Audience Theory

The Cultural Studies Approach to Audience
This was developed within the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies by David Mortley. According to Morley audiences aren't just passively affected by media task as, they take an active role in reading a text. This approach tries to understand the intended effects of media texts but also sees audience as active, stating that different audiences adopt different standpoints in relation to the values expresses within a media text.

These three standpoints are

• 

  Preferred (or dominant) reading (Morley), the audience recognize the values being offered by the text and accepts them as natural and correct.
• Negotiated reading (Morley), the audience recognize the values in the text as legitimate and accept them in general, but adapt their reading of the text to fit in with their experiences and interest.
• Oppositional reading (Morley), the audience understands the values in the text, but disagrees with them and rejects them.

I am going to apply this theory into our music video:

How might audiences read the values expressed in your video and print work in a preferred negotiated and oppositional way?
Audiences who read our video in a preferred way we feel sympathy for the soldier who's lost and disagree to how he got abandoned to find his way home. Audiences who will read our video in a negotiated way will understand the concept behind the video and maybe relate it to their personal experience of missing their loved one who's been in the army or still is. Audiences who will read our video in an oppositional way will maybe not understand the whole concept of the narrative for the music video and thinks its not realistic to what would happen in real life.

What are you going to do to encourage the target audience to take a preferred reading?

We are going to have a lot of close ups of the soldier to show emotion and encourage our audience to feel what hes going through and his journey.  The fact that hes camouflage trousers will connote hes a soldier and will be more realistic for the target audience. We want our video to have a strong concept of courage and a fight for some you love which will probably attract our target audience with their relationships.


What kind of person might take an oppositional reading?
The type of person who might take an oppositional reading to our music video could be one that has been affected by a loss of loved one in the army which may be upsetting for them. This kind of person would think its unrealistic that this could happen and is inappropriate to show a soldier journey to try and find his way home as it just wouldn't happen.