Audience is a prime focus of the media and therefore is an important concept throughout media studies.

All media texts are made with audience in mind. The audience is perceived as group of people who will receive and make some sort of interpretation from it. It is very critical, therefore, to analyze what happens when audience meets a media text. The following are the factors in analyzing this interaction:Audience engagement:- this describes how an audience interacts with a media text. Different people react differently to the same text. Audience expectations:- these are the advance ideas an audience may have about a text. This particularly applies to genre pieces. Sometimes audience expectations are deliberately shattered. Audience foreknowledge:- this is the definite information ,rather than vague expectations, which an audience brings to a media product. Audience identification:- this is the way in which audiences feel themselves connected to a particular media text, in which they feel it directly expresses their attitude or lifestyle. Audience Placement:- this is a range of strategies media producers use to directly target a particular audience and make them feel that the media is specially for them. Audience research:- measuring an audience is very important to all media institutions. Research is done at all stages of production of a media text, and once produced, audience will be continually monitored. theorists and researchers who identify and value the existence of the audience in relation to the media. At the most basic level, audiences are vital in communication. It is for the audience that the media are constructing and conveying information, and, if it were not for the audiences, the media would not exist. The exact relationship between the media and their audiences has been the subject of debate since the media were first seriously studied and emphasises the importance of the audience and of their relationship with the media.

The Frankfurt school, set up in 1923, were concerned about the possible effects of mass media. They proposed the "Effects" model, which considered society to be composed of isolated individuals who were susceptible to media messages. The Frankfurt school envisioned the media as a hypodermic syringe, and the contents of the media were injected into the thoughts of the audience, who accepted the attitudes, opinions and beliefs expressed by the medium without question. This model was a response to the German fascists use of film and radio for propaganda uses, and later applied to American capitalist society. The followers of the hypodermic model of Effects adopted a variant of Marxism, emphasising the dangers of the power of capitalism, which owned and controlled new forms of media. Researchers in the fifties also supported the Effects model when exploring the potential of the new medium of television. Researchers were particularly concerned over increases in the representation of violent acts on television, which correlated with increases in violent acts in society. In the nineties, there was considerable concern over what were called "video nasties". The tabloid papers created a moral panic over whether particular violet films could influence child behaviour and whether Childs Play 3 influenced the child killers of Jamie Bulger. However, theorists since have thought that media could not have such direct effects on the audiences they serve, and consider the media as a comparatively weak influence in moulding individual beliefs, opinions and attitudes. Other factors present in society, such as personal contact and religion, are more likely to influence people. The Effects model is considered to be an inadequate representation of the communication between media and the public, as it does not take into account the audience as individuals with their own beliefs, opinions, ideals and attitudes. Supporters of the Effects model assume the audience is passive in the receiving and interpretation of media texts. Great emphasis is placed on the text itself and its power to directly influence the audience. Meanings in the text are readily

available and easy to find. The impossibility to measure media effects is as a result of not being able to isolate the media from all the other potential influences at work in society. This leads to the Effects model generally being disregarded when considering the audiences response to the media. A new approach to the dynamics of audience/text relationship was suggested in the Uses and Gratification model. In this model, theorists were not asking how the media effects audiences, but how were the audiences using the media. They suggested that audiences had specific needs and actively turned to the media to consume various texts to a satisfaction of these needs. The audience in Uses and Gratifications were seen as active, as opposed to passive audience in the Effects model. Uses and Gratifications acknowledged that the audience had a choice of texts from which to chose from and satisfy their needs. Blumler and Katz (1974) suggested that there were four main needs of television audiences that are satisfied by television. These included Diversion (a form of escaping from the pressures of every day), Personal Relationships (where the viewer gains companionship, either with the television characters, or through conversations with others about television), Personal Identity (where the viewer is able to compare their life with the lives of characters and situations on television, to explore, re-affirm or question their personal identity) and Surveillance (where the media are looked upon for a supply of information about what is happening in the world). While acknowledging that the audience are active and chose what to watch, the Uses and Gratifications model as a model for understanding audiences also has its limitations. The model still implies that messages are packages of information that all the audience will read as the same. It does not consider how the messages are interpreted or any other factors affecting the audiences interpretation. The Uses and Gratification model assumes that the audiences wish for satisfaction results in a media output to fulfil their desire, rather than acknowledging that audiences have to enjoy whatever is produced by the media. Both the Effects and the Uses and Gratifications model ignore to some extent the audience and their social backgrounds, how they form their interpretations of the

media messages and their specific relationship with the media text. In the 70s, the academic journal Screen suggested that audiences were positioned by the media text. Theorists started to take an approach influenced by semiotics and structuralism, to discover what meanings were made from texts and how this meaning was achieved. Great emphasis was placed on the text, particularly film. Screen thought that the position of the viewer of Hollywood film was determined for them through the use of camera shots. For example, the shot/reverse shot commonly used during dialogue enabled the viewer to position themselves as one of the characters. Another example is a close up of somebody who then looks offscreen. The next shot of the object that the character is looking at is shown, again placing the viewer in the position of the character. Writers, such as Laura Mulvey considered the "gaze" in Hollywood film to be a masculine gaze, where the camera shots adopt the male gaze and constructing the female as the object of that gaze. Screen theory suggested that all media texts have a "mode of address" a term used by semioticians which proposes that media texts address its intended audience in a particular way, establishing a relationship between the producer of the text and the medias audience. The mode of address is dependant on the particular medium. For instance, cinema rarely addresses the audience directly. Films are usually shot to suggest the film is reality. In comedy characters occasionally look into the camera. Recently there has be a trend in which films have become self-reflexive, drawing on and manipulating the conventions of the audiences expectations of the medium. The "Scream" films are a good example of this. Television differs from cinema, as the audience are not expected to pay the attention which cinema demands, so television has to work to attain and maintain the audiences attention. The medium employs a wide range of techniques to address its intended audience. Youth programmes constantly have unusual camera angles and short shots to capture and keep childrens attention. Quiz shows often address the audience ("who are playing along at home."). It is assumed that television viewing is done in family groups in a domestic setting. The scheduling highlights this view of the television audience; as the television output is regulated so that there is minimal "adult" material, such as strong

language, sex scenes and violence, before the 9oclock watershed. Whenever sport is on television and the national team is participating, such as the World Cup, the usual objective and neutral commentary changes to a more patriarchal and emotive mode of address. Newspapers clearly have a particular mode of address, reflected in the headlines and phrasing of the article. Broadsheet papers like The Times and The Guardian have a more impersonal and formal mode of address when compared with the tabloids The Sun and The Mirror, which are more emotional and often xenophobic. The limitations of focusing on audience in media studies can clearly be seen in the mode of address made by the media. Different audiences use different media; both the audience that is assumed to be using the media and the particular type of media that is being consumed determines the mode of address. The mode of address will be vital in constructing audiences thoughts about an issue raised in media. However, previous models of audience reception do not take into account what actual audiences are going to do to the media texts. Screen theory, Uses and Gratifications and Effects models suggest that meaning is embedded within the text, which audiences can access easily and accept without questioning these meanings. Just because producers of media texts have a certain opinion and meaning does not mean that this meaning is obvious in the text that, in turn, does not mean that the audience will read these meanings or agree with them. Significantly, the audience has left a considerable imprint on the media, too. The select audience choice is reflected in various Hollywood movies like in the works of Martin Scorcese and Quentin Tarantino. You cannot expect them step into romantic genre. It will be suicidal as the audience wants these directors in action genre. Audience is therefore the prime focus of media and it denotes the success of the same. Media can been termed as reflection of audience.