Revising Audience - Either Q2 or 3!

Revising Audience - Either Q2 or 3!

1. What do these key words mean?

   • Demographics
     • Measurable characteristics of media consumers such as age, gender, education and income levels.
   • Psychographics
     • A more sophisticated form of demographics that includes information about the psychological and sociological characteristics of media consumers such as attitudes, values, emotional responses and ideological beliefs.
   • Situated culture
     • The term for other factors that affect our interpretation of a media text such as daily lives, routines, relationships.
   • Cultural competence
     • ?
   • Active
     • The Active Audience theory argues that media audiences do not just receive information passively but are actively involved.
   • Passive
     • The Passive Audience theory argues that audiences merely observe an event rather than actively responding to it.
   • Encode and Decoding
     • The encoding of a message is the production of that so message
     • The decoding of a message is how audiences can understand texts and interpret the message.

2. For our key texts: Make sure you know...

   • How texts define their target audience/s
   • How texts construct their audiences
   • How texts target and appeal to their target audiences
   • How texts position their audiences
   • How different audiences respond to their same text differently

3. Let's try

   • 2a) Study the front cover for GQ magazine, Suggest two different audiences for this magazine. [4]
     • A primary audience would be regular readers of GQ, with a male dominated viewing between the age of 30-60 years old. A secondary audience could be fans of Clint Eastwood as they would only be interested in him.
   • 2b) Study the front cover for Saga Magazine aimed at people over 50. Explore how this audience has been targeted. [10]
     • The use of Michael Caine would attract an older audience as they can relate to situations in his life. The background is slightly wrinkled and used the colour white, which contrasts with Caine empathising his age. The pull quote from Caine, "I can't remember old people being terrified to go out", would also attract older readers as they would relate to the content. The smart dress codes from Caine, in which he is wearing a black suit, implies the article would be formal and sophisticated therefore appealing to an older viewing.

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