A2 Media Theory – 23rd September 2010

Audience Categorization

Psychographic

What do people like to do? What hobbies do they have?
What lifestyle do they follow?

• Resigned – People who are set in their ways, with traditional values.
• Explorer – People who always look for the new ‘in-thing’ and are always up to date with the current trends.
• Aspirer – People who remain on the ball with trends to improve their self-worth.

Values And Beliefs

• Marketing Christmas to Christians for example.
• Upholding family values and the nuclear family. (2.4 children)

Geographic

Where people live, so are generalized by their geographical location and marketed to accordingly.

Demographic

Age, Gender and Class are three things that could define a certain demographic of people.
Life cycle stages are also a way to generalize people, and items would be marketed to them depending on that.
The type of house people live in would be a show of their social class, so again, would be a good way to categorize people to find the demographic you’d want.

Audience Theory

Hyperdermic – Manufacturing consent from people by influencing them with their own views.
2 step flow theory – Media that is passed through word of mouth between people.

Uses and gratification theory

Personal Relationship – People forming a bond with fictional people on the TV/Radio/Magazines to make them watch or read again and again.

Personal Identity – People will consume media products to feel as if they are part of their identity so people will know straight away what kind of things they are into at certain times.

Surveillance – Using the media to find out the things that we would need, like the weather and various news stories.

Stanley Cohen – Behaviorist and Psychologist

Stage 1

Occurrence and Signification – Something happens that is deemed ‘coverable’ by the news media.

Stage 2

Wider Social Implications – Link the issue to a wider social problem to make people think something is wrong.

Stage 3

Social Control – Tell people what they should do about a certain problem so they can manipulate them to their own bias and needs.

Review of ‘The Archers’ on BBC Radio 4

Very similar to  the well-known soap ‘Emmerdale’ in the manner that it’s based in the countryside and could well fit into the typical soap-esque setting, if it were to be adapted into one.
It all starts in the usual fair too, with a simple conversation between two or three people and very typical of generic soaps. I can see this usual fare being popular with the target demographic of 35+ as the host Radio station, BBC Radio 4, is targeted at that demographic anyway. It’d be interesting for those who like or love soaps and dull dramas like this one, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s not anything that I would usually listen to.

Overall, it would be good for people who are big fans of soaps and everything in between, and it is very suitable for the Radio station it is hosted on. But, it wouldn’t be any interest for any of the under 30 demographic.

Augie’s rating: 6/10

Salutations and all that jazz.

This will be the blog where all the creative ideas in my head (not very many then) will come together in a posty mass of postyness, and describe the thoughts and methods I went through in order to come to a certain conclusion about a certain Radio Drama for my A2 Media Studies coursework.

And on that not, goodbye and much love. 😀

Nothing fun.

The post above is the important one, now get to reading!