Audience Revision Cards

Demographics are a method of audience profiling that relies on aspects of a person that can be clearly measured. These include:

• Income
• Age
• Gender

.These can be shown in a letter system, such as ABC1 being upper/middle class.

Psychographics are a method of audience profiling which uses aspects which can't be easily measured. These are based on the values, attitudes, and lifestyles of a person, and can include things like:

• Political leaning (left-wing, right-wing, centre)
• Ideas around certain topics
• What the person feels is important

The 4Cs model (Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation Model) is a psychographic model developed by advertising company Young and Rubicam. Focus was placed on issues such as security, control, status, individuality, freedom, survival, and escape. These were organised into 7 categories:

• Aspirer: Driven by others' perceptions and views. Their core need is status.
• Explorer: The first to try out new ideas/experiences, and driven to find new things. Their core need is discovery.
• Mainstream: The largest group of people, and the mainstream of society. Their core need is security.
• Reformer: Value their own independent judgement. Generally anti-materialistic. Their core need is enlightenment.
• Resigned: Generally older people - unchanging values built up over time. Their core need is survival.
• Struggler: Live for today - generally seen as losers, aimless people. Their core need is escape.
• Succeeder: Possess self-confidence, generally have responsibility in society. Their core need is control.

Stuart Hall believes that media texts have messages and values from the producer, which are encoded through their use of representation and media language. The text is decoded by audiences, which happens in different ways and provides different readings.

• Dominant/Hegemonic: The intended meaning, and one which is understood and accepted.
• Negotiated: The meaning is questioned and acknowledged.
• Oppositional: The meaning is understood but rejected.

Albert Bandura believed that the media can implant ideas directly in the minds of the audience, and can act a certain way because of media texts.

He conducted the Bobo doll experiment in 1961, where children watched a video of an adult being violent towards a Bobo doll. They were then given a Bobo doll. Most of the children acted violent towards the doll. Thus, Bandura concluded that children will replicate violent media content.

This theory has been heavily criticised and proved in many cases not to be the case, but is still used as an argument against violent video games to this day.

Blumler and Katz had the idea of the Use and Gratification theory to show how audiences use media texts. 

• Surveillance: Gives information about current events, or a subject of interest.
• Escapism/Entertainment/Diversion: Opportunity for relaxation and enjoyment.
• Personal Identity: Learning about oneself and finding how one is similar to others.
• Personal Relationships/Social Interaction: Connecting with others over a text.

Georger Gerbner believed that repetitive patterns of representations can influence the way audiences see the world, and cultivates views and ideas (often targeted at certain groups).

This cultivation reinforces dominant ideologies.

In 2000, in response to Bandura's Media Effects theory, a study was conducted in St Helena, where they didn't have TV. The children there learnt how to behave from their parents/peers.

They were given a TV, and after 2 years, they observed to see if violent programmes affected their levels of aggression. There was no increase in levels of aggression.

Henry Jenkins believes that fans can become active participants in construction and circulation of meanings.They appropriate texts and read them in ways that generally aren't authorised by the producers (e.g. writing fanfiction, shipping of characters).

Fans can often construct their identities through borrowing mass culture images.

Primary Audience: Key audience for the text, and thus who the producers are mostly focusing on.

Secondary Audience: A group who also engage with the text despite not being the target audience.

Tertiary Audience: Audience who might not be actively involved with the text (e.g. someone who might be in the room whilst the program is on)

The Internet and digital technology has had an effect on the relationship between the media and the individual. 

Audiences can no longer be considered passive consumers of the mass media - the age of the internet means that consumers have, essentially, become producers who "speak back" to the media in various ways. Audiences can also create and share content with each other.