Audience Theories

As a group, we will be concentrating on trying to achieve the Uses and Gratifications Theory in our music video. Uses and Gratifications theory is the theory that places more focus on the consumer, or audiences, instead of the actual message itself by asking “what people do with media” rather than “what media does to people”. It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. The theory also holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs. Our music video will fulfil my audiences needs by creating a music video that links in to the artists meaning, we will create a video that conforms to R&B conventions however, stick to the old forms of R&B music videos to give a different feel to modernised music. We aim to create a music video that appeals to all audiences so will ensure that no women are as objectified to fit a dominant male audience as much as they would be, neither will we perceive men to be particularly strong or powerful, this will ensure each side of our audience is satisfied.

By concentrating on this audience theory, we have plans to create more of a narrative based music video so that the audience can decide the story an feeling for themselves.

By using iconography of an R&B music video, we can draw the audience to their expectations yet create new and inventive ways to tell the same story; we can position the audience and create a certain amount of what the texts codes actually mean. The text will be encoded by my group and the audience will decode the information. For our audience to take the preferred reading, and enjoy the music video, we must ensure the iconography is accurate whilst challenging the conventions as much as we can without taking the meaning away from the song.

1. Identity-being able to recognise the product or person in front of you ,role models that reflect similar values to yours, aspiration to be someone else.
2. Educate- being able to acquire information, knowledge and understanding.
3. Entertain- What you are consuming should give you enjoyment and also some form of ‘escapism’ enabling us to forget our worries temporarily.
4. Social interaction- the ability for media products to produce a topic of convocation between other people, sparks debates.