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MEDIA AUDIENCES
Introduction to Media & Society

Dr. Vincent Manzerolle
October 16, 2017
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Looking ahead…
• Week of October 23: midterm exam on Monday, labs do not run. 

Midterm information in separate slides – will be addressed later
today.
• Week of October 30: lecture with mandatory information literacy
workshop (for assignment #2), labs return.
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This week…
• Different perspectives on media audiences:
1. “Passive audiences” and relevant theories/concepts.
2. “Active audiences” and relevant theories/concepts.
3. The business side of audiences: “audience-as-commodity.”
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Media audiences as passive

Early “direct effects” communication research:
• Remember early twentieth century worries over war propaganda?
• “Magic bullet” theories of media and audiences = powerful,
direct, and unavoidable media influence.
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Media audiences as passive

Early “direct effects” communication research:
• This is the “violent video games cause violence” type of theory,
which gives no consideration to audiences.

Hypododermic Needle Theory

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Media audiences as passive

Early “direct effects” communication research:
• Although we have moved on, the academic field of communication
was founded on the notion of “mass audiences” – uneducated
vulnerable masses, easily manipulated by individual media
messages.
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Media audiences as passive

Early “direct effects” communication research:
• Questions We Must Keep Asking:
• To what extent are “masses” manipulated by media content?
• How much agency do we have to interpret the meanings in
media content?
• What allows us “negotiate” how we “decode” the meanings of
media content?
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One way to answer these questions is through the

concept of “Ideology.
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Media audiences as passive

Frankfurt School:
• Not actually a physical “school.” Instead, several intellectuals
that shared ideas about media and society. Names: Horkheimer,
Adorno, Marcuse.
• Many escaped Nazi Germany
• Broader than early “effects” research, because these intellectuals
look at the cumulative effects of being surrounded by mass media
and mass produced popular culture.
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Media audiences as passive

Frankfurt School:
• In the end, another pessimistic view of audiences. The writings
from these scholars consider how media integrate audiences into
the capitalist dominant ideology.
• As such, they offer a Marxist analysis of media focusing on the
importance of economic imperatives and structures in shaping the
content of media
• As well as how audiences are meant to understand that
content.
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Media audiences as passive

Frankfurt School (continued…):
• Important contribution: “the culture industry.”
• Art should inspire critical thought, but mass produced popular
culture subdues, pacifies working classes.
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Media audiences as passive

Frankfurt School (continued…):
• More specific arguments:
1. Homogenous, standardized, formulaic, predictable popular
culture does not inspire critical thought. Music that “hears for
the listener.”
2. Celebrity culture gives false hope to the exploited.
3. Amusement and comedy train people to accept their “beatings”
in life.
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Media audiences as passive

Frankfurt School (continued…):
• More specific arguments:
• Mass Produced for a Mass Audience
• Commodity like other industrial products
• EG “Genres” & “Stars”
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Media audiences as active

Birmingham School of British Cultural Studies:
• Developed by various British scholars in 1960s-1980s.
• Still considers how media and culture reproduce dominant
ideologies. Many of these thinkers were Marxist and/or Feminist
scholars.
• Focus on “Ideology”
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Ideology
• “Systematic body of ideas articulated by a
particular group of people.”
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Ideology
• “Masking, distortion or concealment”
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Ideology
• Conceals the reality of domination
– From those in power.
– From those being dominated.
• Texts and practices ‘reflect’ or ‘express’ power
relations.
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Media audiences as active

Birmingham School of British Cultural Studies:
• However, British Cultural Studies recognizes that audiences do not
uniformly accept dominant ideologies, and, subcultures can
manipulate and be subversive in the dominant culture.
• Ideology, defined by textbook as a “coherent set of social values,
beliefs, and meanings that people use to decode the world.”
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Media audiences as active

Birmingham School of British Cultural Studies:
• Active Audiences: How do we react to ideological nature of
messages?
• Three possible reactions to ideology:
• dominant,
• negotiated,
• oppositional.
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Buzzfeed quiz and gender ideology

• Ideological in terms of gender bias and double standard.

• Remember, three possible audience reactions to ideology: 

(i) dominant, (ii) negotiated, (iii) oppositional.







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Coming full circle

• From “active audiences” (ancient theatre),
to passive mass audiences (20th century mass
media/audiences), back to active audiences.
• Recall the concept of “convergence” from
earlier in January. Convergence also refers
to convergence of media creators and
audiences.
• While the notion of audiences
simultaneously being media creators is as
old as the internet, recent interest and
debate with live video streaming.
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Media audiences as commodities

• Media do not produce shows, content, etc.
• (Most) Media produce audiences to sell to advertisers.
• Audiences are attracted, packaged, and sold.
• The shows/articles/content are simply “bait” or “free lunch” to
attract audiences.
• Consider most of your own media habits. You are likely not the
“customer” – the advertisers are customers and you are the thing
being sold!
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The Audience as Commodity

• Goal is to seek out the “right” audience to pair with a
commercial message or product.
• Not all audiences the same.
• Content tailored to attract and maintain a particular type of
audience.
• Shapes the kind of content available.
 The Audience as
Commodity in the Digital Era
• Content is the ‘free lunch.’

• Apply to social media platforms?

• Platform as free lunch, user-generated content

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Media audiences as commodities

• Media attract audiences, but must also “package” and “sell” them
to advertisers. Media advertise to advertisers.
• Example of Cosmo (magazine) sales kit and “branding” the
audience:

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Media audiences as commodities

• When media produce these types of sales materials, they have
two goals:
1. Provide demographic data on audience. See textbook for
industry audience research methods and data.
2. Prove this audience is worth targeting with advertisements.
• “Knowing” an audience means knowing them only as consumers
with spending power.
• Further examples on next slides: Vice, Toronto Star, Globe and
Mail.
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Vice media sales kit: upload-assets.vice.com/files/2016/01/15/1452894236compressed.pdf

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Toronto Star media sales kit: thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/about/mediakit/

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Globe & Mail media sales kit: globelink.ca/mediakits/

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Media as gated communities

• “Right” (wealthy) audiences means there are, presumably,
“wrong” (everyone else) audiences.
• Given the business model of selling audiences, media must attract
the “right” audiences and turn away the “wrong” audiences.
• Media as gated communities, reinforcing social inequality on
numerous dimensions.
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Key concepts, examples, names

Concepts: Examples:
• Agenda setting • Fan studies (see box 5.3)
• Audience-as-commodity • Media audience sales materials
• Dominant, negotiated, and oppositional
• Early “magic bullet” theories Names:
• Ideology • Birmingham School of British Cultural
• Mass audience Studies
• Media as “gated communities” • Frankfurt School
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Midterm
• Format: 40 MC Qs
• 1 Hour Duration
• 2 Locations
• Last name A-L Room 200
• Last name M-Z Room 204
• (across the hall)
• Midterm study guide on BB
• Lectures + Readings
• Focus on ideas/concepts/examples emphasized in lecture
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QUESTIONS?