Audience classification

 1) Media Factsheet

Read Media Factsheet 232 - Approaches to Studying Audiences. You'll find all our factsheets in our Media Factsheet archive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets. You can also access them online here if you use your Greenford Google login. Read the factsheet and answer the following questions:

1) How is audience defined in the Factsheet?

The audience is the general term for all the individual people who consume a media product.

2) What does the infographic for Gen Z in the age of Covid-19 suggest about the media Gen Z consumes? 

they have started or are consuming more since the outbreak

3) How do media companies target and measure their audience in the digital age?

Many media companies rely on the services of another organisation to tell them who consumes their products, and the companies that collect this data may be the host service in the case of a web or digital text, sales analytics, or a specialist company who collect data about who is purchasing print media or watching specific television programmes.

4) What did the NRS used to do and what does PAMCO do now? 

NRS: used to collect demographic information about the audiences of newspapers.

PAMCO: demographic information

5) How are demographics and psychographics defined in the factsheet?

Demographics at its simplest involves collecting relatively impersonal data about individuals and what they are consuming.

Psychographics, sometimes called lifestyle profiling, is sometimes considered to be a more subtle way of categorising media audiences.

6) Now read the rest of the fact sheet - we'll be studying these theories over the next few lessons. Choose one audience theory you think is interesting and explain why. 

gratifications theory, identities and the media

It was originally created in the 1970s to better understand the reasons why some people chose some television programmes over others.

• DIVERSION

Suggested that the media was used largely for escapist purposes.

• SURVEILLANCE

The media as a source of information about the wider world.

• PERSONAL IDENTITY

Using the media as a reference point for your sense of self, tastes and interests.

• SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

Connecting with others through your media usage.