Media audiences
The word ' audiences' is very familiar as the collective term for the 'receivers' in the simple sequential model of the mass communication process (source, channel, message, receiver, effect) that was deployed by pioneers in the field of media research. It is term that is understood by media practitioners as well as theorists and is recognized by media uses as on unambiguous description of themselves. Nevertheless beyond common sense usage, there is much room for differences of meaning and theoretical disputes. These system mainly from the fact that a single word is being applied to an increasingly diverse and complex reality; open to alternative and competing theoretical formulations.

The 'audience' for most mass media is not usually observable, except in fragmentary or indirect ways. According to 'Allor' (1988) ' the audience exist nowhere; it inhabits no real space, only positions within analytic discourses' As a result the term audience has as abstract and debatable character and the reality to which the term refer is also diverse and constantly changing.

An audience thus be defined in different overlapping ways:]
- by place ( as in the case of both local media)
- by people ( as when medium is characterized by an appeal to a certain age group, gender, political belief or income category)
- by the particular type of medium or channel ( technology and organization combined )
-by the contents of its messages ( genres, subject matters, styles)
- by time ( as when one speaks of 'day time' or ' prime time)

Goals of Audience Research
Media need their audience more than audiences need media. Media research is primarily a tool for the close controls and management (manipulation of media audiences)

Main Goals of Audience Research are:
- Accounting for sales (book keeping)
- Measuring actual and potential reach for purposes of advertising.
- Manipulating and channeling audience choice behavior.
- Looking for audience market opportunities.
- Product testing and improving communication effectiveness.
- Meeting responsibilities to serve and audience.
- Evaluating media performance in a number of ways (for instances, to test allegation of harmful effects).

Public broadcasters often carry a research on meeting responsibilities to the audience. Media industry seeks to satisfy their media needs. More research is made by media to control audience than to serve people.
Depending on the goals of audience research, the research will examine different aspect of audiences. It will also use different tools to describe the audiences. There are three main traditions of audiences' research, which represents different approaches determined by what we are interested to know about audience.


They are not describing audiences; they are tools to do so.

a) The structural tradition of audience measurement
-It describes the amount and social composition of audiences.


b) The behaviorists' tradition: media effects and media uses.
-Mainly research on potential harm from media side. Passive or active audience victims of media manipulation or concise users who are in change of their media experience. Research focused on the origin, nature, and degree of motives for choice of media and media content.

c) The cultural tradition and reception analysis
-Cultural study emphasizes media use as a reflection of a particular socio-cultural context and as a process of giving meaning to cultural products and experiences in everyday life. It involves a view of media use as in itself a significant aspects of 'everyday life'. Media reception research emphasized the study of audiences as 'interpretative communities'. Reception analysis is a part of modern cultural studies.