Media – Audiences

Looking into audiences, how to categorise an audience, audience effects theories and consuming habits.

Categorising Audiences

There are many different ways of categorising audiences, there are theories on how to do this, and ways that they should officially be categorised, in this, I’m going to look at these different theories to help me decide exactly how I will do my magazine. Whilst looking at these theories, however, I will be looking at how effective they would be and if opinion should come into the theories, almost as if I will be able to decide what category my magazine should go into, based on my own opinion, the theories and ways of grouping audiences.

Ratings

Some things use a rating system, this has been used for a long time and is an easy way to see if things are liked by an audience, however, it does have it’s major downfalls. A criticism of this is that there are different audience markets, and so the same thing would not appeal to different audiences, also, with ratings, it only shows a number of people that have tuned in to watch something and so it cannot tell if a person has enjoyed the show, will continue watching it, etc. Another weakness with this is that is does not exactly categorise and audience, just sees if something has been watched by a number of people, it would though, show what kind of thing is popular.

Income/bracket status

Based on this theory, a way of categorising audiences is based on their ‘class’. Usually based on their income.This ranges from ‘upper-middle class’ people such as doctors, lawyers, bankers and other professionals all the way down to ‘people at lowest level of income’ such as those who are unemployed, students, pensioners or casual workers. The good thing about this as it gives us somewhere to start, however someone on a low level income could quite easily be interested in the same things as someone who is ‘upper-middle class.

Young and Rubicam’s four consumers

Eventually, the concept of ‘class’ became less fashionable and advertisers started thinking about audiences in different ways, the most well know was developed by the advertising agency ‘Young and Rubicam’ known as ‘Four consumers’.This theory is made up on ‘Mainstreamers’ that make up about 40% of the population who like security and belonging to a group, aspirers that want status and esteem of others and so want designers labels and live off credit and cash.There are also succeeders that have already got status and control, finally there are reformers who define themselves by their self-esteem and self-fulfillment.Again, this theory gives a basis for defining people, however, that isn’t to say one person may not be a mixture of two or more, depending on what part of media would be in question.

Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles

This theory is very similar to ‘Young and Rubicam’s’ theory, however, it offers a more sophisticated range of audiences, based on their “Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles”.This gives a huge range of potential audiences, such as: Actualisers, Fulfilleds , Achievers, Experiencers, Believers, Strivers, Makers and Strugglers.What makes this theory good, is that there is a lot of choice to pinpoint an audience, however, this could be a criticism as there is too much choice, and so you couldn’t appeal to a broader audience.

LifeMatrix

One of the latest theories to tackle ‘Audience’ is the ‘LifeMatrix’ that looks at, and defines ten audience categories in a way that looks at the person, not just their background.The ten categories are ‘Tribe Wired’ which are ‘Digital, free spirited, creative young singles’, ‘Fun/Atics’ which covers ‘aspirational, fun loving, active young people’, ‘Dynamic Duos’ meaning ‘Hard-Driving, High-Involvement couple’, ‘Priority parents’ referring to those who like ‘Family values, activities and are media strongly dominate’, ‘Home soldiers’ that are ‘Home-centric, family orientated and are materially ambitious’, ‘Renaissance women’ who are ‘Caring, active, affluent and influential mums’.

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Also, there are ‘Rugged Traditionalists’ that have ‘Traditional male values and a love of outdoors’, ‘Struggling singles’ who ‘Have high aspirations, low economic status’, ‘Settled elders’ that live ‘Devout, older, sedentary lifestyles’ and finally, ‘Free birds’ that are defined as ‘Vital, active, altruistic seniors’.This theory gives a great insight to peoples personalities, but it doesn’t quite cover everything, or it doesn’t define them (class, income, ect) clearly, and so could be inaccurate.

Counting The Audience

All aspects of media are made sure to be doing well and making profits, so they use different ways of making sure they are/will get(ing) a good reaction from the audience. For my print, a way that is commonly used to make sure things are selling is to measure their circulation (copies sold). They even have to know these figures accurately for advertisers, so they know what they are advertising into.

Influencing the AudienceHypodermic Needle

The most commonly known way (however most out-dated) of how an audience is affected in by following the ‘Hypodermic Needle’ theory which suggests the media is like a syringe that injects ideas into an audience, for example – Violent films influence violence.This theory is a reason behind films such as ‘The Exorcist’ originally being banned, however, there is no direct evidence to suggest films, or any other media provoke actions from people.This suggests to me, in making my print, that I may have to be careful in what exactly I put in my magazine, to keep it relatively child friendly.

Influencing the AudienceCultivation/Culmination

Because of the difficulty with proving the Hypodermic Needle theory, a new theory, a more refined one was created.This theory suggests not that films provoke something, but cause desensitisation towards specific things, such as violence. If constantly exposed to violence, then you do not find it as shocking, so may be more open to committing it.Again, it is still very difficult to prove this theory, but does not necessarily mean that it is false.Again, I could say I need to be careful with what I put in my magazine, or use it to my advantage with things such as advertisements.

The Audience as PeopleUses and Gratifications

This theory states that people don’t just view media for mindless entertainment, as people, we expect something from it, some gratification. The theory goes that we select media on what we are expecting from it to suit our own needs.People generally want to achieve four things from media, these four things are: Information, Personal Identity, Integration and Social Interaction and simply, Entertainment. This is criticised however, as we cannot always choose what we see, such as posters, as so we do not get what we want out of media a lot of the time. This shows to me that I will have to be clever in what I put, to try and appeal to all without upsetting people in what I put at the same time.

The Audience as People Audience as Individuals

This says nothing has one meaning, we all look at something and decode it in our own way, to give it a meaning, this is based on our personality, our gender, what mood we are in, where we are at the time, and so forth. There are said to be three groupings of audiences, and how they receive a text. Dominant reading – Suggests we have a strong reaction to something; for example, a McDonalds advert would make us hungry and therefore more obliged to buy a McDonalds as that is we perceive that a McDonalds is good, as they want us to.Oppositional reading – Refers to someone who does not get an advert, take McDonalds for example again; Someone who is -

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health conscious or a vegetarian, would not get this advert, as they won’t see it in the way McDonalds want them to. Negotiated reading – This looks at people who may see the McDonalds advert, and understand it in the way that McDonalds want them to, but also see other sides of the advert, so they may see that it would be tasty, but they see it is bad for them as well.This theory gives good insight into how to write a text for a magazine, to make it opinionated, but to try and make sure any point I am trying to make, is made in a clear way and any connotations it would have, I know about and want people to see.

In Conclusion

Overall, from all of my research on audiences, I have concluded that I can’t just base my ideas of how I will construct my magazine to fit my audience on one theory, I will need to take into account a lot of different theories, and pick out different pieces to try and come up with a way that will appeal to an audience well, and keep it consistent all the way through. However, I will mainly have to focus on a specific audience, but there will be secondary audiences. If I have a specific audience, then I need to try and create it, so the things I put are perceived in the way that I want them to be.