Audience

Julian Mcdougall (2009) suggests that online age is getting harder to conceive a new media audience as a stable, identifiable.
An audience can be described as a "temporary collective"-group of people who would of moved on in time. McQuail 1972.

Key terms:
Mass & mainstream/Niche/Alternative

Audience - without it a product is meaningless

• Gender
• Dermonphic/socioeconomic status
• Age
• Niche/Alternative

1900's audience was cleary defined but nowadays audience is a lot harder to define.

2 or 3 different newspapers

People tend to consume stuff that reinforce their own belief system. (by watching/watch media)

BBC - main objectives are to Educate, Entertain and Inform. The TV licence pays for the BBC because the BBC is a public service broadcast.

Historically (until the 19th century) the term 'popular' was quite a negative thing with overtones of vulgarity and trivality something not 'nice' or 'respectable'.

In the modern world, the terms 'widespread' liked or at least encountered by many people. It has also come to mean 'mass-produced' i.e made for the 'mass' of people. There is a downside to this of course in that it can also be interpreted as 'commercial' or 'trashy'.

Another definition of 'popular' is literally 'of the people' a kind of 'folk' culture and this is an interesting area, because it encompasses the idea of an 'alternative' culture which includes minority groups, perhaps with subversive values.

The 'indie' music scene is an example of this. So 'popular' culture can and sometimes does challenge the dominant cultural power groups.

Hegemony - ideology presented as natural common sense.

Len Ang (1991) detailed that media producers have an imaginary entity in mind before the construction of a media product.

"Audiences only exist as an imaginary entity, an abstract, constructed from the vantage point of the institution, in the interest of the institution".

John Hartley (1987) "Institution are obliged not only to speak about an audience, but crucially for them - to talk to one as well; they need not only to represent audience.

Hartley also suggests that institutions must produce "invisible fictions of the audience which allows the institutions to get a sense of who they must enter relations".

Audience Demographics

The magazine instestry use National Readership Survey (NRS) in order to help detail the demographic audience (most consumer magazines have a target relationship of ABC1)