Media studies- key concepts

Introducing Audience

These days every individual goes through a day with encountering a media product. Individuals these days wake up to the sound of the radio, play a walkman while walking to school/college, passing billboards on the street and also watching television or going to the cinema to watch a film in the evening. Therefore shows we are all part of the audience for these different kinds of media products. Some people have seen media audiences as being easily manipulated masses of people who can be persuaded to buy products through advertising, or to follow corrupt leaders through propaganda, also there have been fears that the contents of media texts can make their audiences behave in different ways to become more violent.. On the other hand there have been other critics who have seen the media as having much less influence and working in more subtle ways.

Historical background

The arrival of the media changed a lot of this: while films are often watched in
Theatre sized audiences. The vast majority of our times with the media are spent on our own or in small groups so in one sense the media can seem to split people up – you have probably heard the worry from parents that since the arrival of video games and portable televisions,
children don’t go out as much as they used to.