Introducing audience
Some people have seen media audiences as being easily manipulated masses of people
who can be persuaded to buy products through advertising.
- There have been many fears that the media can have an effect on the audience’s behaviour, for example acting more violently.
Historical Background
If you were living a hundred and fifty years ago photography, film, television,
radio and computers as we know them would all have seemed like fantasies.
- The media has an unprecedented power to affect us in negative ways. Many people go through the same things that are produced in the media, however don’t have anyone to tell them bad or good things about it.
The Audience as “Mass”
According to many theorists, particularly in the early history of the subject, when
we listen to our CDs or sit in the cinema, we become part of a mass audience in many ways
like a crowd at a football match or a rock concert but at the same time very different because
separated from all the other members of this mass by space and sometimes time.
Sociologist Herbert Blumer (1950): Herbert Blumer described mass media in 4 ways. Firstly he says that social strata play a part on mass media for example: it may include people of different class position, of
Different vocation, of different cultural attainment, and of different wealth.
Secondly Blumer says that the mass is an anonymous group.
Thirdly there exists little interaction or change of experience between members of
the mass. They are usually physically separated from one another, and, being
Anonymous, do not have the opportunity to mill as do members of the crowd.
And fourthly the mass is very loosely organised and is not able to act with the unity of
a crowd.
Defining audiences: the mass market
For many obvious reasons, media producers and institutions like to consider audiences in
groups.
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