- Show knowledge of the changing media regulatory landscape and the shift towards globalisation– Firstly, the media provide an extensive transnational transmission of cultural products and, secondly, they contribute to the formation of communicative networks and social structures.
- How do industries target audiences? – Members of a target market exhibit certain similar characteristics, such as age, gender, geographic location or buying habits that make them more likely to buy a company’s products or services. Industries target these people because they are the most likely people to purchase or watch their product therefore different industries target them by using certain types of language and stories.
- Present your own CSP case studies (with institutional details) as illustrations and explorations of this issue – No offence is in English and is advertised on channel 4 targeting audiences who watch this channel who are from the UK. However, The Killing is in Danish but has English subtitles. By doing this, the industry is targeting multinational audiences making their product appeal to people viewing in different countries.
- Highlight Hesmondhalgh’s propositions for the way in which the media industry mitigate this ‘risky business’. – Hesmondhalgh believes that the media industry is a high risk business but he says cultural industries constitute a particularly risky business. The impossibility of predicting audience tastes coupled with the high costs of production and the affects of mass competition mean that the business of making commercially successful media is very difficult. (Media industry is a high risk business, impossible to predict audiences tastes and has high costs of production, hard to compete. Tastes change all the time, cannot guarantee success.)
- Touch upon Curran and Seaton’s arguments for a more diverse media landscape – Curran and Seaton
- Present your CSP case studies (with specific textual reference) as examples that either support or refute Curran and Seaton’s ideas.
- Coupled with some reference to audience theory– Stuart Hall explored how people make sense of media texts and claimed audiences were active not passive. An active audience engages, interprets and responds to a media text in different ways and is capable of challenging the ideas encoded in it.
- An active audience engages, interprets and responds to a media text in different ways and is capable of challenging the ideas encoded in it.
- A passive audience is more likely to accept the messages encoded in a media text without challenge and are therefore more likely to be directly affected by the messages.
| Preferred reading | When the audience responds to the ideas in the way the media producer wants them to. For a programme like The Voice UK or The X Factor this could be large scale audience voting and the purchase of the winning singer’s single. |
- Conclude your essay with a summative paragraph.
The Killing: Produced by Nicole Yorkin. Targets audiences globally, Swedish, Danish, America, British. (Netflix).
First episode aired: April 3, 2011
No Offense: Produced by Paul Abbott. National audiences in Britain.
First episode aired: May 5, 2015
Curran and Seaton are able to argue that the UK governement is partly responsible for the widespread domination of the media landscape by huge congomerates.
George Gerber’s Cultivation theory– the idea that long-term exposure of violent media will lead to a distorted view that the world seems more violent than it actually is. (audience theory.)
The Uses and Gratifications Theory– suggests there are certain reasons why an audience responds to different media texts:
| Reason | Description |
|---|---|
| Entertainment and diversion | Audiences consume media texts to escape from their everyday lives. They choose entertaining texts that allow them to divert their attention from the real world, perhaps by watching a fantasy film like Harry Potter or reading a fashion magazine like Vogue. |
| Information and education | Some media texts are consumed by audiences when they want to be informed and educated. Newspapers, news programmes and current affairs documentaries educate and inform. They help the audience to find out what is happening in the world. |
| Social interaction | Some media texts like The X Factor or I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here provoke interaction with the audience. Social media can now spark an immediate reaction and get people talking while the action is still happening. |
| Personal identity | Some audiences like to watch or read media texts because they can compare their life experiences with those represented in it. Audience pleasure comes from empathising and identifying with characters or content represented in them. Soap operas or lifestyle magazines can offer audiences this kind of enjoyment. |