Media Audiences

What Media Audiences covers

Media Audiences is examined in both written papers — the four areas of the theoretical framework and the contexts run through every section of the course, and are applied to whichever set products a centre has chosen. It covers demographics, social grade and audience profiling; psychographics and lifestyle categories; targeting, mode of address and the constructed audience; marketing, distribution and circulation as routes to the audience; mass, specialised, niche and fan audiences, nationally and globally; and changing patterns of consumption. It also covers uses and gratifications and cultural capital, the effects tradition and moral panics, Bandura's social learning theory, Gerbner's cultivation theory and mean world syndrome, Stuart Hall's encoding and decoding, Jenkins on textual poaching and participatory culture, Shirky on the end of audience and cognitive surplus, how social, cultural and historical circumstances shape readings, and user-generated content and citizen journalism.

The 16 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

• Demographics, social grade and audience profilingRecall questions on demographics and target audiences, the National Readership Survey social grades from A to E and the ABC1 grouping, media packs and advertising rates, ratings data, and the audience sold as a commodity.Open →
• Psychographics, lifestyle and taste categoriesRecall questions on psychographics and how they differ from demographics, the Mainstreamer, Aspirer, Succeeder, Explorer, Reformer, Resigned and Struggler of the 4Cs typology, taste cultures, and the weaknesses of lifestyle categories.Open →
• Targeting, mode of address and the constructed audienceRecall questions on mode of address and direct address, interpellation and audience positioning, inclusive language and brand identity, how a product constructs its audience, and the audience as described by ratings and analytics.Open →
• Marketing, distribution and circulation as routes to the audienceRecall questions on distribution and circulation, teaser campaigns and trailers, synergy and cross-media promotion, viral and influencer marketing, release windows and day-and-date release, targeted digital advertising and exclusive content.Open →
• Mass and specialised audiences, nationally and globallyRecall questions on mass and specialised audiences, narrowcasting and the long tail, public service obligations to minorities, diaspora audiences, geo-blocking and glocalisation, travelling formats, and subtitled drama on streaming services.Open →
• Niche and fan audiences and their value to media organisationsRecall questions on niche audiences and fandom, how fans generate revenue and market a product unpaid, brand loyalty, cult texts, hidden details for close viewers, fan feedback as research, and why retention matters to subscription services.Open →
• Media technologies and changing patterns of consumptionRecall questions on convergence and smartphones, time-shifting, on-demand viewing and binge-watching, second screening and live hashtags, algorithmic recommendation, filter bubbles and echo chambers, consumption data and podcasting.Open →
• Uses and gratifications, identity and cultural capitalRecall questions on the uses and gratifications approach, Blumler and Katz's diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance, criticisms of the approach, cultural and subcultural capital, and media consumption as identity work.Open →
• The effects tradition, the hypodermic model and moral panicsRecall questions on the hypodermic needle model, desensitisation and catharsis, two-step flow and opinion leaders, reinforcement, agenda setting, moral panics, folk devils and deviancy amplification, and Gauntlett's critique of the effects model.Open →
• Bandura, social learning and media modellingRecall questions on Bandura's social learning theory, observational learning and its four processes, vicarious reinforcement, the Bobo doll study and its criticisms, direct and socially mediated pathways of influence, and copycat violence.Open →
• Gerbner, cultivation and mean world syndromeRecall questions on Gerbner's cultivation theory, content analysis and heavy viewers, mean world syndrome, mainstreaming and resonance, first-order and second-order effects, how it differs from the hypodermic model, and its criticisms.Open →
• Hall, encoding, decoding and the three reader positionsRecall questions on Stuart Hall's encoding and decoding model, preferred meaning, the dominant-hegemonic, negotiated and oppositional positions applied to advertising and news, Morley's audience study, and the criticisms of the model.Open →
• Jenkins, textual poaching and participatory cultureRecall questions on Jenkins's textual poaching and its debt to de Certeau, participatory culture, collective intelligence and fan wikis, convergence as a cultural process, transmedia storytelling, spreadable media, fan fiction, and the criticisms of his account.Open →
• Shirky, the end of audience and cognitive surplusRecall questions on Shirky's end of audience argument, filter then publish and publish then filter, mass amateurisation and its four motivations, cognitive surplus and Wikipedia, and the challenges of participation inequality, the digital divide and Curran and Seaton.Open →
• Different readings and their social, cultural and historical circumstancesRecall questions on interpretive communities, how class, culture, generation and nation shape readings, why older products can read as offensive, reading historically, aberrant readings and satire, audience testing, and the limits of media power.Open →
• User-generated content, citizen journalism and the audience as producerRecall questions on user-generated content and prosumers, the strengths and weaknesses of citizen journalism, weakened gatekeeping and verification, crowdsourcing, live audience participation, hashtag activism, and independent creators' reliance on platforms.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Media Audiences further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Cultivation vs Hypodermic model

  Cultivation: the slow, cumulative shaping of a heavy viewer's sense of what the real world is like, built from patterns repeated across years of television. Hypodermic model: The claim that a media message is injected directly into a passive audience, who all receive it in the same way and act on it.

• Uses and gratifications vs Reception theory

  Uses and gratifications: the active-audience approach arguing that people choose media to satisfy needs of their own: surveillance, personal identity, social interaction and diversion. Reception theory: Hall's account of how an audience decodes an encoded message, taking a dominant, negotiated or oppositional position towards the meaning the producer intended.

• Demographics vs Psychographics

  Demographics: groupings of an audience by measurable social facts such as age, gender, income, occupation, education and region, describing who a person is. Psychographics: Groupings of an audience by attitudes, values, aspirations, personality and lifestyle, describing what a person believes, what they want and how they choose to live.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What does the term demographics mean when a media organisation profiles its audience?

   Model answer

   Demographics are the measurable social characteristics used to sort an audience into groups, such as age, gender, social class, income, education, occupation, ethnicity and region.

2. 2

   Name the three demographic categories media industries most commonly use to group an audience.

   Model answer

   Age, gender and social class are the three categories used most commonly.

3. 3

   What is the National Readership Survey social grade system?

   Model answer

   It is a classification that places a household in grade A, B, C1, C2, D or E according to the occupation of its chief income earner.

4. 4

   Which occupations fall into social grade A?

   Model answer

   Grade A covers higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations.

5. 5

   Define the social grades C1 and C2.

   Model answer

   C1 covers supervisory, clerical and junior managerial workers, and C2 covers skilled manual workers.

6. 6

   Which groups make up social grade E?

   Model answer

   Grade E covers casual and lowest-grade workers, state pensioners and people dependent on state benefits.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Media Audiences revision questions

What does Media Audiences cover in OCR A-Level Media Studies?

16 subtopics: demographics, social grade and audience profiling, psychographics, lifestyle and taste categories, targeting, mode of address and the constructed audience, marketing, distribution and circulation as routes to the audience, mass and specialised audiences, nationally and globally, niche and fan audiences and their value to media organisations, media technologies and changing patterns of consumption, uses and gratifications, identity and cultural capital, the effects tradition, the hypodermic model and moral panics, bandura, social learning and media modelling, gerbner, cultivation and mean world syndrome, hall, encoding, decoding and the three reader positions, jenkins, textual poaching and participatory culture, shirky, the end of audience and cognitive surplus, different readings and their social, cultural and historical circumstances and user-generated content, citizen journalism and the audience as producer. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Media Audiences organised?

By the OCR H409 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.