Historically, the audience’s primary task has been to listen, but nowadays the definition of the audience has become much more complicated and audience research has become a specialty .
It seems that the first formal audience should be found in speeches made thousands of years ago.
In English, Audience is derived from the Latin root Audire, meaning to hear. So apparently the Audience’s job was to be the listener and the speaker to deliver the speech.
In our language, we also use the word audience, which is in front of the speaker. In other words, the preacher reads sermons and the audience listens to sermons.
If we want to avoid serious and precise academic definitions, perhaps the most general definition is that the audience is the person for whom the content is prepared, organized and presented. Of course, whether the content reaches the audience or not is another matter.
For example, the audience of a television program may be social science experts; But at the moment of the broadcast of the program, no expert should be on the TV and not see that program. In such a situation, we can still say that the audience of the program was social science experts.
Now, as a rule, such a definition can have different examples in every space. Consider these examples:
The speaker’s audience are those who are going to hear his speech and he speaks for them and for them.
The audience in content marketing are those who are going to receive and consume the content.
The audience of an organization’s public relations are all the stakeholders of the organization at the macro level and in the whole society.
The audience of advertising is the potential customers of a product or business.
The audience of any media is those whom the media is set up to reach and tries to deliver its message to.
Audience demographics
One of the methods of audience research is paying attention to audience demographics.
To pay attention to factors such as the age composition of the audience, their ethnic composition, gender composition, occupation, education, social class and so on.
Of course, demography is not always the right way to analyze and classify the audience. It is up to you to decide how much to focus on the demographic composition of your audience depending on your topic.
Audience book
Many books have been written about the audience and audience studies, among which the following can be mentioned:
- Dennis McQuail’s book of audience theory
- John Sullivan’s Book of Media Audiences
- Graham Mayton’s Media Audience Research Method book
- Audience Evolution with New Media by Philip Napoli
The advantage of the above books is that by reviewing the list of contents and their headings, you can understand to some extent the greatness of the world of audience studies, and you may even be interested in choosing this field as your specialty.
But if you don’t want to become an expert or analyst in the media field and you just want to learn audience analysis in your desired field of expertise, it’s better to go for other books.
For example, many content strategy books such as Content Inc. devote a section to audience analysis, which can be more useful for those interested in content strategy than a specialized audience analysis book.
Or the audience section of advertising and branding books can be more attractive and useful for those interested in marketing .
