1. Effie Price, Ollie Caswell, Catherine
May and Kate Hoyle.

2. With the development and advancement of technology
audiences become increasingly involved in different
medias such as video and computer games. By enabling
players to put themselves in a characters role who is often a
dominant male allows them to have control over other
various, often female, characters.
In having a form of both escapism and power over an
entire world that has been created this allows the makers to
encode various messages in which the players may take
away from the game. It is by this interaction that the
information evidences the different ways in which
audiences are offered opportunities to use texts and
become active is changing how we analyse audience
responses.

3. A different form of media that can be used to
analyse audience responses is the internet; this is
used slightly differently than to something like
video gaming in that the audience can read the text
given and chose to ignore the aspects that they
doesn’t agree with and take away the message that
they do. This is the ‘Pick and Mix’ audience belief
tat the flexibility there enables the user of the
format to pick and choose what they want, which
could potentially be different each time.

4. This theory uses active rather than passive audiences
which emphasises what the audience does with the
media given rather than what the media does to the
audience. Blumler and Katz disagreed with previous
theories that placed the audience as entirely passive
who could be influenced by any type of message from
a form of media.
This theory suggests that individuals and social
groups use texts in a variety of ways rather than
simply passively.

5. 
1.
2.
3.
4.
In 1987 Dennis McQuail refined the four main
needs of an audience.
Entertainment and diversion – people needs a way
in which to escape from the pressures of everyday
life and get away from the worries they have.
Personal Relationships – people want to identify
themselves within a character and be able to
discuss with others.
Personal Identity – The ability to compare and
contrast your life with the characters and story
lines which run throughout a film/text.
Information/Education - To discover and learn
about going on in the world.

6. 
Now we must consider the theory, created by
Dennis McQuail, can now be viewed as a
simplistic way of looking at the audiences that
have become more complex and diverse as
media itself has become more fluid and
changing. The theory, created in 1987, assumes
that media has identified and catered for the
needs of the audience, when in fact it may well
just be the audiences acting in a specific way as
there is no other alternative.

7. 
Audience Fragmentation is the phrase used to
describe the ways in which people interact and
engage with media. It shows that the idea of
audience is in the digital era is changing.
Audience fragmentation is thoughts behind
how convergence, user-created content and
social networking has transformed. This means
the internet (rolling entertainment news and
internet gossip sites, film downloads) in
various ways ‘breaks up’ the potential
audience group for any particular film.

8. 
However in 2007, the film Csigo saw this trend
as a ‘duality’ working in two ways.
Convergence leads to the traditional mass
audience fragmenting off into smaller ‘niche
audiences’ but also ‘falling together’ in various
different ways. This was by becoming more
intimate members of a smaller group. In other
words there are less big-budget, blockbusters
now, and more films aimed at promoting a
‘cult’ audience.

9. 



In the new climate, the film industry is trying to
provide 360 degree branding for their films; to
surround audiences with various converged media
forms to promote films and their franchises.
Csigo suggests that the film industry are no longer
interested in keeping the audience together, but in
triggering engagement.
Converging media can lead to film industries
getting bigger ad bigger and control more of the
industry.
Customers can now however also produce their
own films and upload them to YouTube.

10. 

The media world has therefore changed from a
value chain in which films are made and
distributed to audiences, to a social network.
This is a complex system where producers and
audiences are mixed up.
This is a shift from push media where
producers provide us with films and we
receive them passively, to pull media where
we decide what we wish to do with the media
and how we access it to suit us.

11. 

When media institutions such as YouTube and
MySpace were purchased by Google and News
Corporation, the relaxed approach to copyright
ceased and the sites came visibly ‘corporate.’
Illegally posted material has now been
removed off YouTube. Myspace is also using
Gracenote software to clear copyright at the
point of download.

12. 


Internet advertising in the UK generates more than
50% of the money made from TV advertisement.
This is because more UK homes are now equipped
with broadband resulting in an increase in the time
spent online rather than on other media.
Google alone gain around 45% of all the revenue form
online advertisement in the UK.

13. 
The internet makes sharing easier. The inventor
of the internet; Tim Berners-Lee created it with
a democratic view in mind. The sharing of
material and content is getting closer to
achieving this democratic state that BernersLee intended.

14. 
The power of social media and user generated content is growing.
A recent trend shows an abandoning of established institutions,
and how the power of virtual communities is growing, much like
YouTube. However, big institutions have now embraced the ease
of which media is distributed to reach new audiences and connect
with different people. The Blair Witch Project integrated a very up
to date way of filming and spawned a new wave of horror films.
Arctic monkeys utilised the website MySpace to infiltrate the
music scene and differentiate themselves from other bands,
ultimately reaching new audiences and achieving greater success
and recognition. Because of this inexpensive method of
distribution and creation, more established firms like MTV and
News Corp are struggling to keep up. Before MySpace or
YouTube, the only way somebody would see your film or hear
your song was through either MTV or on the radio. Now other
channels of distribution have been created, threatening the
existence of the older institutions. MTV now offer a portion of
screen time to videos created by user to reach out to audience
members familiar with sites like YouTube or Vimeo. Even older
media corporations like The Guardian or other newspapers now
market blogs where discussion is central. This audience inclusion
helps to expand the portion of the market that The Guardian is
reaching out to, and maintain the current consumer base they
already have.

15. 

All you need now to become famous, or to reach
new heights of fame is a broadband connection
and a camera phone. This access to film production
enables the user to create an overnight sensation.
The distribution, the hard part, is left to YouTube,
a website on which you post videos and share on
other forms of social media; twitter, Facebook,
Tumblr or MySpace.
Despite this new wave of flourishing media, the
older, already established firms that own sites like
YouTube are getting even richer. Every time this
democratic media makes any amount of money, it
will go straight into the parent company’s pocket.
Also, statistics may suggest that the sharing of
content isn’t as popular as first thought; only 0.16%
of YouTube visitors upload videos and only 0.2%
of Flickr visitors upload photos. Wikipedia, an
internet giant, only has 4.59% of its users editing or
expanding its content.

16. 
All of this begs the question; has anything
really changed? Production and distribution
levels have marginally increased and the
figures show that people are using ‘new media’
in the same way ‘old media’ was being used,
and that’s to read, play and watch; all of which
could’ve been done using MTV, The Guardian
and the radio.