Identity and Audience 02 02 2015 Demographic groups age gender race occupation status Social roles family member greek life sports fan athlete customer Depending on different environments Cultural groups social values and interests that we share where do we come from Political and economic identities where they shop expensive vs non expensive are they democrat or republican Identities are complex Various overlapping learned and chosen All need to be understood TOGETHER if you want to see the WHOLE Media as tinted glasses person media What if all we know about some people s identities comes from the o Political candidates Identity category essentialist EX gender Identity category non essentialist o Categories are natural necessary universal unchanging o Categories are culturally constructed and relational o Have fluid dynamic meanings EX not natural or stable only make sense in relation to other categories change over time Essentialist challenge for media Work to ensure groups are represented accurately Non essentialist media challenge There is no way to accurately represent a group Principal issue How do media organizations and their content depict our identities to others and how do media organizations depict other s identities to us Media and identity Culture helps us determine these roles o Media part of that culture provides shared context Gesellschaft society vs Gemeinschaft community o Societies are independent of each other one main power source to set standards for living o Within the society we have different communities don t need a person leading necessarily in a confined space Media helps us see what we cant directly experience o We understand some of our roles by consuming media From identities to markets Media companies have different goals here o Dual markets consumers and advertisers o People are consumers and commodities o Media organizations use content to gather audiences and sell audiences to advertisers Predictability Business is better when people behave in predictable ways It helps media producers find out what content will be popular and therefore profitable What s a media producer to do Media consumers are complex so structure for audiences Audience interpellation Strategic construction of categories of people Conglomeration of potentially overlapping markets media needs people to be predictable o so complex identities are reduced to marketable groups or audiences interpellation hailed or addressed as o media addresses us by consumption types we adopt coke person or pepsi person o the more this happens the more they seem like real differences to us Identity and Audience pt 2 02 02 2015 Mass to Niche Mass audience had mass media Niche audiences o 20th century broadcasting saw a mass audience because we o Moe media outlets meant more competition for audience o Hence narrowcasting to segmented audiences o Divided people into homogenous consumer categories Niche audiences There is no mass audience Media programmers construct messages that appeal to niche audiences Constructing audiences audience segmentation Geographic oldest form newspapers radio local TV Demographic still useful but diminishing Social class a mix of characteristics income psych Geodemographic homogenous neighborhoods Psychographic VALS typology Processing media messages Media producers still need us to process by o Filtering o Sense making recognize symbols match our learned definition to the symbols o Meaning construction use skills of analysis evaluation grouping induction deduction synthesis and abstracting to incorporate meaning into knowledge structures Exposure and attention Exposure is FIRST o Physical be in proximity to message o Perceptual message stimulates senses o Psychological message leaves a trace element in the person s mind consciously or unconsciously Attention is SECOND o Encompassed within the idea of exposure a person cannot attend without expusure Processing Media Messages Processing media messages 02 02 2015 Automatic state o people s minds are on automatic pilot as they unconsciously process media messages o Automatic mental codes govern processing We do perceive the message but we to not think about it Attentional State Transported state o People are aware of messages and processing of them o Conscious awareness o People are swept away by the exposure experience and lose track of the difference between the real world and the mediated world o A powerful place for media Self reflexive state o People are hyper attentive o They do not consciously attend to the messages but are also acutely aware of how they are processing that information o A powerful place for the individual Where do media want us to operate Get past filtering Messages designed to overcome exposure barriers Ideal exposure state fluctuates o Mostly transported by content o Automaticity helps keep audience within message flow Attracting and conditioning audiences Media try to use niche marketing to achieve desired exposure states and processing tasks Appeal to existing needs and interests o We have narrow exposure repertoires 1 2 genres 5 8 channels o So producers make spin offs and sequels o Cross promote Automaticity o If attending keep attending and filter out other messages Flow through ads and show breaks o Match lead ins