Discourse Audience

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There are two types of audiences, the mass audience and the niche audience. A niche audience is a small, select group of people with a very unique interest. Mass audience is often termed as ‘broadcast audience’ and is a very large group of people that media producers target to be profitable. “The audience is seen as a large collection of people scattered across time and space who act autonomously and have little or no immediate knowledge of one another.” (James H. Webster 1998). James Webster definition of mass audience is very interesting because the thought of audiences is less settle than ever before. We can categorise audiences by place, people, the channel involved, time, age, gender etc. In this essay I will discuss how Webster’s definition …show more content…
This audience is for people that have an uncommon passion that other people do not like or is not what they are interested in. Horror films can be a great example for niche audience because horror films are fitted to an exact type of audience and may not be enjoyable for many people. In the past and up to this point, we consumers were treated by media as one and that everything fits for all. However, the truth of the matter is that we are all people with individual objective, and consumption is a method to achieve our goals. Nowadays, niche audiences can be very profitable for media industries but first they must understand the market opportunity and the consumer. However, can the audience size influence what people talk about and share? A research from Alixandra Barach and Jonah Berger based on that question, shows as that when people are broadcasting (talking to a numerous people) they share information of themselves to make their self identity look good and when people are narrowcasting (talking to one person) they share more useful information to each …show more content…
This model proposes that society need more than just the market system because the market revolves around the power of the consumer to purchase. It raises the argument that profit should not be the lone need of media industries. As a substitute, public sphere contends other public concerns like the difference between people and substance. Media industries can very easily manipulate a consumer to buy their product or watch their product. Certain audience theories can verify the point that I am raising. Audience theories are concerned on how people interpret messages. One of the theories is the hypodermic needle model. The theory claims that the audience has no role in clarify the text, believing that audience passively receive information transmitted via media text and that the message is entirely accepted by the audience. This is what media call as passive audience. The problem with this theory is whether every response the same to those media text or not. This brings me to the reception theory. This theory says that the encoder puts a message in the media text according to his own experiences and views of things but the decoder receives that message from his own views and ideals. Different people see different meanings in media texts. The uses and gratifications theory says that people watches different things because they get certain things out of it. This is what we
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