12. Audiances

An audience is a collective group or individual that consume any type of media text. There are two main types of audiences, mass and niche.

Mass Audiences

A mass audience is a large group of people made up of many different social backgrounds. Films that usually have a mass audience are those such as James Bond or Harry Potter. Many films that involve superhero's, such as Batman and Spiderman, also have mass audiences. 

Niche Audiences

A niche audience is a small, select group with particular interests. Many arthouse films and for gain language films have a niche audience. 

Media texts are made with an audience in mind; the most important question in mind when considering a media product is ‘does this have an audience?’ If it doesn’t then there is no point in making the media product as it will not make a profit. As there is now more media technology, there is more competition between the mass media to attract the largest audience possible and make the most profit.

New digital technologies have had an impact on audiences. Old media, such as TV, print and radio, used to have a mass audience but now have to compete with new technology. Digital technology  has also caused increasing uncertainty to how we define an audience. A general agreement is that a large group of people watching the same thing is outdated and audiences are now fragmented.

A fragmented audience is the division of audiences into smaller groups caused by the variety of media outlets. 

An example of this is how Newspapers and CD's are now struggling as they can be downloaded online.

Katz and Blumer are theorist who have researched into  how people use media and they have came up with the Uses and Gratification theory. I have found this slideshare which shows an overview of what the theory involves. 

Uses and Gratifications Theory from shle

Audience Categories

Film companys want to target specific audiences that they know their film will apple to in order for them to gain the most product form their product. Most media products can define their typical viewer by using psychographic and demographic profiles.



Audiences are very important during the production of a film. Producers want their film to have a large audiences as smaller audiences mean smaller profits. They research into audiences audiences using methods such as, questionnaires, focus groups, pre-film screenings in order to find out who is interested in their film. 

Research methods

Film companies measure audaicnes by sales, subscriptopons, ratings, figures

National readership survey - http://www.nrs.co.uk/what-we-do/

The Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board - http://www.barb.co.uk/resources/reference-documents/how-we-do-what-we-do

New ways to measure aduances

Facebook/social networking

Views on youtube

Comment forums

Twitter trends

There are two different ways to research aduainces, quanitiave research and qualitative research.

Quantitate - This research is number based, used closed questions and is very factual

Qualitative - This analyses existing products, used open questions to allow interpretation and also used individual preferences, 

Aduaince engagement and expectations 

Engagement – this describes how an audaince interacts with a media text. Different people react in different ways to the same text

Expectations – these are ideas the audience have in advance of seeing a media text. This perticually applies to genre perices.

Audiences  foreknowledge and identification

Audaicne foreknowledge- this is definite information that and audaince brings to a media product

Audaince identification – this is the ways audiences feel themselves connected to a particular media text, in that they feel directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle

Audience placement – the range of strategies media producers use to directly target a particular audience and make them feel that the medaiu text is ‘specifically for them’.

Audience research – measuring an audience is very imporatanr to all media institutations. Research is done at all stages and once produced audiences will be continually monitored.