Critical Responses for Media

1. TARGET AUDIENCE ANALYSIS
Critical Responses
Contents
Research Techniques
Classification of Audiences
Audience Effects Theory
Skyfall Trailer Analysis
Comparision of two other Products,
The Hobbit and Star Trek In
Darkness
EMILY GRACE

2. RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
Main Types of Research: Qualitative,
Quantitative, Primary and Secondary
Categories of Research: Market, Audience
and Production

3. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE
Qualitative research are of
people’s opinions of products
and/or subjects.
Quantitative Research involves
the gathering of factual data
from numbers, graphs and
charts, for which is easily
measured.

4. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY
RESEARCH

5. MARKET RESEARCH

6. PRODUCTION RESEARCH

7. AUDIENCE RESEARCH

8. CLASSIFICATION OF AUDIENCES
Demographics- things that are both easy
to measure and factual which is
Quantitive-Information
Psychographic- Opinions of the People
which is Qualitative Information
(Emotions)
Geo-demographic- the target audience in
certain areas

9. DEMOGRAPHIC
Social Grade
Social Status
Occupation
A
Upper Middle Class
Higher managerial,
administrative or
professional
B
Middle Class
intermediate managerial,
administrative or
professional
C1
Lower Middle Class
supervisory or clerical,
junior managerial,
administrative or
professional
C2
Skilled Working Class
skilled manual workers
D
Working Class
semi and unskilled manual
workers
E
Unemployed
state pensioners or widows
(no other earner), casual or
lowest grade workers
Demographics are statistical characteristics of a population, for which these types of data are
widely used in marketing. They examine gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home
ownership, employment status, and even location. Marketers link the several variables to define
a demographic profile and categorizes the population. A demographic profile provides enough
information about the member of each group to create a mental picture to work on.

10. PSYCHOGRAPHIC
Social Group
Summary
Mainstreamers
SEEK SECURITY. Tend to be domestic, conformist, conventional, sentimental – Favour value for money,
family brands. Nearly always the largest groups.
Aspirers
SEEK STATUS. Materialistic, acquisitive, orientated to image and appearance, persona and fashion.
Attractive packaging more important than contents. Typically younger people, clerical and sales jobs.
Succeeders
SEEKS CONTROL. Strong goal, confidence, work ethic and organisation. Supports stability. Brand choice
based on self-reward and quality. Typically higher management and professionals.
Resigned
SEEKS SURVIVAL. Rigid and authoritarian values. Interested in the past and tradition. Brand choice
stresses safety, familiarity and economy. Typically older people.
Explorers
SEEKS DISCOVERY. Energy, individualism and experience. Values difference and adventure. Brand
choice highlights satisfaction, and instant effect. The first to try new brands. Younger demographicstudents.
Strugglers
SEEKS ESCAPE. Alienated and disorganised. Few resources beyond physical skills. Brand choice involves
impact and sensation. Buys alcohols, junk food, lottery tickets. D and E demo.
Reformers
SEEKS ENLIGHTENMENT. Freedom of restrictions and personal growth. Social awareness and
independent judgment. Anti-materialistic but aware of good taste. Has attended higher education and
selects products for quality.
"Psychographics is the study of personality, values, attitudes, interests, and
lifestyles”. It studies the individuals or communities, searching for valuable
information in the fields of marketing, demographics, opinion research and
social research.

11. AUDIENCE EFFECTS THEORY
The “Hypodermic Needle” Model
Cultivation Theory
The Desensitisation Theory
Copycat Theory
Hall’s Encoding – Decoding model
Reception Theory

12. THE “HYPODERMIC NEEDLE” THEORY
• Where the audience is
seen as “empty vessels” who
play no role in interacting
with the media concerned,
accepting the content of the
text with no complaint.
• Texts function in a onedirectional communication
process.
• Many theorists have noted
many problems with Effects
theory.
• They feel it is out of date and
that it vastly underestimates
the audiences of the present.
• This has led to more complex
theories about active
audience participation.

13. CULTIVATION THEORY
• The more the TV audience
audience watches or views a
certain media text, the more
likely it is that they will
develop certain ideas about
the world.
• The worry with is that these
will be ‘false’ views.
• The problem with this view is
that it does not acknowledge
that viewers may gain
knowledge of the world from
other different sources,
including multimedia and the
internet.

14. THE DESENSITISATION AND
COPYCAT THEORY
• Audiences who are exposed
to extreme media messages
will become “immune” to
them once viewed, meaning
that long-term exposure can
result in audience
“desensitisation” to such
imagery.
• Inoculation theory has been
used in attempts to blame
violent media for such
alleged influences.
• Like the Hypodermic Needle
model, has more recently
been criticized for its
assumption that audiences
are passive.
• The theory itself had been
concluded as outdated by
Psychologists.
• Very little research has been
done to test this assertion.
• It is a theory that is
maintained by the press
rather than research.

15. HALL’S ENCODING – DECODING
MODEL
• Developed by Stuart Hall, a
theory of an active audience
examines the link between
the text and the receiver.
• Encoding is the process by
which a text is constructed by
its producers.
• Decoding is the process by
which the audience reads,
understands and interprets a
text.
• Within the theory, it states
that it’s polysemic, where the
audience interprets the
information given differently
between each person,
depending on their culture
and the many faces of their
identity.

16. RECEPTION THEORY
• It focuses on the role of the audience in the interpretation of a
text.
• Suggesting that audiences play an active role in reading texts and
that each person has the ability to interpret the same text
differently.
He termed these different ‘readings’ of the ideologies in media texts
as
• The preferred reading
• The negotiated reading
• The oppositional reading

17. TRAILER ANALYSIS
Skyfall
The Hobbit
Star Trek Into The Darkness

18. SKYFALL TRAILER
Skyfall Official Trailer

19. STATISTICS
Film Production Companies
and Distributers
Details: 2012, Rest of the world, UK,
Cert 12A, 143 mins, Action / Drama,
Dir: Sam Mendes
•
The 23rd film in the James Bond
series, situating in #1 position
everywhere in the Film Charts
•
P: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
(MGM), Danjaq and Eon
Productions (as Albert R.
Broccoli's Eon Productions)
•
D: Sony Pictures International
(2012) (UK) (theatrical)
Latest Box Office
Information
•
Budget: $200,000,000
(£124,108,000) (estimated)
•
Opening Weekend (UK) $59.9
million (£37.2 million). Smashing
the all-time Saturday attendance
record, this is the biggest
opening of 2012 and the biggest
2D Friday-to-Sunday opening
weekend in history
•
Opening Weekend (USA)
$88,364,714 (£54,772,691.24) (11
November 2012)

20. GENRE

21. GENERIC CODES AND
CONVENTIONS

22. NARRATIVE
Bond's mission is to keep a computer drive that has a list of British agents from being used
against them. He chases the man who has it and they have a brawl on top of a train. Eve, an agent
sent to assist Bond has them in her cross hairs but hesitates to take the shot because she might hit
Bond but M orders her to take it. She does, and hits Bond who falls into the river and is believed
to be dead. A few months later, the British government is upset with MI6 for losing the list;
specifically with M. She is told that she'll be allowed to retire but she refuses to leave till the
matter is resolved. So she returns to HQ to work on it but as she arrives, there's an explosion. In
the meantime, Bond, who is not dead, has been laying low. When he learns of what happened, he
returns. And M tasks him with finding the one who has the information. He eventually learns
that the man who has it, is someone from M's past and who has it in for her. (IMDB)

23. REPRESENTATION

24. RESPONSE

25. COMPARISON OF OTHER TRAILERS
The Hobbit: An Unexpected
Journey
Star Trek Into Darkness
The Hobbit Official Trailer
Star Trek Into Darkness Official Trailer

26. THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED
JOURNEY

27. STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS