A media industry such as ITV will identify their audience
using a social demographic scale. This defines society into social classes
depending on the income of the person. For programs such as Downton Abbey the
main audience would be the retired person e.g. category E or upper middle class
A grade persons, as they would identify with the etiquette and honor. This
leads onto another way media industry’s can identify tier audience through Blumler and Katz ‘s gratification theory. They state that the audience watch
media in order to gain one or more gratifications from the standard five,
education, identification, escapism, social interactions and entertainment. For
example a pensioner may watch Downton Abbey in order to relate to past experiences
and also to be entertained by the scandalous storylines whereas a young person
may watch it to be informed of how life was like in the date of the program.
But the main routes in which the media industries identify their audience is
through race, geography, sex, sexuality, income, age and psychodemographics.
Danny Boyle’s ‘This Is England’ has been
specifically made for its target audience of late teens to middle aged working
class people. The use of costumes and make up is a real identity point as the
youth of today dress in a 90’s retro style so they will identify with the dress
sense as well as the freedom loving actors, the social interaction side of the
show is also a big lure as if you aren’t watching the show you’re the odd one
out on social media due to the 90’s scene. The middle aged audience will
identify with the costumes as it is what they use to wear themselves so will watch
it to see themselves being done justice and to see if there generation is being
properly represented.
Another way in which Danny Boyle identifies with
the target audience is through the use of storylines and emotions as the
involvement of drugs makes some characters lifes go down the wrong path so
therefore audiences maybe watching it to inform themselves about the wrong or
right route to take to escape troubles in there life.
The show touches on subjects such as sexual abuse and drug use,
which many young people out there can identify with, therefore making the show
increasingly attractive to the target audience.
The program also educates
the audience on previous ideologies and behaviors of this specific generation
by capturing the racist white supremacists in their prime. It educates the
audience on how not to behave and how wrong it is.
This Is England also uses sound to portray the audience as
the rave scene is an important anchor in the program to which the stone roses
and oasis play, the audience of young people can relate to this music and see
how much has changed as it is now house music that is at the raves not
alternative rock n roll. The older audience can just enjoy and reminisce to the
soundtrack. There are no real constraints on this program as it is past the
watershed. But as this is basically a feature length split up film the
guidelines are more relaxed than it would be for a normal TV program. Also the
audience for this is England will be prepared for harsh viewing, as there was a
similar previous film. The BBFC ordered the classification to be an 18 however
CAMDEN and WESTMINSTER councils have over ruled and classed it as a 15, due to
its racist violence and high levels of profanity throughout but the councils
thought it raised contemporary issues concerning racism and therefore needed to
be lowered to a 15.
An audience may understand a media product through being a
passive viewer which means they believe anything the media says or writes for
example if the audience were to young to remember to 90’s then they will just
believe anything they are told about it by Danny Boyle and generalize massively
to the whole 90’s society without thinking about whether it had been
exaggerated. This is usually done through the theory of the hyper dermic needle
or cultivation theory.
The audience can be a negotiated audience, which means they
are positioned in a way that allows them to be in control of what they believe
from the media e.g. disagreeing with a newspapers view on things such as politics
yet agreeing on other aspects such as sport views.
Oppositional reading is when the audience are in complete
disagreement with the medias message.
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