Briefly explain the development of perceptions of the audience
1) Audience as a mass society:
- Large, heterogenous, widely spread individuals.
2) Audience as a market:
- Seen as potential consumers, but unrelated individuals. (ABOUT CONSUMPTION)
3) Audience as a group:
- Media’s power is shaped by personal factors/characteristics of the audience
- Consideration of audience’s ability to understand message as intended.
4) Motivated audience: UGT
- Audience members use/seek content that provide them gratification to fulfill specific needs.
5) Various interpretive audiences: Reception theory
- Audiences are active in the social production of meaning
- Interpretation depends on their belonging to social groups.
Mention the four categories within McQuail’s categorization of audience types
1) Social group or public
2) The gratification set
3) The medium audience
4) the channel/content audience
How do you know which type of audience to apply to your message?
Depends on your goal:
- what to achieve with your campaign?
- Reaction from audience?
- Likable or effective?
Mention three media-centred goals within audience research
- Sales and ratings
- Finding new audience market opportunities
- Managing audience choice behavior
- Product testing and improving effectiveness from a sender’s perspective
Mention three audience-centre goals with audience research
- Meeting responsibilities to serve an audience
- Evaluating media performance from an audience’s perspective
- Uncovering audience’s interpretation of meaning
- Exploring the context of media use
- Assessing actual effect on media
Briefly explain the three main traditions of audience research
1) Structural tradition: Audience measurement (data of size and reach)
2) Behavorial tradition: Media effects + use
3) Cultural tradition: Reception analysis
Mention the issues of public concern regarding media use and elaborate on the consequences
1) Media use as an addiction - diversion and reduced social interaction.
2) Social atomization: Isolation w. negative effects (e.g. lack of self control)
3) Audience behavior as active/passive: Lack of stimulating content.
4) Manipulation and resistance: Object of manipulation.
5) Works against minorities: Critical theory
Elaborate on Schroeder’s implications of audience research; ‘Observers paradox’
We aim to find out how people behave when they aren’t systematically observed, but this can only be done by systematic observation; We intrude their lives and affects their behavior when observing!
Briefly explain the five types of audience activity
1) Selective: Choosing content
2) Utility: Use for gratification to fulfill specific need.
3) Intentionality: One who engages in active cognitive processing of incoming information and experience.
4) Resistance to influence: In control of reception
5) Involvement: Arousal - caught up w. media experience (talking back to tv)
Mention the six most relevant concept of audience reach:
1) Available potential audience (reception capability)
2) Paying audience (CD, books, movies)
3) Attentive audience (Reading for information)
4) Internal audience (Attention to particular type of content)
5) Cummulative (Overall reached audience)
6) Target audience (advertiser)
Who is behind the UGT?
Katz, Blumer, McQuail, Gurewich.
Mention at least three differences between the UGT and the perception of the audience being a mass
1) Audience being active >
Apply the core communication models to the different perceptions of the audience
Transmission:
- One-way communication
- Audience being passive in meaning-making process.
- Does not include feedback.
- Assumes that message is perfectly understood.
- Seing audience as a mass.
Interaction:
- Semi-active audience
- Feedback is needed
- Interaction between audience and media
Transaction:
- Perfectly active audience
- Message is delivered through a dialogue resulting in shared meaning.
- Only perfectly active in order to gain something from media (UGT)
Mention 5 kinds of needs gratified by the media
- Tension release: Escaping, diversion.
- Personal relationship: Substituting media for companionship
- Surveillance: Information helping audience member to accomplish something
- Affective: Emotionally stimulating
Who is behind the idea of the fraction of selection within the UGT?
Wilbur Schramm
Explain the fraction of selection
Expectation reward/effort required = frequency of activity
- Expectation reward: All the rewards we expect to get from doing something.
- Effort required: The effort/difficulty to gain these rewards.
- Frequency: How many times we end up repeating this action.
Suppose you are a campaign planner; Elaborate on the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign if your audience groups are addressed within the transmission model?
Weaknesses:
- One way communication to audience may lead to misunderstandings.
- Lack of understanding different groups within the audience
- Message can easily harm if not taking the preferences of the audience into consideration
- Your message will not be received, if the audience questions the credibility of it.
Strenghts:
- Because audience is assumed to be depersonalized and objectified we can define them in demographic terms (age, income, ethnicity, gender) without further investigation.
- Your message is assumed to be understood and received; People will accept and follow.
- If making a campaign with the intention of making people to act on it (an order) the transmission model is effective as it does not allow negotiation of the message.
Suppose you are a campaign planner; Elaborate on the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign if your audience groups are addressed within the transaction model?
Weaknesses:
- You have to observe and understand your audience (Observers paradox)
- May lead to shitstorms if audience is misjudged
Strenghts:
- Message is negotiated - you will have a bigger effect on the specific target group have knowledge about the specific group
- Audience is involved in meaning-making process
Mention three main assumptions of UGT
1) Audience is active
2) Media use is goal oriented
3) Audience’s choice of media depends on gratification
4) Media compete with others sources for need satisfaction
5) Audience is aware of own media use
6) Value of media content can only be assessed by audience
Explain Schroeder’s implication of respectively:
- When observing and when talking to an audience
1) Observing: Not possible without intruding their lives + affecting their behavior
2) Talking: Can not be sure that there is a mutual understanding as it derives from different social settings.
According to Schroeder three things should be considered regarding audience research; What are these things and what do they mean?
1) Reliability: Is the procedure of gathering and analyzing the data consistent and systematic
2) Representativeness: Are there enough evidence to state anything
3) Validity: How accurate has it captured the intended?
What does Schroeder say about finding the truth in audience research?
Audience research can never claim to find the truth about audience practices and meanings, only partial insight about how audiences use the media in a specific context.
What does Schroeder say about the change that is developing in the consumption of television?
Emergence of multi-set families in which each member has access to own choice of television; TV use has become more individualized whereas part of their consumption no longer has to be negotiated with other members.
Does the change in the consumption of television exclude collective uses of the medium?
No, collective uses of television is still important in some spaces of the household.
