AUDIENCES

This work helps you understand how to write about audiences for your summer 2018 exam TV Comedy Institutions and Audiences. The second half of the exam is about TV channels, their brands, their products and their audiences. We pick 4 TV comedies and up to 4 channels as case studies to analyse in the exam.
Last week on Friday, we learned about the 'uses and gratifications' model of audience behaviour (Blumler and Katz, 1974) which positions audiences as active users of media texts. To remind you:

How do texts appeal to target audiences?

Now look at this video on audiences.

Another factor to consider is that audiences are different and this means that there are different reactions to the same texts. In fact, if audiences are active rather than passive, the texts themselves have different means for different audiences. This is called reception theory (the theory that people 'receive' different meanings from texts.)

We also looked at a more outdated model of audience behaviour, the media effects model. The clue to understanding and remembering this model is in its name 'effects'. This model positions the audience as passive rather than active (weak, easily influenced). MediaKnowall has a useful site summarising the different models of audience behaviour including the media effects model, also known as the hypodermic syringe model. 
We looked at a clip from one movie which has been cited in an infamous murder court case as influencing the violent behaviour of two convicted children. 
The debate is still open: what do you think about the claim that people (audiences) are influenced negatively by what they see on screens? Does it depend on the age of the viewer, that is, should children be more rigorously shielded as they are more readily influenced?