Audience Research

Hartley (1987) claims that the fabrication of the ‘audience’ is perpetuated by media industries and media academics for their own purposes: ‘in all cases the product is a fiction which serves the needs of the imagining institution. In no case is the audience “real”, or external to its discursive construction’.

Here Hartley is stating that the audience is controlled by those that distribute media products so that they can convince the audience into their ideology and therefore control them. This shows that the audience is therefore passive and simply believes everything that the institution sells to them without looking beyond what is right in front of them. Here Hartley also states that the audience isn’t ‘real’ what is meant by this is the fact that you can’t say the target audience is actually real when the product is being forced upon them and the company is controlling their faith in it. As this shows they aren’t making their own decision on it because they aren’t becoming active in finding out more about it. As we can see from the time that Hartley stated this in 1987 it is quite outdated and at this point the idea of audiences being active was actually coming in with John Fiske’s audience theories.

John Fiske (1987, 1989) is vigorously advocated with the notion of the ‘active audience’ and he rejects any claims that audiences are ‘cultural dupes’ and that cultural product necessarily promote capitalist ideology. From looking at the beginning of his theory you can see the complete contrast between his and Hartley’s theory. As here John Fiske is stating that the audience actively get involved in the media that they take in and denies the fact they are ‘cultural dupes’ meaning they don’t just follow anything and believe it without really knowing about it. Whereas Hartley is very much stating audiences have very narrow views that stick to what the consumer is feeding them almost as if showing this idea of a passive audience that are very naïve.

Another part of Fiske’s theory is the idea that the term ‘audience’ should be abandoned as it implies ‘mass’ instead you should use the word ‘reader’ as it acknowledges the individuals social positioning and shifting agendas and priorities. This shows that as Fiske’s theory seems too start developing slightly later than Hartley’s it shows that this active audience is very much becoming more present. So from that the consumer should try to make their company more appealing on a personal level to the active audience to make them more involved as this is the way they will be more interested in the product. This can link to the present day media of magazines and how the magazine should represent ideologies that are personal to each individual reader rather than that of a mass audience. As the active reader wants to feel they can be involved on a different level to others and that they aren’t just a figure.

This image above shows Maslow's hierarchy of needs this is for every human and from this you can see that these needs can be easily manipulated by the media. As media texts can give an individual their identity and aspirations. As well as giving them instructions on how to achieve those aspirations or to create an escapism for them. 

The two-step flow theory is to show that an audience is not as passive as previously thought but is instead influenced by opinion leaders. This changes the idea that the message comes straight from the media but instead from an opinion leader who may get their opinion from the media then tell it to an individual so it spreads to a wide variety of people.