Blumler and Katz
Blumler and Katz describes an active audience (when an audience is engaging, interpreting and responding to media messages) and suggested that there are four basic uses and gratifications at work, these can include:
- Social relationships
- Personal identity
- Entertainment
- Information
When creating a piece of media, I will consider these four aspects to ensure it is succesful and relates to my audiences ideologies so they are part of the active audience towards my magazine.
Stuart Hall
Hall’s reception theory is a two stage process. The producer encodes ideology into a text and wishes it to be read in a particular way. The audience then decodes the text, but then they also bring their own ideology into the text. He also states that there are a range of factors which can cause an audience to read media differently, these four areas which impact this can include:
- Demographics (Who you are)
- Psychographics (Your values, attitudes and beliefs)
- Situated culture (How and where you consume the text)
- Cultural Competence (Your existing cultural understanding and experiences)
Below is a slideshow I created on the research I did on the website YouGov about artists of my choice
By researching three artists of our chosen genre, it enabled us to discover the most popular age, gender, politics (eg, if they vote conservative) and EU Referendum (leave or remain) of fans of the artists. I chose to research Arctic Monkeys, Florence and The Machine and The 1975. By doing this, it gives me a wider range of knowledge on what audience to aim my music magazine at, eg what age range or gender.
Below is a profile I created for my perfect audience member
After doing research on YouGov, I then created a tinder dating profile for my perfect audience member. I interpreted the demographics of the audience which were most popular on YouGov, which included their age, gender, location etc. I also considered their psychographics of the audience, for example, their hobbies, likes and dislikes and just what makes up their personality as a whole.
Reflection/Focus Forward
This task has allowed me to develop my knowledge and understanding on what will make an audience more attracted to my music magazine and how they will encode and decode it. Looking forward, when designing my magazine I will relate it to my target audiences ideologies and their preferred readings so I create a wider audience, which then will make my magazine more succesful compared to my competing magazines.