Media Audiences: Television, Meaning and Emotion - Report Example

Media Niche Media Niche Media audience refers to a group of viewers, readers and listeners of a specific media channels. Media audience is the primary target of a media outlet because the audience forms the demography of the channel (Gorton, 2009, pp. 13). Different media outlets attract different audiences depending on the programs they offer and their mode of presentation. It is important for the media to understand various qualities of their audience in order to offer them the programs, services, and products that they prefer. This will help media outlets to attract and maintain bigger audiences. There are several types of media audiences ranging from sports, business, education, science, lay, expert, consumers, executive, and technical audiences among others (Gorton, 2009, pp. 27). Some media channels provide products and services that appeal to many people while others reach out to specific categories of audiences. Targeting specific classes of audiences gives a media house a unique niche or position in the market. With such a niche, the media outlet is able to study its target group and plan for ways of improving audience satisfaction thereby attracting and maintaining a bigger audience. This essay will discuss the concept of niche in media with a specific focus on expert audience. Expert audience is a specific audience niche consisting of well versed individuals who are familiar with the issues a particular media is offering. This type of audience include educated people, technicians, scientists and other people who are abreast with the issues being discussed in a particular media. An expert audience for a sports channel, for instance, would include players, coaches, sports scientists, trainers and other people who understand the specific type of sports (Napoli, 2011, pp. 18). This essay will endeavor to demystify expert audience to determine how this group of individuals engages with the media. The essay will analyze how expert audience uses, responds and enjoys services offered by media companies. The paper will also examine different media theories and to find out how they help to understand expert audiences. This essay will be guided by the hypothesis that expert audiences are more difficult to please because they have high expectations from the media and high quality standards standards that they impose on media outlets. Expert audience consists of individuals with a diverse background with regard to their level of education, work experience, and level of skills and expertise (Gorton, 2009, pp. 39). This group of people is usually familiar with most of the issues that media outlets discuss and in most cases, they have predetermined judgments. The media has to be very advanced in their approach of sharing information in order to appeal to expert audience. Expert audience is different from other types of audiences such as lay audiences in many ways. Lay audiences access media outlets to learn new things, expert audiences, on the other hand, access the media to update their knowledge and get different perspectives on the various things and issues that they already know (Nightingale, 2011, 53)). Expert audiences are very critical on information they receive from media because they have higher expectations as compared with lay audiences, who may be less critical (Napoli, 2011, pp. 73). Expert audiences do not need a lot of details and information on various topics that they are familiar with. They prefer the media to go straight to the point without having to go through many explanations and introductions. Lay audiences, on the other hand, require a lot of information on various topics in order to have a broader understanding of the topic of discussion. Expert audience engages with the media in a different way as compared to other audiences. Engagement refers to how an audience participates and responds to shows or programs in media. An expert audience will only enjoy media broadcasts if they feel that the shows and programs add value to what they already know. Additional values can come in terms of new knowledge, different points of view, reaffirmation of what the audience already knows, and recognizing that the audience consists of well informed people (Nightingale, 2011, pp. 132). Expert audience uses the information they gather from media for different purposes. This audience considers information a powerful resource for personal and professional development. Expert audience, therefore, uses information from the media to improve their lives by adopting different views from the media to improve their professional and personal lives (Napoli, 2011, pp. 137). Expert audience is however very critical in its response to information from the media. The audience expects media to provide quality information that can enrich what people in the audience already know. If the information provided meets the required standards, the audience will appreciate and remain loyal to the media outlet. If the information is of little value, the expert audience will give a negative response and may lose faith in the media channel. Media can improve audience engagement with expert audience through various strategies. One strategy that can achieve this is to offer great experience. Great experience refers to offering the audience high quality products and services that appeal to all their five sense. The audience has to relate the information they get from the media in terms of their emotional attachment. This implies that media outlets have to understand their different elements of their audience in order to provide programs and information that the audience can associate themselves with during broadcasts (Napoli, 2011, pp. 213). The other strategy to improve audience engagement is to ask the audience to contribute in the presentations. The audience can participate in the process by asking questions, making recommendations, and following other instructions. Participation also includes asking expert audience to attend seminars, webinars, or other events as well as engaging with the media on various social media outlets (Gorton, 2009, pp. 156). This helps the audience to get involved in the process of information sharing thus appreciating the whole process. Asking people in expert audience to participate in the presentations recognizes that they have a higher level of skills, experience and knowledge and skills that can be useful for the media. Expert audience likes to be acknowledged that it has something to contribute to the whole process as opposed to being recipients of information. The other important strategy to encourage audience participation is target communication. This entails using a communications approach that resonates well with the audience in terms of their knowledge, age, religious beliefs and professional experience (Gorton, 2009, pp. 191). Communication is very important when relating to an audience. A wrong communication approach can easily put off an audience. Several theories and models can be used to illustrate the relationship between media and audiences. Audiences are the primary beneficiaries of information from media outlets. Media cannot exist without an audience. This relationship between audiences and the media has been subject of various studies over the years with many theorists using different approaches to describe and explain how the two relate with each other. Different theories seek to explain how different categories of audiences relate with media in their niche. One theory that explains the relationship between media and expert audience is the active audience theory. This is a newer theoretical model that views the audience as an active participant in its interaction from the media (Nightingale, 2011, pp. 31). This theory asserts that an expert audience digests and understands messages from media and responds to the messages effectively. This theory was put forward by Stuart Hall to explain how an informed audience relates with texts or information from the media. He stated that audience plays a significant role in interpreting messages from media based on their different cultural backgrounds and knowledge. The audience can decide to change the information they receive from media, or they can decided on how to best use the information. Stuart Hall also found the encoding-decoding model of communication shows the relationship between how media produces and disseminates information to the audience and the various ways in which the audience interprets the messages (Nightingale, 2011, pp. 47). This model of communication empowers the audience to analyze the information and messages they get from the media. This recognizes the importance of expert audience in a communication process between media and their audiences. Another way of understanding the relationship between audiences and the media is through the Uses and gratifications theory (UGT) model (Nightingale, 2011, pp. 59). This model explains the reasons why and how audiences seek information from different media to satisfy their different needs. This is an audience-centered model for understanding the relationship between audiences and media. The theory asserts that individuals reach out to media that attends to their needs. Expert audience in this regard only wants to interact with media that meets their different needs in terms of enhancing their knowledge, social interaction and relaxation. The expert audience will play an active role in identifying a suitable media to relate and interact with (Ruddock, 2001, pp. 14). The expert audience therefore influences the type of information that the media puts out by either rejecting it or recommending for changes. The two-step flow model of communication can also explain how expert audience engages with media. This model of communication asserts that there are two levels of users of information from the media (Nightingale, 2011, pp. 92). These are the opinion leaders in the society while the second category is the people who interact with the opinion leaders. The opinion leaders are respected people in the society because of their knowledge, experience, leadership position or experience in a particular field. The other people, on the other hand, are lay people and depend much on opinions of opinion leaders in order to make their own personal decisions. From an audience point of view, the opinion leaders are the expert audience while the other people who interact with the opinion leaders are the lay audience. The opinion leaders receive the information directly from the media, digest it and respond to it appropriately. The expert leaders then pass on the information from the media to other people around them (Napoli, 2011, pp. 219). These two levels of interaction ensure that information from the media flows down to everybody in the community. Another theoretical model for understanding how expert audience reacts to media information is the reception analysis model. This analysis focuses on how different audiences react to react to different texts and information from media. Different issues including the level of knowledge of the audience, religious values, customs, and age influence reception (Ruddock, 2001, pp. 68). Upon receiving messages from the media, people would analyze and make their own judgments regarding the messaged they received. This theoretical model recognizes the importance of audience in the communication process and is classified as an active theory of media communication. Based on this theory, expert audience is more active in analyzing and responding to information from the media. Since expert audience consists of individuals with different levels of knowledge, there are bound to be different interpretations and reactions to media information. In conclusion, therefore, these theories show that expert audience is very keen and selective in whatever information it receives from the media. This audience critically analyzes and responds to the messages from the media in different ways depending on various factors. This includes issues like whether the information satisfies their needs, or if it meets the standards they expect (Ruddock, 2001, pp. 119)). The media has to recognize the level of expectations and needs of the expert audience in order to provide them with the best programs, services, and products. Expert media is very critical in its response. It is also important to note that expert audience can determine the type information they want and can change from one media outlet or product to the other is they do not like the services or products. The media should therefore strive to study their audiences and segment their market according to different levels of knowledge of experience in relation to their services or products. This will help the media to attract large audiences. In order to appeal to expert audiences, the media should do more research about the audience and provide specific information that suits its needs (Nightingale, 2011, pp. 236). Bibliography Gorton, K. (2009). Media audiences: television, meaning and emotion. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. Napoli, P. M. (2011). Audience evolution: new technologies and the transformation of media audiences. New York, Columbia University Press. Nightingale, V. (2011). The handbook of media audiences. John Wiley & Sons. Ruddock, A. (2001). Understanding audiences: theory and method. London [u.a.], SAGE. Read More