Watch and Learn

I find media studies of audiences to be inherently fascinating. This of course would have to be because everyone is a part of the ‘audience’, we cannot help but consume, read and interpret the media surrounding us.

Who Cares About Audiences?

• Advertisers
• Broadcasters
• Production Houses
• Government Policy Makers
• Social scientists/Psychologists
• Cultural Theorists/Media Scholars

This lectorial presented to us the changing beliefs that media theorists had about audiences over the years. It is important to gain an understanding of why the audience is important when creating media, as all products will have an intended audience, and will be aimed to effect these people in a certain way. This can be in a meaningful manner, which attempts to change opinions of people worldwide, or even a piece of entertainment, which just aims to create some level of enjoyment. Media serves different purposes, but the audience is the most important factor in content creation.

We currently have quite a complex understanding of the audience’s relationship to media, but this is after years of mass media prevalence on a global scale and the advancements of media technologies has changed how the audience received media as well the audience themselves, who have gained a deep understanding of the media that allows for more complex readings of it. Things were not always this way, as the general populous had to be introduced to media and learn how to use and consume it at one point in time. This is referred to as the broadcast era, which was built on the understanding of a one-to-many broadcasting scheme. Media products were believed to have messages which would be wholly accepted by audiences during this time, and the Government would hold particular influence using it. The audience as labelled as a homogenous, passive unit in this time, unable to read the purpose of the media or find any message other than the one intended.

Now in the post-broadcast era, our understanding of audience-media relations has changed. We realise that there a wide range of factors which may influence a person’s understanding of the media. We now regard audiences as ‘active’, in that they are able to read texts in a sophisticated manner. Media texts are therefore built with this assumption, building more complex relationships with the audience.