An audience could be many different things and be defined in many different ways. Usually we make generalisations about audience and not include ourselves as part of it, however, it is something we are very much a part of. Once we start analysing the concept, we see that 'it' is in fact not an 'it' but a collection of different things, depending on where you are standing, and why you're looking. The idea of audience is a way of trying to think about a group of individuals in one go, however big or small. In the term 'mass media', the 'mass' is us believe it or not. To aviod making making generlisations about this group of individual (the audience) we ask ourselves some questions: What is the media text without an audience? Is it the meaning in the text itslef, or is it in the relationship between the text and its audiences?
Media text are are always constructed with an audience in mind as they are made for us- the aucience.
There are some different views on what audience is:
- YOU!!
- A target market or a particular type of customer which a media producer wants to reach or sell to.
- A member/s of a society who might (at somepoint) use the media.
- A group of people who consume a certain TV show, film, magazine, advert,album, etc.
- Something you DO rather then something you ARE.
- Individuals who use the media to satisfy their own needs.
- People who passively consume the media without challenging it- a couch potatoe!
- A set of individual readers of a text who actively make their own meanings and respond to media.
- A group of others make generalisations about.
- There is no such thing as 'an audience!'
- A variety of different groups to which you belong. Foe example: gender, class, age, ethnicity, sexuality etc.
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