Nick Couldry’s The Extended Audience: Scanning the Horizon defines (through observation of Abercrombie and Longhurst) the three broad types of audience. These are the “simple audience”, the “mass audience”, and the “diffused audience”.“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 basically defines the notion of continuous ‘audience-hood’ – everywhere we go, and in almost everything we do, we are audiences to some form of media.
Passive and Active Audiences. There are basically two different schools of thought concerning how audiences consume media texts, those that believe that audiences are ‘passive’ and those who believe that audiences are ‘active’.
Passive audience theory includes the hypodermic needle theory which suggests that audience passively absorb and consume media - we accept the messages shown to us. However hypodermic needle is now thought to be outdated as resrach shows that audience engage and create meaning as towards.
An active audience theories include the users& gratifications theory which suggets that audiences actively absorb and consume media- we use media texts for own purposes. A criticism of U&G is that we don't always know why we are using or consuming media , and that other factors like money may influence the media we consume.
This type of audience relates to the medium of short films because short films are experimental and very straight to the point with the overall message thus audience's don't really have time to just sit and watch, imdiately they become an active audience.
What country do they orginate from? are they being violent because of their views or religion?
PASSIVE AUDIENCE
ACTIVE AUDIENCE
Ien Ang's study of watching Dallas, the American prime time soap opera is a classic example of the New Audience Research (Ang, 1985). Ang invited readers of the Dutch women's magazine Viva to write to her about their Dallas viewing experience. "I like watching the TV serial Dallas but often get odd reactions to it. Would anyone like to write and tell me why you like watching it too, or dislike it? I should like to assimilate these reactions in my university thesis. Please write to ..." She received 42 letters, most of them from women. Based on these letters Ang reconstructs what kind of pleasures watching Dallas offers for these Dutch viewers. Her goal was not simply to describe how viewers make sense of and find pleasure in watching Dallas, she also wanted to intervene in the then fierce debate in the Netherlands and in other European countries about the `cultural imperialism' of American television shows as well as take a stand against the often denigrating views of popular culture and its users.Through qualitative method, inspired by ethnography, Ien Ang was able to access audience pleasures in viewing Dallas (and hating Dallas).
Type of Audience
"...Media producers have an imaginery entity in mind before the construction of a media."
Imaginery entity = vision
constuction of media product = filming/editing
This describes how producers imagine their film to be before making the product where their vision might take a different route e.g. scnes cut out or different effects used.
Entity suggests independence highlighting producers are very through with what they have planned and there's nothing better than seeing your vision actually come to life.
"Audiencehood is becoming an ever more multifaceted,fragmented and diversified repertoire of practices and experiences"
multifaceted = having many aspects
repertoire = a whole body of items
This highlights that society is very diverse and complex therefore audiences' are also evoling into something more diverse, everyone has a different perspective/view rather than years ago where views were more of a consensus throughout society.
Stuart Hall Reception Theory (1980)
Stuart Hall claimed that media texts go through stages of encoding and decoding. this theory states that media texts are encoded by the producer and that the texts contain only the ideologies of the people who made the media text. Decoding is when an audience views the text and interprets their own ideologies into the text. Not all audiences will respond in the same way, and in some cases, not how the producer intended. A example of this could be Miley Cyrus and her world famous video 'We Can't Stop'. The video was produced by the producer to make people forget about the Hannah Montanna girl, and create the new Miley Cyrus, but when it was decoded by the audience, the reaction was that she was 'slutty' and 'disgraceful' in most peoples views, but again, not all of the audience will interpret the video in that way.
Audience Theory
24/08/2015
Dear Megan...
Muslims are terrosists.
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Preferred/dominant reading is the reading media producers hope will take from the text.
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Oppositional reading is when audience members from outside the target audience may reject the preferred reading, receiving their own alternative message
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Negotiated Reading The ‘third way’ is one in which audiences acknowledge the preferred reading, but modify it to suit their own values and opinions.
Nationwide Audience ;Members of the same subculture will tend to decode texts in similar ways.Individual readings of texts will be framed by shared cultural formations and practices.
Numerous factors add to whether we take the dominant, oppositional or negotiated reading.
The areas are as follows:
- Life experience
- Mood at time of viewing
- Age
- Culture
- Beliefs
- Gender
Lemna Road
Leytonstone ,
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Researching audience theories helped me to hone in on what type of audience I want to attract for my short film and understand the variety of expectations different audiences have.
Yours Sincerly, Megan xo
