Matakuliah
Tahun
: Sosiologi Komunikasi Massa
: 2009/2010
AUDIENCE
Pertemuan 4
• Define the audience
• Reflect on the media’s view of the audience
• Consider the various ways in which the audience has been imagined by academic
research
– varieties of cultural pessimism, ‘liberal-pluralist’, ‘encoding/decoding’, media
ethnography
• Consider how different theories, methods and concepts shape our understanding
of the media audience
Bina Nusantara University
3
Defining ‘the audience’
C14th -15th ‘the act of hearing’; a formal or judicial ‘hearing’ (the court of audience); a
formal interview with a superior (‘granted an audience’)
C 17th – 18th – those physically, and collectively, present at a sermon, speech or
theatrical production
C 19th -21st – consumers of ‘mass’ forms of communication
From New Keyworks: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Bennett et. al
2005.
Bina Nusantara University
4
The Audience
• Who Is In the Audience?
– Mass media distinguished from other social
institutions by necessary presence of audience
– Identifiable, finite group or a much larger,
undefined group
Bina Nusantara University
5
The Audience
• The Segmented Audience
– Increasingly, media market themselves to a
particular audience
– The role of audience members as opinion
leaders intrigues social researchers
Opinion leader: someone who, through day-to-day personal
contacts and communication, influences opinions and decisions
of others
Bina Nusantara University
6
The Audience
• Audience Behavior
– Response often influenced by social
characteristics:
• Occupation
• Race
• Education
• Income
Bina Nusantara University
7
The media’s view of the audience
•
•
•
•
•
Measuring the size and composition of audiences
Quantitative methods and indicators
Nielsen (US) BARB (UK)
Qualitative methods to gauge meaning and reaction
The audience a product made by the commercial media to sell to advertisers
Bina Nusantara University
8
Approaching audience research
‘The history of academic research in this field is best characterised as a continuing
dialogue between perspectives which stress the power of the media over their
audiences on the one hand, and perspectives which stress the active dimension of
how audiences respond to the messages they receive on the other’
(Morley in Bennett et.al 2005: 10)
Bina Nusantara University
9
The audience 1) Cultural pessimism
Media producers
(state or industry)
•
•
•
•
Media audience
Hypodermic model
Critical Marxist accounts (Frankfurt School) – culture as industry & explotation
Effects tradition (social conservatism?)
One-way process – passive audience
Bina Nusantara University
10
The audience 2) ‘Liberal-pluralist’
sender
(other factors)
message
(other factors)
receiver
From Livingstone in Gillespie (ed) Media Audiences
• Media communication is still one-way but other factors can get in the way (Katz
and Lazersfeld 1955)
• Influence, rather than effects – ‘two-step flow’
• Audience is selective.
• ‘Uses and gratifications’ – company, distraction, the relief of tension, catharsis,
social solidarity, education
Bina Nusantara University
11
The audience 3) Encoding/Decoding
Programme as
meaningful discourse
Bina Nusantara University
Encoding
Decoding
Meaning structures 1
Meaning structures 2
Frameworks of Knowledge
Frameworks of Knowledge
Relations of Production
Relations of Production
Technical Infrastructure
Technical Infrastructure
12
Encoding/Decoding
• Media messages are ideological
• Textual analysis & audience analysis (Morley, Nationwide)
• Negotiation – or struggle – between
– dominant
– negotiated
– oppositional readings
• Hegemony (Gramsci)
Bina Nusantara University
13
The audience 4) Media ethnography
•
•
•
•
Inspired by feminist accounts of the media audience
The politics of pleasure
Uses of media in everyday life
Qualitative accounts – meaningfulness of audience engagement (Dallas, The
Young and the Restless)
Bina Nusantara University
14
Conclusion
• Media industries operate with a particular vision of their audience.
• Audiences are ‘made’ through
– Research methods (quantitative and qualitative)
– conceptual approaches to society (liberal-pluralist, Marxist, feminist)
• ‘The audience’ does not exist!
Bina Nusantara University
15