow advan- cing our conceptualisation of the management practitioner as audience member and the flow of management ideas throughout different mass communication contexts. Interactive Audience: Conversation Analysis Conversation analysis (CA) emerged in the 1960s as part of the broader programme of sociological research known as ethnomethodology, which aims to document the tacit common-sense knowledge and practices that people use to navigate their daily lives and tasks (Garfinkel, 1967). Conversation analysis focuses on the social organisation of verbal and non-verbal aspects of spoken interaction through fine-grained analysis of audio and video recordings of naturally occurring social encounters and transcripts thereof.

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  A Companion to Media Studies

  • Angharad N. Valdivia(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  In doing so, however, it shifted the emphasis away from the people researched and onto the contextual relations in which they were located, as David Morley (1986) explained in his study of family television view-ing patterns (Morley, 1986, chapter 3). This emphasis marks the difference between researching audiences as people and researching audiences as spaces. Ien Ang (1991) has described this distinction in the following way: From the institutional point of view, watching television is the decontextualized measurable viewing behaviour that is taken to be the indicator for the existence of a clear-cut “television audience” out there; from the virtual standpoint of actual audiences, watching television is the ill-defined shorthand term for the multiplicity of situated practices and experiences in which television audiencehood is embedded. (Ang, 1991, p. 165) The idea of audience as a sociocultural space provides a key to explaining the changes cultural approaches have made to the audience research repertoire. Its presence in the assumptions of cultural approaches has made it possible for insights from various humanities disciplines to experiment with interdisciplinary initiatives and multi-genre methods, and particularly for theories of cultural forms and the nature of human engagement with them to be brought to bear on the audience research agenda. Recognition of the difference between audiences (people) and audience (space) is important because it clarifies an ontological distinction masked by the common use of the one word, audience. Virginia Nightingale 368 Since it is sometimes difficult to come to terms with the fact that the word “audience” does not always refer to a group of people, it is useful is to consider the meanings listed for the word audience in a good dictionary. My dictionary, for example, provides four meanings, though this is by no means an exhaustive list of the signifieds the word can evoke.

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  The Limits of the Digital Revolution

  How Mass Media Culture Endures in a Social Media World

  • Derek Hrynyshyn(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER FIVE Social Media in the Production of the Mass Media Audience

  Understanding popular culture as a process of production of audiences makes it possible for us to identify two important implications of social media for popular culture: the possibility of mass customization of smaller audiences and the increased scale of activity on the part of the audience members. Focusing primarily on the medium of television, this chapter looks at the implications of these two possibilities, beginning with an exploration of the production of meaning in the mass audience as it was produced before social media.

  Mass Media Required the Production of National Mass Audiences

  Mass media, from their earliest development in the form of printing press technology, through to the later invention of radio and television broadcasts, almost always profited more from the production of larger and larger audiences. One form that these large audiences took was that of a national community; as mentioned earlier, print technology played an important role in the emergence of the possibility of the political unification of communities of this size. While this might seem to be a product of the fact that nations are organized at least in large part as linguistic entities, Anderson argues that, in fact, the linguistic unity of nations is, in some measure, a product of the technological development of print technology.1

  Arguably, the dominant form of popular culture in the modern world, at least before the rise of global satellite networks, has long been the nationally organized mass media broadcast. Wherever one was, at least in the industrialized world, one was able to read or watch and listen to content produced for members of the nation to which one belonged. Different nations might disseminate different cultural forms, but almost all are brought together through the use of television and radio distribution of news about political, economic, and social events, in the form of a daily newscast.

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  Mass-Media

  • Peter Sorlin(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The system called Computerized Continuous Preference Indication is said to check the behaviour of all the members of a panel and even to test the depth of their participation. Firms have collected a vast amount of data that social scientists might use to evaluate the comportment, inclinations and options of readers or viewers. 'Meaning', that is to say the content of papers or broadcast programmes, is not necessarily involved in this process; we shall try, later, to work out why messages emitted by the media make sense for those who get them, but what we would like to examine, first, is another, much simpler thing: media sell goods (their messages) that people buy directly (a paper, a seat in a cinema) or indirectly (a broadcast programme): how is it possible to account for the various attitudes of the consumers? Journalists are often criticized for delivering false or exaggerated news but we must not forget that they work under the pressure of a permanent demand; the desire for media is relatively stable, it cannot be simply equated with a hunt for information or entertainment. Statistical surveys seem to provide us with exceptionally good material, but we have to verify whether it fits in with our research. 4 And if it does not, even partially, we must find out how audiences can be best described. The Media and 'Their' Public From people to public Media are directed towards an anonymous entity, the public. David Chaney considers the notion of 'public' to be an example of a fiction, 5 which does not mean that it is a pure fantasy but that it is mostly characterized by its narrative construction

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  Theory and Research in Mass Communication

  Contexts and Consequences

  • David K. Perry(Author)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4 Theories of Media Audiences        

  Why do you sometimes go to a movie, listen to the radio, turn on the TV set, read a newspaper or magazine, or perhaps surf the Internet? You may be seeking, consciously or not, something that will take your mind off of your worries, help pass the time of day, or predict tomorrow’s weather. In fact, audiences report various motivations for media use. These sometimes include such things as passing time and learning about things or oneself, as well as for arousal, relaxation, companionship, and because of habit (Greenberg, 1974).

  Clearly, communication is more than a process by which one party, the sender, does something to another, the receiver. The media do not merely act, and those exposed to them do not merely react. Rather, like with other things in life, it takes “two to tango.”

  USES AND GRATIFICATIONS RESEARCH

  The uses and gratifications approach to mass communication research (e.g., Rosengren, Wenner, & Palmgreen, 1985) examines what people do with the media. Sometimes this issue is studied separately from and less often alongside of the question of what the media do to people. Such research assumes that audiences are to varying degrees active participants in media use, rather than purely passive or reactive objects. As E. Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch (1974) defined the approach, it is concerned with:

  (1) the social and psychological origins of (2) needs, which generate (3) expectations of (4) the mass media or other sources which lead to (5) differential patterns of media exposure (or engagement in other activities), resulting in (6) need gratifications and (7) other consequences, perhaps mostly unintended ones. (p. 20)

  Contemporary uses and gratifications research tends to reflect five assumptions, according to Rubin (1993):

  (a) Communication behavior such as media use is typically goal-directed or motivated. Such behavior is functional for people; it has consequences for people and societies.

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