Audience Theory

Audience is a key concept in Media Studies and for any producer or analyst of media.

Extra Information:

"The contemporary audience is therefore a multi-dimensional one that can be reached on many levels; however, each level or way of reaching an individual may not or may have the same impact as media that tries to appeal to ‘mass audience’ and requires a higher level of engagement such as broadcast.”

This simply defines the notion of continuous ‘audiencehood’ – everywhere we go, and in almost everything we do, we are audiences to some form of media.

Passive Audience - the idea that the media injects views directly into the brains of the audince, therefore controlling the way that people think and behave; they're manipulated.

This type of audience does not question the message that the media is sending and simply accepts the message in the way the media outlet intended and is made aware of something through a brief encounter such as a billboard, poster, flyer, etc.

A passive audience is sometimes referred to as 'Media Effects Theory', i.e. the media has a direct and powerful effect on its audience.

Messages targeted towards a passive audience need to be creative and stylish: something that will capture one’s attention. Catchy slogans and dramatic, emotional imagery attract readers' attention.

Active Audience - the notion that audiences don’t just absorb everything they are told but are actually involved, sometimes unconsciously, in making sense of any given message as it relates to them in their own personal contexts. Active audiences are already interested and engaged but want to know more information. This type of audience needs factual details before forming an opinion; it is based on the interpretation of the media message.

An active audience is the one that relates to our short film because we want our audience to be actively involved in the film in order for them to understand the message intended.

Qualities of a Passive Audience:

Easily Manipulated
Compliant
Weak Willed
Followers
Controlled
Dominated

Qualities of an Active Audience:

Engaged
Involved
Responsive
Free Willed
In Control

Ien Ang (1991):

"...Media producers have an imaginary entity in mind before the construction of a media product."

In simple terms, this means that media producers have a distinct vision of who they want their audience to be before making their media product e.g. short film. This statement iskey as it relates to us as filmmakers; TA Media had a creative foresight of the type of audience we wanted our message and images to project to before the production of our short film.

"Audiencehood is becoming an ever more multifaceted, fragmented and diversified reportoire of practices and experiences."

In essence, Ien Ang means that people consume products differently. Some read from the front to the back and others back to front. The notion of an audience as a number of practices, as a variety of meaningful social behaviours, avoids trying to arrange particular audiences into an unnatural sociological 'posture' .i.e. they are all working class or New Age types rather than force audiences into a kind of frozen permanence, reflecting one 'moment' of their composition. Ang's concept of practice ( how they consume ) acknowledges the shifting nature of their arrangement, but still allows them to exist as concrete elements of social reality.

All this clearly constructs the audience as active rather than passive consumers.

Our 'Imaginary Entity':

'Michael is an 17 year old student, hoping to pursue a career in film, photography or music. He spends most of his free time creating 3 minute short films of him and his friends skating around his local area and watching documentary skate films or videos on YouTube/Netflix, such as The Motivation or Hill Street. He enjoys listening to a range of music genres and eating healthy.'

Stuart Hall's Reception Theory : an active audience theory which sees the audience as being actively engaged in the interpretation of media texts, rather than passive consumers. The idea is that individuals interpret in different ways.

Stuart Hall claimed that media texts go through two stages: encoding and decoding. Media texts are encoded by the producer and are then decoded by the audience.

When a producer creates a media text it is encoded with a meaning or message that they want to convey to a mass audience. However, sometimes the producer can encode a message that is not correctly understood by an audience, making the message non-effective.

The audience decode the media text by viewing it and then interpreting their own ideologies into the text. Not all audiences will respond in the same way and in some cases, not how the producer intended.

Stuart Hall's Reception Theory (1991) outlines three different types of readers (audience):

Dominant or Preferred Reading: the message the producer has intended is usually accepted.
Negotiated Reading: the dominant reading is only partially recognised or accepted and audiences might disagree with some of it.
Oppositional Reading: the dominant reading is refused and rejected because the reader disagrees with it, especially for political, religious and feminist reasons.

Numerous factors add to whether we take the dominant, negotiated or oppositional reading. These areas include:

Life Experience
Mood at the time of viewing
Age
Culture
Beliefs
Gender

All these factors have an effect on how we as individuals decode a media text.

Stuart Hall's theory can be related to our short film, on how our audience will decode it.

How we WANT our short film to be viewed?

We want our short film to be viewed as something inspirational to young people who know about the skateboarding subculture, but we would also like to educate those marure adults that have no knowledge of the sport and the subcultutre in London. We would like to put across a positive message about those involved in the skateboarding subculture and how a sport such as this can benefit you in many ways, particularly via motivation and determination.

How our short film WILL be viewed?

The dominant readers of our short film will understand the inspirational, positive message and will agree with the way we have decided to put the message across. The negotiated readers will agree with the message of our short film, but will probably not agree with the way in which we have decided to convey the message in the short film. Oppositional readers, on the other hand, will totally disagree with our short film and feel that it does not relate to them in any way possible.

By Ashley Fontaine

Creating a page on audience theory was extremely beneficial as it helped us decide what type of audience we want and how they might respond.