Audience Manipulation

Audience Manipulation

The importance behind the audience; 

• Without an audience there is no point in a media product.
• There is always a target audience
• There is a primary target audience and a secondary target audience
• Its the audience who decide the success the of the media product.
• There are different types of demographics and psychographic types of audiences.

Key Theory - Albert Bandura - Media Effects

• What happens if you watch too much TV/Youtube/Video Games?
• Alters your perceptions on things, makes you understand biased ideologies. (Stereotypical Characters) 
• Changes your personality, if you watch a show you could try to be the character and 'if you watch too many horror films you're more likely to kill someone'
• If you play too many video games then you may not take life so seriously, example; Call of Duty will make you enjoy kill people online so it could reflect that into real life. 

• The effects model - AKA The hypodermic needle model.
• We as the audience are being brainwashed by the producers ideology which they're putting into the media product, and we cannot do anything about it as we are watching it and we are taking it into account. 

• Mass media is media that can be spread to mass audiences quickly and easily. 

• Advantages of this theory;
• Assuming that is true it can get important messages across. (propaganda)
• Educating people on what's going around them.
• Its very simple and easier to blame the video games rather than sociological issues. 

• Disadvantages of this theory;
• The theory doesn't work in the majority, we can watch shooting games and horror movie's and not kill someone, if you kill someone then its probably because there is something wrong and they are ill. 

Key Theory - George Gerbner - Cultivation Theory

Cultivation Theory is the idea that prolonged and heavy exposure to TV cultivates as in grows or develops in audiences a view of the world consistent with the dominant or majority view expounded by television

• Outline of Cultivation Theory;
• Television (and by extension other tools of mass media distributions) present a mainstream view of culture, ignoring everything else.
• In doing so, television distorts reality
• Heavy television users are therefore more likely to accept this edited and distorted view of reality.

• Advantages of this theory;
• 
  
• Disadvantages of this theory;
• Not everyone's the same and may be less influenced.
• It is so simplistic as it doesn't take in the idea of the complex human mind.
• We are now watching so much different types of channels, so there are so many more conflicting ideologies so we can't just focus on one ideology and be influenced by it. 
• Its distressingly similar to the effects model. 

Applying Cultivation Theory To Advertising 

• Women do the washing we see this through the women hugging the washing powder, and women should do the cleaning as there is no men seen in the advert at all, this is an ideology that is cultivated as we are not born with this ideology. 
• She is an archetypal housewife.
• Another ideology that has been cultivated is the fact that women want to clean and like to clean through the use of mise-en-scene we see this as she is smiling, there is also a romantic love between the housewife and cleaning. 

Hegemony

• Where one group wields power over another, not through domination, but through coercion and consent.
• Examples;
• Queuing
• Homework
• Stopping at a red light
• Letting others get off the train before you get on
• Putting disabled people before yourself (seat on the train)
• The school system
• We dont do drugs in public as we would get judged
• Wearing clothes 
• Patriarchal Hegemony
• Cultural Hegemony
• Hegemonic structures of class
• Political Hegemony 

• Hegemonic Power VS Non-Hegemonic Power 

Applying Cultivation Theory & Hegemony to Advertising

• Its presenting that slim women are beautiful and can wear what they want and do what they want.
• Being able to sit on a private terrace so they can be seen as rich and wealthy
• If these women were overweight the message of the advert would change completely and it would be a body message instead, they're attractive as they're thin/blonde, we know these women are sexually attractive because of how they look and by what they're wearing. 
• Showing coke is a seasonal drink that can be drunk in summer as it cools you down and gives you a feeling of relaxation, the image codes this sense of relaxation as both the women are laying down and chilling not having to worry about anything, the colour's are also light which connotates the purity and innocence of this sexualised image. 
• Attractive, young women who may be financially successful drink coke.