Audience Consumption

Uses and Gratifications Theory

Blumler and Katz

The uses and gratifications theory is a popular approach to understanding how and why audiences watch films or other aspects of the Media. it assumes that the audience are sometimes passive towards consuming the media but the media also plays an active role in integrating it into their lives.

The 5 components.

Entertain- should be  enjoyable for the audience; Educated/Informed- Is being able to acquire information and understand it; Social Interaction - Help people to come together and talk about similar issues with the media; Escape- Will allow people to leave their everyday lives and become part of something innovative;Self-Identification- the act of identifying yourself as a particular kind of person

There are some flaws that I have identified:

The audience are consuming media unaware of manipulation. They are persuaded to meet one or more of this needs to make the media product/ advert desirable. The audiences do not have free will and do no get to choose. The audience is passive and are not in control of what their consuming.

Maslows's Hierarchy of needs

'Maslow (1943) stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fullfil the next one, and so on.'

In the media  this also applies the same way. The film will be of thriller genre and it must fulfil a need somewhere in the hierarchy of needs.

Audience Segmentation and Theories

This table shows how the advertisers classify the consumers in the market. They would focus a particular category to appeal to. I could use this to classify the target audience of my thriller film opening that I will be making by the end of this project.

This is the psychographics table that will help

determine the types of consumers in the market. This is useful as we can find which audience we can a

dvertise our product to without taking any risks.