Entry 7 - Audiences and Consumption

What do audiences do with the media that is produced? Well this could be watching a programme, listening to a radio station or even looking at a website, but not only this, some people go to more of an extreme and create fandoms or even their own subculture. All of this then becomes important to media companies as they like to know who they are targeting and it also allows them to find the best ways in doing so.

There are four main ways of researching an audience, this is by using a Questionnaire, focus group, interviews or ethnography. All of which allows a company to target specific people with questions or even in the case of ethnography, looking in the right place. Not only are these research methods important but looking at subcultures and fandoms can also help. When looking at subcultures in particular, it shows how various groups of people go off and do their own thing, which might not necessarily be what society wants them to do but to a company this makes them interesting as it allows them to see what meanings they have made from certain text instead of coming to a conclusion based on stereotypes. Fandoms again help producers see who they are targeting as it allows them to pinpoint their exact target audience.

From this, is shows just how much an audience member can ‘influence their own media experiences’ (Lull, 1995:73), and with the rise of the internet, it has allowed more doorways to do so.

My own research has then allowed me to understand that by conducting research into an audience member once they are a fan of something is a lot more effective than doing it before in a controlled environment. In this case then, it allows the producer to ‘ask incisive question about the fans actual viewing environment, responses and/or use of the text(s)’ (Gray, 2003: 67) which is exactly what they want.

Bibliography

Gray, J. (2003). New Audiences, New Textualities Anti-Fans and Non-Fans. International journal of cultural studies, 6(1), 64-81.

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

Lull, J (1995) Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach, Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers.