Macro Elements: Audience Theory

There are two distinct factors that contribute to target audience. Firstly is demographics, this is the physical difference between people  that would determine if they are within the target audience, such as age, gender, religion and ethnicity. On the other hand there is psychographics, which is the personal difference between people, such as interests, opinions, values and behaviour. 

Firstly, I looked at Stuart Hall's Encoding/ Decoding.

Hall's theory is based on the idea that all media text has a message from the institute that made it, being represented to the audience who have to decode the message, the audience based upon their opinion of the message fall into 1 of 3 categories.

Dominant Reading: Where the audience view the message as the institute intended.
Negotiated Reading: Where the audience agree with some parts of the text but disagree/ have their own views in other parts.
Oppositional Reading: Where the audience have a completely different view of the text than what the institute intended.

Next was Blumer and Katz Uses and Gratification Theory.
Blumer and Katz theorised that the audience are there to use the text and not the text to use the audience. What is meant by this is that the audience willingly consume the text for a pleasure.
E.g. People may willingly watch horror as they love the intense thrill.
People consume text for different reasons, such as

• Escapism 
• Diversion
• Information
• Counter Culture
• Comparing
• Sexual Stimulation