Entry 6 - Audience

From the reading, the focus on the audience of any given media text shows them to be a 'receiver, reader or even an interpreter' (Long, 2012: 277). From this it shows that any individual can take a text and get a different outcome to someone else who has viewed it. However due to this does it mean that we don’t always do what was intended by the producer of the text. For example, when looking at a photograph, you can create your own ideas around it, but then once you have looked into its background, your whole idea can be changed and you are later seeing what was intended by the photographer. 

Another idea that is put forward is that we are unaware of other audience members when consuming a particular media text, however with the growth of social networking I feel that this is no longer the case due to the fact there are Facebook and Twitter pages where people can go to share their opinions. With this in mind it allows media institutions to enter ‘into relations’ (Hartley, 1987: 127) with their audience, collecting data on the interactions they might have as well as picking up on their dislikes and likes. This can then be used when future media products are being created.

From further reading the idea of researching an audience to see what they like was a key theme in chapter 14 of the book Desperately Seeking the audience (Ang, 1991) with one source stating that even though the creators of a product are interested in their audience, they are more interested in whether what they have made has been seen properly by the audience member, with him stating ‘ They would like to have their finger continually on the audiences pulse in order to see whether the aims of their programme policy are being realized’(Werkgroep Luister- en Kijkonderzoek 1963).

However, even though that was a key theme in both readings, Propaganda was also something that was touched upon in the media studies textbook and I felt this was important when it came to the audience. This is because people can be susceptible to what they read, see and hear. Examples of this are advertisements on the telly where perfume, cars and even concert tickets are being ‘sold’. Even though they are not all directly aimed at one individual audience member, they are sending you messages such as the perfume will find you love, something that has been seen in the Lynx adverts. In the words of Edward Bernays, propaganda is used ‘to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise’ (Bernays, 2004:52) and from the Lynx advert we can see how it’s put into action.

Bibliography

Ang, I. (1991) Desperately Seeking the Audience, London: Routledge.

Bernays, E. (2004) Propaganda, New York: Ig Publishing.

Hartley, J. (1987) ‘Invisible fictions: television audiences, paedocracy, pleasure’, Textual Practise 1(2): 121-38

Long, P and Wall, T (2012) Media Studies: Texts, Production, Context (2nd Edition), London: Pearson.

Werkgroep Luister- en Kijkonderzoek (1963) ‘Report to the NRU and NTS Administration’, 6 November.