Audience Research

Audience Research

Demographic - The audience's..

• Age
• Race
• Gender
• Class/Status
• Nationality

Psychographic - The audience's..

• Interests
• Beliefs
• Hobbies

Audience Research - Audience research is a major part of any media company's work. The media companies usually use questionnaires, focus groups, pre-film screening and also spend a lot of time and money finding out who would be interested in their particularly product.

 

Audience Profiles - This link, on Thinkbox, has helped me understand how audiences are characterised into profiles.

 

Group A:

• Lawyers
• Doctors
• Scientists
• Well Paid Professionals

Group B:

• Teacher
• Middle Management
• Fairly well paid professionals

Group C1:

• Junior Management
• Bank Clerks
• Nurses
• 'White Collar' Professionals

Group C2:

• Electricians
• Plumbers
• Carpenters
• 'Blue Collar' Professionals (People who get there hands dirty, e.g. Builders)

Group D:

• Drivers
• Post Sorters

Group E (You):

• Students
• Unemployed
• Pensioners

Research Methods:

How do we measure media audiences?

• Sales
• Subscriptions
• Ratings
• Figures

Who measures audiences?:
These are a few of the organisations who monitor audience sizes..

• NRS - This organisation conducts a continuous survey every month for 7 days a week. They interview 36,000 people a year, which is considered a 'large' sample. They also do random samples where they interview at randomly selected addresses with randomly selected individuals. The average interview takes 27 minutes.
• ABC
• BARB
• Bookseller

New Media:

There are a few 'new' ways in which we can measure audience..

• Facebook/Other social network sites
• Online Forums - Comments tools
• Views on YouTube and Google +1
• Twitter Trends

Research:

When looking at audiences, there are two main types of research..

Quantitative Research - e.g. questionnaires

• Number Based
• Closed questions to generate exact answers
• Very Factual

Qualitative Research - e.g. interviews, focus groups

• Analysis of existing products
• Open questions to generate answers open to interpretation
• Individual Preferences

Considering Audience:

Audience Engagement - This describes how a particular audience interacts with a certain media text. Different people can react in different ways to the exact same text.
Audience Expectations - These are the ideas the audience have before seeing a media text. This usually applies to genre pieces. Producers continually play with/shatter audience expectations.