Audience Theory

2. In 1959, Blumler and Katz stated that
music videos are used for four reasons,
which are;
• Entertainment and Diversion
• Personal Comparison
• Personal Identity
• Surveillance
This theory suggests that media users play an
important role in choosing and using the media. The
theorists state that a media user seeks out a media
source that best fulfils the needs of themselves. The
idea of entertainment and diversion allows escapism
for the audience, so they can be engaged in some sort
of media and will be in their own world and can escape
from realism. For example, some people may play
videos games or may listen to music to get away from
the real world and to escape to their own world. The
idea of personal comparison demonstrates that media
is a friend who cares about the artist – which can
frequently be seen in Pop music. For example, artists
are able to communicate with their audience in a
range of different way as they could do this through
the use of their music videos as they may directly
address the audience by looking at the camera, but
also the artist could tweet a fan on twitter or like one
of their pictures on Instagram and this will
demonstrate a bond between the two people.

3. The concept of personal identity presents how an audience will fit into a certain group or
how they will present themselves to that group – this is in relation to both the audience and
the artist because the artist will have to ensure that they will fit into and look like they are a
part of the genre of music that they have been placed into. The audience will have to
ensure that they will fit in with the artist they are following and make sure they can relate in
some way. Lastly, the idea of surveillance allows the audience find out what is happening in
the world through the use of different medias. For example, if an audience read a magazine,
they are able to find out what is going on in the world in relation to certain artists and will
be able to find out more information about them whether it is personal things or anything
in relation to their music.

4. This theory was constructed by George Gerbner and Larry Gross in 1975 and is primarily about how
something is represented toward its audience. This theory was developed to check the long term effects
that television shows or any type of media shown on the television had on American audience of all ages.
The majority of this research came from a larger project known as ‘Cultural Indicators’ - the purpose of
the this project was to track the ‘cultivated’ effects on television viewers. The idea of the cultivation
theory is that audience consume media and gradually develop views about the world, some of which
could be false. However, this has an impact on the audience as it can often change their perception on
their understanding of representation including; gender, sexuality, young people and ethnic groups. The
main concept of this theory is to present that certain television shows and other media shown on the
television can have a great effect on the way that its audience views society. There are two key
components to this theory which are; ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘resonance’. The concept of ‘mainstreaming’
presents that through the use of continuous exposure to the same images and labels, the audience will
begin to become used to it and will see it all the time, hence the name ‘mainstreaming’. For example, if
someone was watching a lot of shows about murder, then they may begin to think that people around
them could be murderers or could resemble something similar. The concept of ‘resonance’ presents that
television viewers may be affected by what they are seeing as they may have been a witness of a murder
or have been a victim of violence – meaning that a viewer is often forced to relive their own personal
experience of violence or what they have witnessed through the use of a character in a television show.

5. This theory was generated by Stuart Hall in 1980 and states that audiences are
able to make sense of media texts according to their social position, which
includes; gender, age, class and their ethnic background. This theory is an
active audience theory which means the audience will receive information, but
they will also be actively involved in a way instead of only receiving the
information which is known as the passive audience theory. This theory
identifies the audience being actively engaged in the interpretation of media
texts rather than just consuming the text because different people will
interpret texts in a range of different ways.

6. This theory was constructed by Loren Coleman in 2004 and states that audiences are
influenced by the media texts that they consume which can often be perceived as a
negative thing. For example, if someone played a lot of violent video games or watched a
lot of violent films which included features like murders and suicides, than this could be
copied and the person playing these games or watching these films could decide to murder
someone or do something similar which they have witnessed in all the games and films
they have been playing and watching. The name ‘copycat’ and ‘modelling’ make this theory
quite obvious as the person will be copying or modelling what they have previously seen.
Furthermore, this is not always the case, however – this is often an assumption used by
journalists to explain an individuals negative behaviour because they do not understand
why else they would have done the act they had done.

7. The Long Tail theory was generated by Chris Anderson in 2006
and demonstrates how the internet has influenced audience
consumption. The concept behind this theory is that our
culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus
on a small number of ‘hits’ (mainstream products and
markets) at the head of the demand curve and is heading
toward a huge number of niches (niche audiences) in the tail.
As the cost of production and distribution begin to fall, there is
now less need to create physical versions of products as more
people will digitally get them. To summarise this theory, it
essentially presents how the introduction of broadband has
had an impact on the consumption of certain media’s.
The two images I have shown help represent this theory – the dinosaur
presents the head and the tail which makes it clearer when trying to explain
this graph and what it means. One of the ways you could explain the graph is
that the head of the of it is one shop that has around 50 customers and the
long tail could represent 50 different websites that each have one customer.
From this we can see that niche audiences are no longer economically
unviable and they people are more likely to purchase things that have a large
mass audience. This concept can be reinforced through the fact that 37% of
Amazon books are no longer sold on the high street as they only appeal to
niche audiences and there is no point stocking products in the shop if only
one person is willing to buy it.