Research: Audience Identification - Ms Begum

Audience Identification

Introduction

- Audiences are the assembled spectators or listeners at a public event such as a play, film, concert or meeting.

- In other word, audiences are groups of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature in which they are called ''readers'', music in which they are called ''listeners'', theatre in which they are called ''viewers'' and video games in which they are called ''players''.

- It is very important to know about audiences because the more you know and understand the background of your audience in which you targeted and their needs, the better you can prepare to meet their expectation in order to achieve a successful music video.

- Audience research is essential any media production such as questionnaires, focus groups, and comparisons to existing media texts.

 

How might some audiences be categorised?

- Some audiences might be categorised to be more suitable for the area that they belongs to in the purpose of being protected from harmful and inappropriate moving images that could harm them. This is also beneficial for the artist as it will be more clear for them to target their audiences that are appropriate for their productions. 

- For instant, audiences can be categorised into different age groups and gender. It is important for audiences be categorised into different age group so that artists can clarify which age group they are aiming for and at the same time protecting children from seeing inappropriate images from music genre that contains controversy features such as diverse music or wearing very little clothing from the hip hop genre. 

Advantages of categorising audiences

- Have an idea of what type of people they are interested in.

- Can make their content suit with the audience interests.

- Know what sort of products they would buy, based on how much have have to spend.

- Use the information to encourage companies to advertise on local radio station.

Disadvantages of categorising audiences

- It doesn't consider that people are different despite having a similar job.

- It doesn't consider people's interests, just their income and status.

Different genres have different audiences.

- As mentioned in the sub-heading, different genres have different audiences. This can includes age, gender, ethnicity and occupation.

- For example, the hip hop genre tend to attract a mainstream audience which includes young teenagers and young adults. This is because of the content of the music plus music videos is suitable for the young ages where they can familiarise themselves with the lifestyle and learning to be adult plus enjoying their life whilst they are young.

- Whereas, Opera music tends to be more appealing to people that have high income and at their late adults due to the music containing glamorous features and is suitable for the royalty.

Audience reaction in relation to Goodwin, Dyer and Hebdige

Goodwin: Audience expectations

- ''These are the advance ideas an audience may have about a text. This particular applies to genre pieces. Don't forget that the producers often play with or deliberately shatter audience expectations''.

Dyer: Audience identification

- ''This is the way in which audiences feel themselves connected to a particular music video/artist, in that they feel it directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle''.

Hebdige: Audience engagement

- ''This describes how an audience interacts with the music video. Different people react in differemt ways to the  same text''.

As a spectator, I think that all audience expectations, identification and engagement applies to what Goodwin, Dyer and Hebdige say in term of their theories and what they have stated about audiences. This is because all three theorist provides the criteria for artists to target their audience plus knowing and understand everything about them first before making a production which can be suitable and appropriate at the same time meeting their expectations for the audience to watch.

Conclusion

- All the information above has helped me to gain a better understanding into how the audiences are being categorised plus the advantages and disadvantages of it. I have also learnt to understand more about audience identification and that audience research is essential to any media production.