Audience theory

Introduction

As seen in a previous factsheet, audience are crucial to the producers of media texts. Without an audience a TV programme, newspaper, magazine or film cannot be successful. Media producers think carefully about identifying their target audience and providing a text which will interest and engage them. However, the mass media is such a major part of people's lives that one of the major debates in media studies is the effect that the media may have on its audience. This issue focuses on the negative effects that may be created by media texts; for example, considering of there might be a link between violent behaviour and representations of violent behaviour and representations of violence in the media.

The aims of this Factsheet are to:
-Identify some theories of the way the media may affect an audience
-Support a critical engagement with the theories



1. Whilst some people do act violently, many do not and in today's culture it is almost impossible to avoid violent representations. This seems to support the view that the media does not directly cause people to act a certain way.



Manhunt

2. Advertisers spend millions of pounds promoting their products. The Marks and Spencer's food adverts have increased the grocery sales for the high street shop and encouraged customers to indulge themselves with the luxury items they  sell.



Not just food, but M&S food'

3. Viewing a documentary can provide access to information that may change the way you feel about an issue. It may even make you want to act differently, eat more healthily, join a political group or simply tell you friends

Telling Stories - The Media's Use of Narrative

The aims of thias Factsheet are to
-introduce and define the way conventional narrative structure is used in media texts
-discuss different uses of the conventional narrative structure
-provide example of media texts to demonstrate how narrative is used and its relationship with other media concepts

All media texts tell stories. the structure of these is called the narrative. The events in a story are called the plot but when narrative is discussed, it's the structure of the story rather than the events themselves that are focussed on. Certain genres of media text often use specific structures to tell their stories.

Conventional Narrative Structure
Conventional narratives follow the same basic pattern in terms of the way they construct a story.

The terms used by Todorov to define the three main parts of a narrative structure (the beginning, middle and end) are:
-Equilibrium - the balanced normawlity of the world of the story
-Disequilibrium - unbalanced world between the problem and the climax (see below)
-New Equilibrium - a return to normality at the end - returning the world to balanced state

The equilibrium and the new equilibrium are not exacly the same. The problems of the disequilibrium will have caused the world of the text to change in some way or the characters have learned lessons as the narrative developed.

This basic three point narrative can be looked at in more detail. This is sometimes called the narrative arc.