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Since audiences are active consumers of the media, narrowing your focus to certain demographics can help you deliver your brand message or sell your product. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is one approach to defining the audience and how they engage with a text.
It is very relevant to advertisers, and institutions that carry advertising – newspapers, cinema, television and radio stations, social media
Maslow’s upper levels at the top of the pyramid are all about self-esteem and gaining the respect of others. This can be linked to the idea that consuming particular media texts or buying certain products fulfills self-esteem. In practice, Maslow is suggesting that if you buy a new pair of sneakers of the right brand, as advertised, then you will feel better about yourself, because you have the respect of other people.
The earliest idea was that a mass audience is passive and inactive. The members of the audience are seen as couch potatoes just sitting there consuming media texts – particularly commercial television
It was thought that this did not require the active use of the brain. The audience accepts and believes all messages in any media text that they receive. This is the passive audience model.
This theory also treats the audience as passive. It suggests that repeated exposure to the same message – such as an advertisement – will have an effect on the audience’s attitudes and values. For example, if we watch lots of crime shows and see reports of public disorder on the news bulletins every night, we will begin to worry that violence is having a dangerous impact in our own neighbourhoods.
This theory assumes a slightly more active audience. It suggests messages from the media move in two distinct ways.
First, individuals who are opinion leaders, receive messages from the media and pass on their own interpretations, in addition to the actual media content. The information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience, but is filtered through the opinion leaders, who then pass it on to a more passive audience.
The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media, with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders. They are not being influenced by a direct process, but by a two-step flow.
This newer model sees the audience as individuals who are active and interact with the communication process and use media texts for their own purposes. They are producers and consumers.
We behave differently because we are different people from different backgrounds with many different attitudes, values, experiences and ideas.
This is the active audience model, and is now generally considered to be a better and more realistic way to talk about audiences.
This model stems from the idea that audiences are a complex mixture of individuals who select media texts that best suits their needs – this goes back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
The users and gratifications model suggests that media audiences are active and make active decisions about what they consume in relation to their social and cultural setting and their needs.
This was summed up by theorists . This means that audiences choose to watch programs that make them feel good (gratifications), e.g. dramas and sitcoms, or that give them information that they can use (uses), e.g. news or information about new products or the world about them.
Reception Theory is an active audience theory that looks at how audiences interact with a media text taking into account their daily life.
This theory was put forward by Professor Stuart Hall and suggests that social and daily experiences can affect the way an audience reads a media text and reacts to it. Hall suggests that an audience has a significant role in the process of reading a text, and this can be discussed in three different ways:
The internet has opened up new ways to receive and interact with information. We can ‘read’ texts that are downloaded to our computers, or mobiles, or watch TV-on-demand . We can access music and film wherever we are with an Internet connection. We have access to media 24/7.
A prosumer - people who produce many of their own goods and services, a term coined by futurist Alvin Toffler. It applies to the fact that we can create our own media and contribute, generating our own audiences. The real power of the audience seems to lie in being able to take part in a media text.
In the realm of New Media audiences are creating their own distribution systems without mediation from institutions or companies. Websites such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to name a few offer new possibilities for audiences. New technologies have changed how music is made, there’s no longer a need to spend money on renting a professional studio for a few hours at a time, you can create and publish music from your bedroom.
Social media websites take the underlying idea of the prosumer, and use it in a way that both benefits the producer and the consumer. While they are may be provided with a pre-produced product, the prosumer still feels as if they are in control because they are the ones providing the content. We are seeing a merging of the old and new relationships between the author and the audience, as each party still holds a traditional role, while at the same time venturing into new territory.
