Audience Response - Key Topics

Audience Variations

Active Audiences: This refers to an audience that actively engages with and interprets the media they consume. They might challenge, negotiate, or resist the intended message from the newspaper.
Passive Audiences: This is an audience that absorbs and accepts the media content at face value, aligning with the newspaper’s perspective without much questioning.

Preferred Reading: The view or ‘reading’ of a news item that the newspaper or journalist intended for the audience to accept.
Negotiated Reading: Occurs when the audience partly agrees with the preferred reading but modifies elements to suit their personal knowledge, social conditions or experiences.
Oppositional Reading: This is when the audience rejects the preferred reading entirely, interpreting news from another, often contradictory, viewpoint.

Demographics and Psychographics: Characteristics such as a reader’s age, gender, educational level, income etc. (demographics), as well as attitudes, values, and interests (psychographics), can significantly influence how they interpret news.
Political Ideologies: A reader’s political beliefs can affect how they perceive and respond to news, especially when it relates to political or controversial social issues.
Cultural Competence: This involves understanding and shared knowledge of culture-specific symbols, references or connotations. Readers with different cultural backgrounds may respond to a news item differently based on their cultural understanding.

Agenda Setting: This theory suggests that newspapers can influence public opinion by choosing which stories to cover and how to present them. They may not directly tell the audience what to think but what to think about.
Framing: This is the process of shaping how a story is presented to the audience. By choosing particular words and phrases, images, or aspects of a story to emphasise, a newspaper can influence how the audience interprets the story.
Sensationalism: An editorial tactic where stories are exaggerated or dramatic in order to provoke public interest or excitement. This can influence, often distort, the audience’s perception of a story or event.
Two-Step Flow Theory: This theory emphasises the important role of ‘opinion leaders’ (those who first receive news, interpret it and then pass it on) in influencing the audience’s response to news.
Uses and Gratifications Theory: This theory suggests that individuals actively seek out specific media and content to satisfy particular needs or desires, for instance, information, entertainment, personal identity, or social integration. This user motivation impacts how they respond to content.