Audiences and
Attitudes
Learning Objectives
After reading the chapter, you should be able to:
1. Describe characteristics of audiences in the media
age
2. Identify the components of an attitude
3. Explain how persuaders use audience analysis in
creating their messages
4. Understand how audiences are measured using
polling, demographics, psychographics,
geodemographics, and ratings
Key Terms
 Narrowcasting
 Demographics
 Broadcasting
 Psychographics
 Attitude
 Focus group
 Belief
 Geodemographics
 Audience analysis
 Cookie
 Polling
 Ratings
 Segmentation
Audiences and Attitudes
 American media organizations are measuring and
analyzing audiences as never before
 You, and others like you, are assembled by
programmers and sold to persuaders
 Television networks seek to achieve high ratings
from advertisers interested in targeting their
messages to this lucrative group of consumers
 Persuaders understand audiences through
technology and use audience segmentation to
pinpoint ideal audiences for an advertiser’s product
The Audience in the Media
Age
 Media broadcast audiences are large, anonymous,
and able to circumvent persuasive messages
 Potentially millions of audience members reached
through television, print, radio, and the Internet
 Narrowcasting – targeting programming at small,
narrowly defined audiences allows persuaders to
reach their ideal audience
 Primary versus secondary audiences – secondary
audiences hear about, see, or read a persuader’s
message after it has initially reached the intended
(primary) audience
The Audience in the Media
Age
 Anonymity – persuaders communicate to unknown
audience members
 Tweets and e-mails make audience active participants
in a program
 Persuaders foster identification through creating
appearance of knowing the audience
 Taking control – audience members can create their
own messages and content independent of media
organizations
 iTunes
 Hulu
• Amazon.com customers interact
• Hypertext layout of Web pages
Audiences and Attitudes
 Attitude – an evaluative, learned, flexible
predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable
or unfavorable manner with respect to an object
 Attitudes are formed from three types of information
1. Cognitive – beliefs are ideas about what is true or
false
2. Affective/emotional information – based on how
something makes audience feel
3. Past behaviors – direct experiences lead to formation
of an attitude
Rokeach’s Five Types of Beliefs
 Type A: primitive, 100% Consensus – basic truths



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that are shared
Type B: Primitive, Zero Consensus –
incontrovertible, learned through direct experience
Type C: Authority – the faith we put in parents,
friends, authority figures
Type D: Derived – ideological (political/religious)
derived secondhand through identification with
authority
Type E: Inconsequential – matters of taste
Changing Attitudes
 Attitude of audience member is the linchpin to




changing audience behavior
Cognitively formed attitudes more easily changed by
affective information than new cognitive information
Affectively formed attitudes more easily changed by
cognitive information than new affective information
Attitudinal ambivalence – evenly balanced between
negative and positive
Apathy – absence of an attitude
Components of an Attitude
Attitudes are comprised of cognitive information, affective/emotional
information, and past behavior. An attitude is simply a behavioral
intention. It may or may not lead to an actual behavior by the
audience member.
Audience Analysis
 Audience analysis – the process by which
persuaders break down their audience into small,
observable units
 Persuaders learn about audiences in order to
communicate effectively to them
 Persuaders use audience analysis to create their
audiences
Adapting to Audiences
 Persuaders use a variety of ways to learn about
audience and then tailor message to change their
attitudes
 Example, a president uses polling data to determine
how receptive an audience will be to a particular
argument
Creating Audiences
 Persuaders create audiences that have attitudes
consistent with their message
 Persuaders assemble the right people to hear, read,
and see a message – often crucial to the
persuader’s success
 Politicians create target audiences by choosing to
focus on issues appealing to the audience
 Attorneys interview potential jurors and select those
sympathetic to their cause to create jury for trial
Polling
 Polling – the use of statistical theory to gauge
opinion of a larger population based on a survey of a
smaller representative sample of the population
1. Determine audience attitudes
2. Gauge effectiveness of the message
3. Use poll results as persuasive proof to demonstrate
acceptance of message
Polling
 Began in mid-1930s
 George Gallup – Institute of Public Opinion sampled
public opinion for syndicated newspaper feature
 Fortune magazine commissioned Elmo Roper to
conduct similar surveys
 Archibald Crossley – 1936 presidential election
surveys
 Functions
 Politicians test public opinion of issues
 Market research – evaluate persuasive campaigns
 Advertisers poll to find best advertisement
 Entertainment programmers poll to test potential
products – focus-group testing
Assessing Polling
 Approach polling with healthy skepticism
1. How informed are respondents about poll topic?
2. Is question wording loaded?
3. Random sample?
4. Poll results reported in an impartial manner?
Audience Segmentation
 Segmentation – divides population into units based
on demographics, psychographics, and
geodemographics to more precisely infer audience
attitudes
 Demographics – audience
analysis based on
 Memberships
 Age
 Ethnicity
 Sex
 Religion
 Race
 Income
Demographics
 Age
 Youth – purchasing power $211 billion in 2012;
have influence on parental purchasing decisions
 Baby boomers – 78 million reaching retirement;
control 70% of U.S. wealth
 Gender – women make or influence 85% of all
purchases
 Race – increase in minority and mixed-race
populations
 Sexual orientation – gays have more discretionary
income, live throughout U.S., likely to have children
Psychographics
 Psychographics – combines demographics with
audience attitudes, opinions, and interests
 VALS – Values, Attitudes, and Life Style – based on
idea that personality drives behaviors
 VALS profile based on (1)self-orientation and (2)
resources
 Innovators
 Believers
 Thinkers
 Strivers
 Achievers
 Makers
 Experiencers
 Survivors
Qualitative Analysis
 Focus groups – probe audience emotional
connection to a product, image, or idea to tweak
concepts and images used in commercials,
packaging, and product development
 Personification – respondent pictures company as a
representative character to indicate attitudes
 Concept mapping – product ratings graphically
represented in a map to show relationships between
products
 Collage – consumers use various photos or objects to
create themed visual representation of feelings and
concepts about a product
Geodemographics
 Geodemographics – shows where demographic
groups live
 Persuaders divide counties and cities into one-block
units to target their communication more narrowly
 Swing states – voters can go either way; political
persuasion efforts concentrated in these areas
Segmenting Internet Audiences
 Internet offers opportunity to understand and
segment online audiences
 Websites can determine software use, user location,
time spent on sites
 Cookies
 Retain ordering information
 Track site navigation
 Personalize Web pages
Ratings
 Ratings – measurements of media audiences by a
third party
 Print and broadcast advertising all sold based on
audience as determined by impartial third party
 Television – Nielsen ratings
 Ratings – percentage of all households tuned to a
particular show at a particular time
 Share – percentage of current television viewing
audience tuned to particular show at a particular time
Ratings
 Radio – Arbitron ratings
 Portable People Meter (PPM) – electronically monitors
radio listening and television viewing
 Print Media
 Based on circulation figures from Audit Bureau of
Circulation (ABC)
 Readership often considered rather than circulation to
consider multiple readers of publication
Ratings
 Internet audiences - Nielsen/NetRatings
 Sites visited
 Time spent on each site
 Frequency of online use