Audience theories

AUDIENCE THEORIESLO: TO UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE USE DIFFERENT FORMS OF MEDIA

RICHARD DYER’S UTOPIAN SOLUTIONS THEORYRichard Dyer states that people will respond to a media text if it offers them compensation for the inadequacies in their own lives. Through the media audiences can vicariously live their lives and fulfill their wants and needs, leading them to strive to a utopian life. This is his ‘Utopian Solutions’ theory:

Thinking about sitcoms, what ‘solutions’ do they offer to ‘problems’ in peoples lives?Focusing on Bad Education explain what solutions it offers its audiences.

ABRAHAM MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS THEORYAbraham Maslow stated that we all have the same 8 basic needs. Therefore if your production targets these, you will have a greater chance of success. The top five needs are:

Q. Explain how the Media make use of people’s needs across different forms of Media.

Q. How does the genre of comedy and in particular sitcom fulfill audience needs?

USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORYBlumler and Katz suggested in the 1970s that the media audiences make active choices about what to consume in order to meet certain needs. Their Uses and Gratifications Theory tries to show the different reasons that audiences have for consuming certain media texts.

The Uses and Gratifications TheoryMedia Consumers choose media texts that fulfill one or more of these needs:

The need to be INFORMED and EDUCATED about the world in which they live

The need to IDENTIFY personally with the characters and situations in order to learn more about themselves

The need to be ENTERTAINED by a range and variety of well constructed texts

The need to use the media as a talking point for SOCIAL INTERACTION 

The need to ESCAPE from their ‘daily grind’ into other worlds and situations