Audience Theory

The Cultural Studies Approach to Audiences

This approach was developed within the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (BCCCS) principally by David Morely. According to Morely, audiences aren't just passively affected by media texts - they take an active role in reading the text.

There are three different ways in which a text can be interpreted:

Preferred Reading – the audience recognize the values being offered by the text and accepts them in general, but adapt their reading of the text to fit in with their experiences.

Negotiated Reading – 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 – the audience understands the values in the text, but disagrees with them and rejects them.

Applying the theory to our music video:

How might audiences read the values expressed in your video and print work in a preferred, negotiated and oppositional way?

I believe our target audience will view our music video in a preferred way as it connotes friendship and having fun with your peers, this is relate able to many of our target audience as they enjoy going out and having fun with friends, and taking part in activities such as camping and road trips which are both featured in our video. Audiences who view our video in a negotiated way, will understand the concept of friendship in the video, and may link this to their friend group and taking part in activities which they enjoy doing. Audiences who read our video in an oppositional way may reject the view of camping and road trips being fun, and may connote friendship in a different sense. Some people can often be intimidated by youngsters in a group such as this one, which may also link with an oppositional reading.

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

In order to encourage the target audience we are going to use close ups of the youngsters looking happy and having a good time, to connote friendship within the video. Plus we are going to use shots of the youngsters with alcohol as this is also a way in which people feel they are able to have a good time. We are also using actors of similar age ranges to our target audience so that they are able to relate easily to them and also will be able to relate to the activities occurring in the video.

What kind of person might take an oppositional reading?  

Someone who is not the intended target audience may take an oppositional reading to our video as they may not understand the concept and possibly may not see the activities as fun, or as something that a friend group might take part in. Others who may take an oppositional reading may be people who disagree with alcohol consumption, especially among young people, or believe that alcohol is not significant to have a good time. Also as I stated before, someone who may take an oppositional reading is possibly the older generation, who can be intimidated by youngsters in groups.