L19 Media Audiences and News

Katherine Viner makes an important comment that the Guardian stands for Pluralism - multiple voices from any part of the political spectrum, or people with contrasting ideas can come coexist. This also means that they support diversifying their work.

How are audiences categorised by news industries?

• The Publishers Audiences Measurement Company Ltd (PAMCo) is an organisation run by the newspaper and periodical publishers and advertisers.
• Their figures for newspapers include such demographic categories as age, gender, class and region.
• News industries use these categories to sell their audiences to advertisers.

Newsworks facts:

• Newsbrand content on social media is 40% more trusted than general social media content.
• Consumers are 50% more likely to engage with advertising encountered in a quality environment.
• Brand using video advertising on newsbrand sites are 2.4x more likely to be considered trustworthy.
• Image-based ads outperform price-based ads.
• The newspaper you read explains 71% of the variance in your views. That is far higher than simple demographics such as age (16%) and income (3%)

Social Class Categories

• A/upper middle class/higher managerial, administrative or professional
• B/middle middle class/intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
• C1/ lower middle class/supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
• C2/ skilled working class
• D/ working class/semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers
• E/ state pensioners, casual and lowest grade workers, unemployed with state benefits only.

Categories A,B,C1 - Generally Middle class - Proportion of UK population: 54%

Categories C2,D,E - Generally Working class - Proportion of UK population: 46%

Analysis of Audience

These figures clearly show that the Guardian readership is much younger, more upmarket (more middle class) much more London based and slightly more male than the Daily Mail readership. The Daily Mail's reach is more evenly spread than the Guardian's.

The differences in the audiences for the print newspapers are huge. They are much less for the online editions.

The Mail's Online Audience is, compared to the Guardian's:

- only slightly less upmarket

- only slightly older

- only slightly more female

- slightly less London based

Influence of Context

• Social and Cultural contexts will influence how audiences are categorised. Class has become a much less significant predictive factor in how people behave, including which brands they buy, compare to, say, the 1930s. This is due to social and cultural change. This means that, though news industries still sell audiences to advertisers in terms of class, they are more likely to use psychographic categories. The Guardian, for example, sells its audience profile using the following terms:
• Progressive audience
• Active fashion and tech consumers
• Well travelled
• Finance savvy 
• Well educated
• Engaged, influential and well connected
• With a passion for food, art and culture.

Case Study Analysis: Daily Mail

• The contents of the newspapers will reflect the social make of all their audiences as the newspaper tries to meet and address that audience.
• For example, the Femail section of the Mail Online addresses its female audience with topics similar to women's lifestyle magazines. The newspaper reflects its social mix by including both sensationalist celebrity coverage and a fairly detailed business section.
• The travel section attracts advertisers aiming at the rich older audience, with a bias towards advert for cruises.
• The Mail's strongly populist viewpoint, supporting ordinary people against a hostile world, may address the beliefs of an older, conservative audience with a sense of pessimism or grievance.

Case Study Analysis: The Guardian

• The Guardian attempts to engage and address its markets, younger audience by extensive coverage of high culture. For example, the Saturday Guardian include a review section dedicated to literature and a guide supplement which covers opera, classical music, arts, dance, film and television. No parts of the Guardian are gendered as this was deemed sexist.
• The business section of the Guardian concentrates more on issues affecting consumers than those for investors, perhaps addressing a more left wing audience.
• The travel section tends to serve the more Independent Traveller, although it does offer a range of packages to suitably cultural destinations.
• The Guardian website tabs-news, opinion, Sports, culture, lifestyle-suggest that the website is addressing a younger audience by giving the last three bigger prominence than in the print newspaper, but still retaining broadsheet ethos.
• The Guardian's moralistic, liberal viewpoint may address the beliefs of a younger, more liberal and optimistic audience.

Online Media

• The fact that the websites for the Guardian and Mail Online are so different in style and content, yet fairly similar in terms of audience might lead to the conclusion that:
• These differences in style and content are not so significant as online as they are in print
• The online audience is less loyal to any one newspaper, possibly arriving at the website by a click-through from social media feeds.

Influence of Context

• The growth of consumerism, impact of feminism, rise of multiculturalism, changing attitudes to sexuality and political/historical context have a strong impact on how news targets and dresses audiences.

The growth of consumerism means that newspaper audiences feel that the media should serve them rather than the consumer being loyal to a particular newspaper. If the newspaper does not serve the consumer, they will just switch to a different paper. Consumerism means the consumer has more power.

The impact of Feminism means that the newspaper audiences have a wider range or sources, and no male/female structure means that the newspaper is choosing not the be sexist, which will offend many in the 21st century, as gender roles are changing and becoming more fluid. Typically, the Daily Mail Online shows in their Femail section, more 'conventionally' feminine stories that include makeup, hair, children, stay-at-home mother activities, etc, when really, in the modern day, women are not just labelled as these things anymore; they have jobs, are multitasking, and are not just interested in makeup and clothing and having babies.

Technologies, audience consumption and response

• The most significant discussion is between the consumption of print and online news. Printed newspapers offer a very different kind of consumption to online newspapers.
• Audiences are more likely to be loyal to a print newspaper so the design may be more strongly affected by what the audience expects.
• Audiences seem to expect less of the quality of news and thoughtful content on the website but expect a higher speed of response by the news organisation.

Influence of Context

• Social and Cultural context is reflected in the audience's expectations of a fast speed of response. This is the world we are living in now.
• Cultural context of the prestige and respect audiences often give to print newspapers.