Anybody out there? the audience hopefully.

Who are these ‘audience’ people?

The conception of audiences has been changing over the years. We’re not so stuck in this broadcast model of media production, where audiences are seen as passive consumers. Rather audiences are considered to be more aware and critical of the media they consume, as well as being tastemakers who can shift the produce of the industry through audience interactivity or self-production.

Narrowcasting

Narrowcasting is based upon the postmodern belief that broad or mass audiences no longer exist. Therefore narrowcasting is a refined or adapted version of broadcasting, wherein makers aim products at specific segments of the population. These segments are defined by their demographics, subscriptions, values and preferences, this enables makers to identify and target niche markets.

But who cares about the audience? lots of people:

  • Advertisers
  • Commercial broadcasters
  • Production houses
  • Government policy makers
  • Social scientists/psychologists
  • Cultural theorists/media scholars

Fandom

Fandom is a term used to describe a group of people who share a common interest, this common interest often embodies the form of a television series (Star Trek), character (Hello Kitty), comic book series (Tank Girl) or literary series (Sherlock Holmes) etc. Fans within a fandom often spend a large portion of their time interacting with or communicating about their fandom of interest, as well as devoting a large part of their identity, often even physical to displaying and representing that fandom.

Fandoms were once seen as comprising only ‘freaks’, ‘geeks’ and ‘weirdos’ relegating extra interaction with texts as obscure and unusual. However fandom has somewhat been absorbed into mainstream culture, often encouraged by the corporations and creators that make such media texts. This has led to a new wave of audience interactivity, where most consumers of texts can be seen to interact with certain texts at an extra level, beyond that of once off consumption. This is also encouraged by new technologies, changes in media industries – products often requiring more active modes of spectatorship and the internet – becoming a ‘knowledge space’, where one care source and share knowledge on fandoms.

Evolution

Regardless of the industries understanding of ‘audiences’ it is certain that audiences are evolving, interacting with texts at new complexities, experiencing texts through deeper and deeper layers of meaning and references and adding their own spin on textual understandings and meanings. Audiences are also often creating media themselves, adding to the sphere through which they consume, allowing audiences to interact with and influence the ‘influencers’.

 

Catch you later,

Louise Alice Wilson