Audience Identification

Introduction to Audience

• Section A 
• Analysing media language and representation.
• Section B 
• Analysing media industries and audiences. 

The only reason a media product exists is due to money, if the media product doesn't receive money then the product doesn't exist. Audience reactions construct a media product. 

• Target Audience
• The audience who the producer is aiming to. 

• Primary Audience 
• The specific group the producer is targeting their product at (first audience)

• Secondary Audience
• The second specific group the producer is targeting their product to. 

T.A.P - Text, Audience, Producer

Producer - Encodes Text - Text - Decodes Text - Audience

Key Words;

• Targeting
• Certain type of people who the producer wants the media product to aim at.

• Attracting
• The type of people that are actually interested in the media product.

• Reaching
• The ability to obtain a wider audience.

• Addressing
• The way that the media product is written / talks to their specific target audience. 

• Constructing 
• The audience itself, it constructs the audience's thinking.
• Eg. Female's smoking are not prostitutes. 

The Last Of Us - Video Game Advert 

• The dark gloomy mise-en-scene attracts the male audience.
• The target audience is young adult males, due to the props of the guns also the setting is old and abandoned and run down.
• The woman is based as a strong character, she is holding a gun, it is also challenging stereotypes of women as she is carrying a gun. 
• The relationship between the two characters is very maternal and not sexual. 
• Proairetic/Hermeneutic codes, dutch angle so we know something is going to go wrong so there is a sense of mystery and the unknown. 
• Hermeneutic code - how did they get there, what is the characters relationship, what happened to the setting. 

How do we break down audiences?

• Sex
• Gender
• Ideology (Beliefs)
• Religions
• Age
• Interests and Hobbies
• Class
• Location

Demographics 

• Putting people into groups in terms of class, it is a way in classifying and identifying people and is based on essentially numbers. Example of chart;

• Problems with this stratification; 
• It is not very well defined, as some people may have a high up profession but not get much money. 
• It is an unfair system. 
• Some students could make a lot of money.
• Too reductive, reduces people to an extremely small group. 
• Doesn't tell you much about the audience. 

Psychographics

• The classification of people according to attitudes, aspirations and other psychological criteria. 
• Aspirers; People who want to appear rich and attractive
• Reformers; People who want social change 
• Explorers; Adventurous people who like to take risks
• Mainstreamers; People who follow the crowd
• Strugglers; People who find it hard to achieve 

Mcdonalds Pickles Advert

• The setting is full of flats and council houses which suggests they are working class. 

• We get the idea that Mcdonalds is a loving place as when the man walks in there the lighting is extremely bright and high key and the staff are smiling whereas when he goes to the corner shop and they're all down and the lighting is very dull and gloomy.