Social Insight Groups

The Social Insight groups claim to be an accurate representation of the social groups that exist in the UK today. A study was carried out of UK social values and change, and the findings established this social value scale.

From these groups we can establish the types of people that would fit into niche or mainstream audiences. Self actualisers are the most interesting, as they are individualistic and creative. These people are more likely to come into the niche audience as they are "enthusiastically exploring change", but I think they are also the most likely to encorporate mainstream into their lives. As they are individualistic I don't think it would matter to them whether they liked something that was mainstream or not. They are not driven by what everybody else likes, but if they do like it, then they will embrace it as much as their niche interests.
 

Niche vs Mainstream Audiences

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.

Niche products have smaller target audiences than mainstream products, although niche target audiences tend to be more loyal and actively supportive towards their niche interest. Examples of niche products are NME, Studio Ghibli and Pantera, as they do not appeal do everybody but still have very strong audiences. 

Niche products are sometimes accepted by the mainstream industry, and this can either be good or bad. For Apple this was a huge success. Ten years ago there were no Apple stores, and people had to buy their Apple products from the back of knitting shops. This was because Apple was a niche market that was only really used by designers and producers in the creative industry. There was no mainstream market. This all changed with the invention of the iPod. They were bought by people with disposable incomes (or esteem seekers) who thought they were great, and then looked into buying an Apple Mac to plug it into. The sales of Apple products rocketed and ten years later Apple had firmly established itself as a mainstream retailer throughout the whole of the UK.

The mainstream market consists of mainstream products that appeal to a mainstream audience in the mass media. This audience is generally the majority of people exposed to media products. They tend to be less loyal than niche audiences, and more fickle. Mainstream products are easier to come across and are more widely available to the general public. They have less extreme views than niche products so that they can appeal to a wider target audience and nobody can get offended. Examples of mainstream products are Disney, Twilight and Eastenders, as they have very large target audiences and are very well-known.

Passive and Active Audiences

A passive audience is an audience that has no influence over the outcome of the programme. They cannot change it in any way and it is up to the writers to decide what happens and when. An example of this is Eastenders. The script is written six weeks in advance and will be shown whether the audience likes it or not. TV is traditionally seen as being passive.

An active audience is the opposite. An active audience can interact with the programme and tell them their views, and what they would like to see. They can influence the outcome of the whole show. An example of this is The X Factor. In this the audience interact by ringing up to vote for their favourite act, so the other ones get knocked out. This determines the whole show, as there is no way of knowing the outcome at the beginning. Mediums such as books and magazines almost force the reader into becoming an active audience.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both passive and active audiences. An advantage to having a passive audience is that production is made much easier, as there would be nobody telling them their views and ideas for the programme. The disadvantage to having a passive audience however, is that the audience is not as loyal. At lot more time and money needs to be invested into the narrative to ensure that people are going to watch it and be interested for it to continue.

An advantage to having an active audience is that the audience can choose what they want to see, meaning that they are more likely to watch it. The audience will also feel ownership towards the programme as they will have contributed to its outcome. This could be by voicing their views, voting for somebody or simply investing time watching it. The disadvantage to having an active audience is that the audience may have bad ideas, and may not know what is best for the programme. Audiences can also be very fickle, and may like their idea one week but hate it the next. This idea also limits the structure that the programme can have.


There are times when having an active audience is not always the best idea for the show. Members of the active audience may set out deliberately to change the initial concept, which has happened a couple of times on the X Factor. There is currently a Facebook campaign containing thousands of people who are voting for an incredibly untalented contestant called Wagner to win. And as they have have all been voting, he has escaped being in the bottom two for the past four weeks, even though he is clearly a joke act. What will also happen, is that the media will report on this strange campaign, therefore making it even more popular and it will gain more publicity and more people will join in. Thus the saying, "any publicity is good publicity". If this does happen, poor Wagner will actually stand a good chance of accidentally winning the competition. 

This is what happened when a different campaign, Rage Against the X Factor, set out to stop the winner of last years X Factor dominating the Christmas number one for the fifth year in a row.

Seven Days

Seven Days is a new reality tv show on Channel 4 that will be running for seven weeks. Once a week it shows the lives of people who live and work in Notting Hill. Viewers can interact with the characters in the show via the 'ChatNav' section on the website. They can tell them what they think of their lives and what they think they should do about certain situations. The characters can view the ChatNav to see what people are saying about them.

The adverts shown in the first couple of episodes were chosen to attract the target audience that they expected would be watching, however the type of adverts changed in the third episode, which is possibly because they realised that the target audience differed to what they had assumed.
An advert featured in the first episode was Times Online, which is aimed at older people, possibly from London, working in the legal system. These people may also be Conservatives. Other adverts shown were Revlon mascara, which is aimed at older, middle aged women, and two car adverts aimed at posh people.
New adverts featured in the third episode were Glade and Tena Lady, which are both aimed at women. Glade is aimed at housewives and Tena Lady is aimed women aged 50+. Another advert shown was for Absolut, which is aimed at 18-40 year old drinkers. Snickers was also shown, which is aimed at working men and women.
I think this shows that the target audience they assumed would be watching was an older, posher, middle class audience, however they realised that the real target audience was mainly older women, most likely housewives.  

The show represents a very wide range of characters from different backgrounds. There are both men and women, and there is a fair age range from around 18 to 60. There are various ethnic groups, sexualities and occupations, and wealth is represented on quite a broad scale. There are more less wealthy characters than there are wealthy, but both are definitely represented. The ACORN user guide categories that are represented are mainly Urban Prosperity and Hard Pressed. There is also one Flourishing Family from the Wealthy Achievers category. The Urban Prosperity groups in the show are either affluent urban professionals with flats, prosperous young professionals with flats or student flats and cosmopolitan sharers. Groups from the Hard Pressed category are mainly single parents and pensioners with council terraces, or families and single parents in council flats. Having such a broad representation of characters means that there is more chance that individuals in the target audience can relate to one of them, and then hopefully will continue to watch the programme.



The programme has been incredibly unsuccessful and has had shocking ratings. The opening episode was watched by only 1.1million people, and this had gone down to around 600,000 by the third episode. Channel 4 have now switched Seven Days from a Wednesday to a Tuesday to try and hook the audience back in. A reason for the bad ratings may have been that there was competition on other channels on Wednesday nights at 10pm. Having looked at the tv listings, there is a very similar, but much more fake, programme showing on ITV2 at this time. The Only Way Is Essex is also broadcasting the lives of people in London and scooped up 2.5million viewers in its first episode.

Audience Theories - Reception Theory

The Reception Theory suggests that audience members complete a media product and read it on their own terms dictated by their own perspective. An audiences social and academic background alongside their experiences will influence how they will perceive a media text.


"British cultural studies suggests three frameworks for reading texts, based on the work of theorist Stuart Hall:


- Dominant, or preferred reading accepts completely the ideology of the text.
- Oppositional  reading absolutely opposes the ideology invloved
- Negotiated reading, both accepts and opposes part of a text's ideology in order to suit the specific needs of the individual."

"Staiger offers criticisms of two fundamental assumptoins of British cultural studies: first, that all media texts reproduce the dominant ideology, and second, that readers fit neatly within socioeconomic categories." 

Audience Theories - Two Step Flow Theory

The Two-Step Flow theory was introduced in 1944. It states that information from the media moves in two stages. It starts with individuals who pay close attention to the mass media receiving its messages. These individuals are called 'opinion leaders'. The opinion leaders then pass on their own interpretations as well as the actual media content to other people. They are very influential in getting people to change their attitudes and behaviours. 

Audience Theories - Uses and Gratifications Theory

The Uses and Gratifications theory is a popular approach to understanding mass communication. It states that individuals might use and consume media for the following purposes:

- Diversion: to escape from everyday problems and routine.

- Personal Relationships: using the media for emotional and other interaction, for example substituting soaps for family life.

- Personal Identity: finding yourself reflected in texts, and learning behaviour and values from texts.

- Surveillance: information that could be useful for living, e.g. weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains. 

The theory focuses on "what people do with media" rather than "what the media does to people". It implies that members of the audience take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their lives and are responsible for choosing specific media to meet their needs.

This theory then implies that media sources compete against other information sources for viewers gratification, and individuals are usually more dependent on available media if their access to media alternatives is limited.

Audience Theories - The Hypodermic Needle Model

The Hypodermic Needle Model is a theory that states that the audience of mass media is passive, and receive information transmitted via a media text with no attempt to absorb or question it. It suggests that the information from a media text passes into the audience's mass consciousness whether they want it to be there or not. This then resulting in behavior changes and drastic changes in personality.

The theory originated in the 1930s and is largely considered obsolete today.

The purple in this image represents information received via media text. It represents this theory because the information is being injected into the persons head, while they are making no effort to stop it.

This theory relates highly to propaganda. Old propaganda was used to influence mass audiences into joining and supporting causes and changing the attitudes of them. They used bold, bright colours and slogans that told people what to think instead of letting them make choices, leading them subconsciously to believe everything they were reading.