Audience Research

Audience research:

There are many factors that contribute to the way an audience responds to a media text. Some of these factors are:

Gender - Different genders respond to different media texts – for example, stereotypically, women will enjoy soap opera’s more than men will, and men will enjoy sports programs more than women will. This may be due to the way people are brought up – and the way people are pushed into enjoying ‘appropriate’ content for their gender.

Age – Different age groups will generally enjoy different media texts, most likely because of what they where brought up watching/reading.

Ethnicity – Different ethnic groups will most likely respond to media texts differently due to their beliefs and upbringing.

Cultural experiences – different people will have different opinions of different things, due to personal experience, what they have been told, or what they have watched on TV.

Situated culture – depending on the situation that the person is in when viewing the media text, good or bad responses can occur. For example, watching a horror film at night can be scarier than watching it in the day.