Q1b: Audience

Lets start with our exam board's chief examiner, and his guide:

[Some] questions which have been set in previous sessions:

1. Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.
2. Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre
3. Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.

You will notice that each of these questions is quite short and fits a common formula. You can be assured that the same thing will apply this summer. You will be asked to apply ONE concept to one of your productions. This is a quite different task from question 1a, where you write about all of your work and your skills, as this one involves some reference to theory and only the one piece of work, as well as asking you to step back from it and think about it almost as if someone else had made it- what is known as ‘critical distance’.

So what do you do in the exam?
You need to state which project you are using and briefly describe it
You then need to analyse it using whichever concept appears in the question, making reference to relevant theory throughout
Keep being specific in your use of examples from the project
Here is a link to a good answer to q1a and 1b from the January session.

Audience
Every media product has to have an audience, otherwise in both a business sense and probably an artistic sense too it would be judged a failure. In your projects, you will undoubtedly have been looking at the idea of a target audience- who you are aiming it at and why; you should also have taken feedback from a real audience in some way at the end of the project for your digital evaluation, which involves finding out how the audience really ‘read’ what you had made. You were also asked at AS to consider how your product addressed your audience- what was it about it that particularly worked to ‘speak’ to them? All this is effectively linked to audience theory which you then need to reference and apply. Here are some links to some starting points for theories:
general intro
presentation on reception theory

Some further (DB) pointers:

• use the pack given out, and decide which theories you will use
• McQuail (1972): Uses and Gratifications theory is useful
• description of theories will get limited EAA marks; its all about applying these (to use the EAA terms: analysis and argument, not just explanation), well backed up with clear, specific examples
• precise, specific denotation is key to all Q1a/1b questions/topics
• has the answer you've prepared addressed the binary within audience theory (active v passive audience)?
• this is where your EAA can be boosted: you could point out that under the hypodermic syringe model [example of possible effect from viewing your text], but that this is too simplistic an approach

• have you addressed the role of audience feedback, and of new media technologies (web 2.0 etc) in getting this in the first place?
• is your text aimed at a narrow, niche audience, or a wider, mass audience? have you broken down the demographics? (it can always be helpful to consider: if this appeared on a TV channel/mag, which would it best suited to?) did feedback (or your own planning) indicate scope for secondary or cross-over audience appeal? any postmodern/intertextual references?
• do you represent your core audience in your text?
• did restrictions such as BBFC ratings or pre-watershed regulations (even the context of producing work that a school's image is indirectly linked to) have any influence on your work?

FURTHER RESOURCES (ALSO USE LINKS LISTS)

Audience theory 15th dec 2010

View more PowerPoint from kbamediastudies

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Exam 1 b audience

View more PowerPoint from Charis Creber

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