The influences of media are growing exponentially along with the technology development in the last several centuries. Media evolves originally from the books, magazines, visual and audio recordings to television, radio and films, and now to the new media relying on the digital technologies. Nowadays, almost everyone lives with the support of new media in the daily life. Accordingly, the research of media is also dependent on the evolutions. Thus, this essay will discuss the impacts of new media on audience research from the respects of both values and challenges. 1. Audience Research Audience research, in the qualitative research background, involves a relatively small amount of participants aiming to generate a more detailed and in …show more content…
Jane Brown and Laurie Schulze (1990) point out that selecting a specific group of target audience usually requires the researchers to ascribe the audience to some certain characteristics, desires or needs, desires, despite of the varieties in their demographic features. Besides, the audience is viewed as a construction that is motivated by the paradigm where the research is built. There are basically three epistemologies in audience research, i.e. reception research, audience ethnography and constructionist research. Methodologies involved in the audience research vary from different subjects and research purposes. Traditional methods of an audience research can be interview, focus group and ethnography, etc., which regard the audience as a passive subject (Livingstone, Sonia, 1998). Meanwhile, the criticism of these approaches states that the results of these methods are highly dependent on the researchers’ expertise to interpret the participants’ response and reveal the truth of the topic. In the contrary, the recent trend in audience research tends to view the audience as an active subject (Karen Ross and Virginia Nightingale, 2003), who will actively engage with the culture and act as the expert of their own experiences. Thus, the research approaches will focus more on the audience's own expertise and the meanings of their experiences to them. One example of this argument is the creative or reflective research technique which requires the
It is desirable to develop demographic and psychographic profiles of these likely consumers (the target audience).
Utilizing the new sensation of technological media, with its instant projection to a broader audience base, can be both advantageous and unfavorable. As media is frequently updating
‘Employing a qualitative methodology, underpinned by a constructivist world view, has provided the means to generate rich, deep and contextualised understandings of the research issue, and an appreciation of the socially constructed and experienced realities of the participants.’ (Highfield 2012)
I engage with the evidence of a focus group I conducted to discover how an audience
Defining the intended audience effectively (Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.). This begins with dividing the audience into groups, which share similar characteristics (Slater, 1996). This can be done by researching demographics, through surveys designed to measure psychosocial factors, involvement, and behaviors, and focus group discussions (Slater, 1996).
in Rethinking the Media Audience: The New Agenda, edited by Pettri Alasuutari. New York: Sage Publications.
Audiences fall under four different types of categories with varying degrees of expertise and knowledge. They are described as follows.
Audience. Identifying your audience will affect your rhetorical aim, therefore, it is a very important step, example, for this journal the audience is students and their professor teaching
Four theorists are the contributing authors of the active research theory. These authors evolved the role audience play and their ability to actively engage with communication medians. The idea of deconstructionism was the focus of the work of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault during the 1960’s. Later in the twentieth century theorist Raymond Bauer developed The Obstinate Audience. In the early 1980’s a theorist by the name of Stuart Hall challenged the traditional theories of an audience role in the media and developed his encoding/decoding theory. Each contributed to the current understanding of the active role audiences engage in when information is presented.
Throughout the session, the discussion will be recorded so that the data can be analyzed. As a short one hour session can often take a few hour hours to transcribe – producing large amount of pages (Rabiee, 2004), it is crucial to have an effective method for analyzing the data. To review and analyze the data, the data will undergo an “Ethnographic Content Analysis” which is an approach developed by David Altheide. Ethnographic Content Analysis consists of repetitively reviewing the data and taking into consideration underlying context within each answer, patterns will emerge (Altheide, 1996). The researcher will have a complete understanding of what the participants are trying to express; ‘quotations illustrative of key points are selected
Media: Now-a-days right from children to elders, all are greatly persuaded by each and every kind of media. Especially, they are easily influenced by television, mobile, computer and internet allowing them to imbibe all that is shown without segregating as good and
Media is all around us and individuals seek gratifications from using it, “In the era of mediatization, the vision of what the media do with audiences and what
When group dynamics work well, the partakers work together with the researcher, taking the investigation in new and frequently unanticipated directions. They are also good for giving a lot of the participants the courage to speak, especially for those who may not feel confident enough to speak in a one – to – one interview (Kitzinger, 1995). However, focus group methodology has its limits. The focus collection depends heavily on supported discussion to harvest results; therefore, the enablement of the dialogue is critical. The worth of the discussion rests upon the skill of the mediator, who should be well qualified and preferably distant from the target populace, yet not linked with the researchers (Leung and Savithiri 2009). From the groups, words and expressions were extracted for coding into groups of meaning and themes were then
Analysis of the audience is an important part of the presentation of a speech that precedes the selection of a topic. This process requires asking specific questions regarding the topic in order to understand the interests, knowledge, and attitudes of the audience towards the topic. As part of adopting strategies and methods to ensure effectiveness of communication, analyzing the audience is vital for audience identification. Moreover, this process enables the speaker to choose the appropriate means of communication that ensures that the message is delivered appropriately. Analyzing the audience is also a vital point in speech presentation because of its impact on the direction of the speech.
What do we really mean by television? The way we watch television has drastically changed over the last fifteen years due to new technologies such as digital television and services providing on-demand access. These drastic changes have had a huge effect on viewers and have “allowed online streaming platforms to dominate and revolutionize the way the audience consumes” (Aliloupour) media, ultimately allowing the viewer to be in total control of how, when and where they want their content. The idea of only being able to watch television on a television set is now a thing of the past. Due to technology, the audience now has a vast variety of options on how they can access content. By using scholarly articles, research in new media and Internet sites I will be analyzing current television and where the future of television will be heading.