This week’s lectorial is about audience. Audience plays an important role in the whole society, especially for media study. Everyone can be audience, as long as you engage in “media thing”, such as TV programme, film, music and advertising. If you have ever watched a TV programme, ever watched a video online, ever gone to the cinema, you are the audience. Therefore, study of audience is necessary.

One question was mentioned in the lectorial: who cares about audiences? There’s a list:

Advertisers

Commercial broadcasters, cable networks etc

Production houses and individual program makers

Government policy makers

Social scientist/psychologists

Cultural theorists/media scholars

As can be seen above, audiences are important subjects in many areas. For example, when you are making a film, you are supposed to think about the feeling of audiences, and you need to create different experiences for them. Only when audiences satisfy your film, you can make profits from it. It is the same as TV programme and advertisings. As I mentioned at the very beginning, everyone can be audience, so there are different types of audiences. Media activities should focus on their own targets. Take filmmaking for example again. If a director is going to make a children’s film, his target would be children. They should try to think about what may catch children’s attention. If a director is likely to make a love movie, he will concern about how to appeal to lovers or adults. Again, it is the same situation for those who care about audiences.

As an audience, I care about my experience when I am watching TV programmes or films. Even though I am now not in Australia, I still keep in touch with my parents and friends who are in China. We will discuss the programme or film we watch. Then I realize that even though it’s the same program, even though we are at the same age, we have different feelings about it. On the other hand, I notice that audiences can be connected. Although they are not in the same country, they can communicate with each other. Now, I am a media student, when I am making videos, I will try to think about everything from both director/camera operators and audiences perspectives.