This lesson has an accompanying worksheet to assist with notetaking: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1agHoK-ifixUyI9RsrGAoSM_M6qdGgp5agGIrVCabjj0/edit?usp=sharing
Transcript
So today we’re going to talk about audience and specifically identifying the audience of a piece of text or media. This is a major component of your meme analysis assignment, so we’ll just take a minute today to discuss how to go about doing that.
First, what is audience? The audience of the text is not necessarily just anyone who reads or views the text but is the demographic of people that the text is targeted at. You can read a text and not be the target audience of that text. Just because you’re reading it doesn’t mean it was written with you in mind. Authors and creators specifically target certain demographics of people that they think that they can appeal to with their text. Those demographics can include targeting certain ages, certain genders, uh people of a certain race, certain people people in certain geographical locations people with certain jobs, those kinds of things.
So let’s talk about the steps we take when we are trying to identify a target audience. We got to ask ourselves where was it published, who created it, what is the context, and is it using any clear rhetorical strategies to attack its audience.
So first up we’ll talk about uh where the text was published. So the publication location can often tell you a lot of things about the audience. So for example anything published in the journal for the American Chemical Society is being targeted at chemists; that one feels pretty obvious. It’s written by chemists for chemists. same thing with the Lexington Herald-Leader which is the local Lexington newspaper which is targeting Lexingtonians or citizens of the city of Lexington, and how we know that is because it’s the local newspaper. That is the purpose and the goal of the local newspaper is to target the people in the local area where it’s published.
Internet material gets a bit more tricky but you can still use this this line of thinking to narrow down the audience a bit. So where was the text published? Was it published on facebook? That’s a pretty broad audience. Was it published in a specific group on facebook, or on a specific page? What is the group about what kind of people are members of that group? Asking yourself those questions can tell you a lot about the audience. So, for example, say you’re looking at a post that was made in a group on facebook dedicated to discussions among new moms, new parents so any posts that go up in that group are targeted at those new moms, are meant for those new moms, and are written for those new moms, so the audience there is new moms.
So the next question you have to ask yourself uh is who made the text? Who wrote it, who designed it, who is the creator? Knowing the creator can tell you a lot about the audience. So, for example a press conference given by Governor Beshear contains a lot of information that could be useful for a variety of people, but there’s one crucial thing you need to know about Andy Beshear that gives away his audience. He is the governor of Kentucky, therefore, his target audience is Kentuckians.
Again, this gets a little tricky with online media but we can still make it work. On most social media you can visit the profile of the person who has posted or published the media and learn quite a bit about them which might tell you about the audience that they are not only actively targeting but the audience that they may just naturally appeal to. Finding the original posters of your memes might be tricky so I recommend using sites like knowyourmeme.com or other wiki sites that might be able to take you back in time and give you that that information.
So next we’re going to consider the context of the text. Context is background information that you need to know in order to fully understand a piece of content. Context can include historical knowledge pop culture knowledge, technical knowledge, scientific knowledge, any sort of just information that you need to have in order for the text or the image that you’re looking at to make sense. So for the example that you see here, the context required is a knowledge of Star Wars, the knowledge of who Baby Yoda is and who Yoda is in order for this to be funny to you. So the target audience here is Star Wars fans who would find this funny.
So the last thing that we’re going to talk about is identifying rhetorical strategies to help you identify the audience. So let’s take this Old Spice commercial as an example. The purpose here is pretty easy to identify. They want to sell deodorant that’s their whole, that’s their whole shtick; that’s all they’re trying to do is sell deodorant. If any of you are familiar with Old Spice ads, you’re familiar with the line “Ladies look at your man, now back to me. Now look at your man, now back to me.” Even though he’s addressing the ladies, he’s speaking directly to the ladies, the ladies are not the audience here. The target audience of this ad is actually the men, and how we can figure that out is because that tactic of saying look at your man now back to me coming out of the mouth of this very handsome man that you see on screen uh is meant specifically as an ethos technique to make any men watching this commercial feel insecure, feel insignificant, feel less than, because they don’t look like this guy here on screen, and so because Old Spice is targeting the insecurities of men we can deduce that their target audience is men.
So as you go about looking at the audiences for the memes that you’ve selected and identifying the audiences for the memes that you selected it’s in your best interest to really sit down, look at your meme, ask yourself where it was published if you can find that information, who created it, what is the context needed in order to understand your meme, and in order for the purpose to be effective what, are the rhetorical strategies that are being used and who might be targeted by those. So go ahead, sit down with your memes go ahead and write all of that out. Once you’ve got that figured out maybe send it to one of the other people in the class uh have your one of your classmates take a look at it give you a little bit of feedback and then send it on to me for a little bit of feedback as well. If you guys have any questions please please reach out to me please email me and yeah have a good day.
