What an audience is

Overview

Audience, in media study, mass audience and niche audience.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is meant by an audience, in media study?

   Model answer

   The people who receive, use and make sense of a media product, considered as a group with characteristics a producer can address.

2. 2

   Why is audience a constructed category rather than a natural one?

   Model answer

   Producers define the group they want and then address it, so the audience is partly brought into being by the product that speaks to it.

3. 3

   What is a mass audience?

   Model answer

   A very large, dispersed and largely anonymous audience for one product, of the kind broadcast television and national newspapers were built for.

4. 4

   What is a niche audience?

   Model answer

   A small audience defined by a shared interest, taste or identity, which a product can serve precisely rather than broadly.

5. 5

   What is a specialised audience?

   Model answer

   One brought together by a particular interest or need rather than by demographic similarity, such as the audience for a hobby magazine.

6. 6

   Why has the mass audience become harder to reach?

   Model answer

   Distribution has fragmented across channels, platforms and on-demand services, so no single transmission reaches everyone at once.

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