Media Audiences | AQA A-Level Media Studies (7572)

Media Audiences

203 questions
16 subtopics
The theoretical framework, examined on both written papers
Media One and Media Two

Media audiences is examined on both Media One and Media Two.

It covers how audiences are grouped, targeted and reached, how technology has changed consumption, and the enabling theories: media effects, Bandura, Gerbner on cultivation, reception theory, fandom and the 'end of audience' argument.

Sample questions from Media Audiences

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

Grouping and categorising audiences

How does taste function as a psychographic factor for categorising audiences?

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Taste refers to audience preferences for particular styles, genres or cultural products, allowing media industries to group audiences who share similar aesthetic preferences.
Media technologies and patterns of consumption

What is time-shifting?

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Recording or streaming a programme to watch at a time of the viewer's choosing rather than at the moment it is broadcast.
Niche and fan audiences

What risks does a producer take in depending heavily on a fan audience?

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Fans hold strong expectations about the material and can respond critically to changes, so decisions that displease them can generate organised and highly visible opposition.
Media effects: uses and gratifications

What does the entertainment/diversion need involve according to uses and gratifications theory?

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The need for escapism, relaxation, emotional release, and filling time through media consumption.
Media effects: media literacy

Why is media literacy considered increasingly important in a digital environment?

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Because anyone can publish and content reaches audiences without editorial checks, so distinguishing reliable from unreliable material falls more heavily on the individual.
Cultivation theory: socialisation and the bardic function

What is enculturation in the context of cultivation theory?

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Enculturation refers to the process by which media transmits cultural values and beliefs to audiences, integrating them into the dominant culture.
Reception theory: agenda setting, framing and myth making

What is myth making in media?

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The construction and reinforcement of shared cultural narratives, beliefs and ideologies through repeated representation.
Fandom

Which theorist developed influential ideas on fandom, participatory culture, and textual poaching?

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Henry Jenkins.

The 16 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
Grouping and categorising audiences	Demographic, psychographic and behavioural categorisation, target audiences, and the limits of demographics.	12
Targeting, attracting, reaching and addressing audiences	The difference between reaching and attracting, mode of address, marketing, distribution and circulation, and constructing an audience.	12
Media technologies and patterns of consumption	On-demand access, binge viewing, time-shifting, second screening, algorithmic recommendation, filter bubbles and paywalls.	12
Mass and specialised audiences	Why the mass audience mattered to broadcasting, the long tail, and what scale still offers producers.	12
Niche and fan audiences	Fandom, cult texts, conventions, why fans are valuable beyond their spending, and the risk of depending on them.	12
Audience interpretation and its circumstances	Why interpretations differ, cultural capital, active involvement in production, and the social, cultural and historical circumstances behind response.	12
Media effects: uses and gratifications	Blumler and Katz, the four needs, how the theory reverses the effects question, and the criticism that it assumes self-knowledge.	12
Media effects: hypodermic needle and moral panic	The hypodermic model and why it is rejected, Cohen on moral panics, folk devils, deviance amplification and cumulation.	12
Media effects: media literacy	What a media literate audience asks of a source, misinformation against disinformation, lateral reading, and the limits of literacy alone.	12
Bandura: social learning and imitation	Social learning and imitation, the conditions that make imitation likely, the four stages, and the Bobo doll experiments with their critics.	12
Cultivation theory: socialisation and the bardic function	Socialisation, standardisation, enculturation and the bardic function, and why cultivation looks at long-term exposure.	12
Gerbner: cultivation differential, mainstreaming and resonance	Cultivation differential, mainstreaming, resonance, and what the Mean World Index measures.	12
Reception theory: agenda setting, framing and myth making	Agenda setting, framing, myth making, and how conditions of consumption shape meaning.	12
Hall on reception: the three reading positions	Encoding and decoding, and the dominant-hegemonic, negotiated and oppositional positions with worked examples.	14
Fandom	Prosumers, interactivity, and Jenkins on participatory culture and textual poaching.	13
'End of audience' theories	Digital natives, 'we the media', Web 2.0, convergence, and Shirky on mass amateurisation and cognitive surplus.	20

Media Audiences is 203 of the 1,066 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £7

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.