Becky Marrow's Media Coursework: October 2012

Monday, 29 October 2012

Uses and Gratifications Theory

The Uses and Gratifications approach is a theory proposed by Blulmer and Katz (1974). It is a theory that states that audiences of the media have certain psychological and social wants and needs that are supposed to be met by texts produced by the media they consume. And because the audience is active, people use and buy the media texts offered to them for their own gratification or pleasure.

Blulmer and Katz then went on to state that, because it is the audience who get gratification out of consuming media texts, it is them that decide whether to buy these texts, and therefore the power is in the audience’s hands. This means that for these texts to fulfill the audience’s needs, the producers of media need to make sure that the texts they produce are things that will meet their target audience’s needs, (For example, creating the type of music their intended audience listens to, keeping them updated on current issues within the news etc.) as it is whether the audience consumes the product created that determines how much money those who produce it make, and whether they succeed in making useful texts.

They also said that audiences have certain expectations that media texts must live up to, and so producers in media must meet these expectation to fulfill the audience's needs.

They went on to expand on their idea, and said that an individual may consume a media text for these purposes:
- To escape from everyday life
- As emotional/personal interactions, the audience would view the interactions that happen within something such as a TV programme as their own personal interactions
- For personal identity, seeing themselves reflected in texts, learning norms and values from media texts
- For information that is useful for living, for example finding out the weather

Wednesday, 24 October 2012

Demographics

Demographics is statistical data relating to the population and particular groups within it, such as social class, gender and occupation.

It is important for me to understand demographics as I would be able to use the statistics found to decide what I would like to feature in my magazine such as artists, competitions and prizes, how I would present my magazine to my target audience, using colours, images and text, the price of my magazine, whether it was low in price or high, whether it will be a monthly or weekly issue, and places it would be sold.

I can use the statistics to see what the demographic range I am aiming my magazine at is interested in, and by choosing to feature things in my music magazine that this demographic range is interested in, they would be more inclined to buy it, by changing the way I would present my magazine it would make it more appealing to my chosen demographic range, by making the price of the magazine affordable to those within my demographic range and by deciding whether to issue it monthly or weekly, which would contribute to how much money my target audience would spend overall on the magazine, would determine whether a lot of people would buy my magazine or not, so if I changed all of these things to suit the demographic range my magazine is targeted at, the rate of consumption of my magazine will increase.

For example, if I decided my target audience was the demographic range C1, which is the lower middle classes, then my magazine would feature things that they are more interested in, rather than what another demographic range such as B, which is the middle class. As well as changing what is featured, I would also change the price of my magazine and whether it is issued weekly or monthly, to fit the amount of money earned by the demographic range I have chosen.

I have decided that the demographic range of my magazine will be C2/C1. I will appeal to this audience by having competitions with prizes that this demographic would be interested in, such as tickets to go and see bands live and merchandise of artists featured within the magazine, making sure the price of my magazine is around £2.00 and that it is issued monthly so that this chosen demographic would be able to afford most issues published, having around 100 pages in every issue featuring interviews with current artists, concert listings, and album reviews etc, as this is the conventional amount of pages in most magazines with this demographic range as its target audience, and it will be sold in places like supermarkets, news agents, gyms, etc because they are places that those within this demographic range go to.