CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDING THE AUDIENCE

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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATIONUNDERSTANDIN
G THE AUDIENCE
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDIN
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Idea
Narration
Media
Audience
Encodes
Decodes
_demographics _psychographics _media consumption
_ Age _ Gender _ Occupation _ Education _
Income _ Family status _ Geographic area
_ Opinions / interests / hobbies _ Degree of
loyalty _ Occasions _ Benefits sought _ Usage
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDIN
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• Almost all stories are written with the target
  audience in mind.
• To find out the nature of our target audience, we
  perform audience analysis.
• When we know the nature of our target audience,
  we should adjust our stories to that target
  audience.

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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDIN
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• Audience Theories
• 1. Demographic approach
• 2. Cultural approach
• 3. Uses and gratifications approach

Frame of reference
Stimulation motivation
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDIN
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Media Content
Experience (Frame of reference)
Needs and Desires (Stimulation and Motivation)
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDIN
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• HOW PEOPLE CONSUME MEDIA
• The selection of the media people consume can
  tell us about their daily needs and desires.
• Peoples needs and desires lead them to seek out
  and consume different media experiences.

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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDIN
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• Maslows hierarchy of needs

morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem
solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts
Self-actualization
self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of
others, respect by others
Esteem
friendship, family, sexual intimacy
Love/belonging
security of body, employment, resources,
morality, the family, health, property
Safety
breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis,
excretion
Physiological
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDIN
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• What is your favorite movie?
• What is your favorite TV show?
• What is your favorite song?
• What is your favorite radio station?
• What is your favorite book/novel/magazine?
• What is your favorite website?

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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDIN
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• You are what you eat
• You are what you read,
• watch, and listen to

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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDIN
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• Stories focus on common human concerns
• that derive from our needs, desires,
• fears, hopes, phobias,
• and other motivating forces.

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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION UNDERSTANDIN
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• An examination of these significant
• concerns will help us to relate and
• create stories that will attract our
• target audience.

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Hydes Needs and Desires in the Public Arts
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
DESIRES IN THE PUBLIC ARTS

• 01_ to have models of agents and actions

We learn patterns of behavior from those around
us parents, siblings, friends, teachers and
from stories, including fairy tales, novels,
movies, television shows, and comic strips. The
public arts have long told us how storytellers
(or their sponsors) believed people should and
shouldnt behave.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 02_ to experience the beautiful

Beauty is relative. All societies agree that
there is such a thing as beauty, although each
society has its own criteria for beauty. At the
same time, tastes are almost constantly changing,
and works that once were found beautiful may
later be thought to be uninspiring, or even ugly.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 03_ to experience the ugly

Like beauty, ugliness is a relative term. The
human preoccupation with the ugly, whether
physical or behavioral, is a mystery to some of
us, but theres plenty of evidence to show that
most people are fascinated by and somehow drawn
to things they find frightening or
repugnant. Confronting ugliness elevates our
self-image. It gives us a feeling of that were
in better shape than the objects of our
fascination.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 04_ to have friends

Life without friends would be intolerable. Surely
at one time in your life and more likely at
several points you have been enriched by
sharing with friends entertainments, outings,
adventures, and ideas. Friendless people lack
sympathetic acquaintances to assure them that
they matter that they have value as human
beings. Friendship, as depicted in theatre, film,
television, and popular novels, are integral
parts of most dramas.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 05_ to be independent

As contradictory as it may sound, along with a
need for the support of friends, we also have a
need to feel independent. Because were complex
beings and often have conflicting or
contradictory needs, it follows that just as at
times we need the support of others (friends or
family, usually), at other times we need to
assert our independence. Perhaps youve had the
experience of being the lone dissenting voice in
a group discussion or have felt a need to go our
own way.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 06_ to see authority figures exalted

Most societies have believed in a hierarchical
arrangement of their members, extending from the
highest of noblest to the lowest. We seem to
need heroic figures in our lives. We experience
pleasure in looking up to such people. Often, we
endow them with virtues they dont possess and,
later, are unforgiving toward them if their
fallibility is revealed.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 07_ to see authority figures deflated

We humans are just contrary enough to want have
it both ways to both exalt and deflate
authority figures. In societies where its
unsafe to deflate authority figures, its
necessary to go underground with hostile feelings
or even to depose or kill the object of ones
hostility in order to be purged.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 08_ to improve oneself

Our need to improve takes many forms. On a
physical level, it motivates us to work out, to
take vitamins and body building supplements, and
to diet. On an intellectual level, it causes us
to sign up for a class or an entire program of
instruction that offers hope for a better job or
a more enriched life. To be human is to want to
work achieving our highest potential. Without
this desire and the willingness to sacrifice
temporary pleasures, we are less than fully human.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 09_ to be distracted from the realities of life

Most of us need periodic opportunities to escape
from the problems that plague us. The public
arts offer such a refuge, and there are many ways
of interpreting this. Some believe that an
occasional break from ongoing problems restores
our energy and prepares us for a resumption of
the battle. Others, including many who condemn
the so-called mass media, claim that
entertainment becomes addictive and distracts us
from the awareness that problems exist that
should be identified and engage.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 10_ to believe in miracles

Throughout the ages, humankind has consistently
reaffirmed its belief in miracles. In recent
years, science has attempted to undermine our
belief in miracles at least at the rational
level but our public arts, our prayers, and our
unshakable hope for the future seem to indicate
that even the most pessimistic person believes
that miracles, while they might not occur, should
occur!
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 11_ to have fun to be amused

Laughter serves important psychological and even
physiological needs. Were momentarily
distracted from the realities of life, yet we
sense more than this negative motivation for our
enjoyment.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 12_ to be purged of unpleasant emotions

Public arts and ceremonies help us maintain a
psychological balance by purging a surplus of
negative psychological energy. Hostility toward
ones boss, system, ones mate, or sweetheart can
be relieved (at least temporarily) by the public
arts. Both universal themes and the cathartic
power of forms, can bring about such relief.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 13_ to believe in romantic love

Nearly everyone falls in love, and the feelings
that follow are excruciatingly beautiful and
painful the constant preoccupation with thoughts
of the love one the agony of time spend apart
the palpitations and drumming in the ears when
you meet and kiss the speed with which time
passes when youre together and on and
on. However, human relationships cant remain in
this state. They lived happily ever after is
based on anything but human experience, yet were
willing to accept the notion in fiction as though
it were the truth.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 14_ to experience a world of significance,
  intensity, and larger-than-life-sized people

The lives of most of us alternate between periods
of excitement and stretches of unremarkable
routine. During our down times, we often seek
entertainments that stimulate us and provide
opportunities to participate vicariously in
heroic, life-or-death decisions, or peak
experiences. The public arts take us away from
the humdrum and expose us to events and agents
that are larger than life.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 15_ to be informed

Many public arts furnish us with information.
This is obvious in newscasts, documentaries, and
how-to shows. But because the public arts
pervade our lives, theres information to be
gained, too, from variety shows, situation
comedies, cop shows, and outdoor adventure shows.
If they provide us with little useful
information, theyre still important to us,
because everyone is talking about them we must
watch in order to be informed most of us feel a
need to keep up with them to participate in
social interchange.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 16_ to share experiences with others

Sharing experiences with others is one need or
desire thats served only sporadically by the
electronic media, and in a two-step process. When
crowds gather for rock concerts, sports events,
or political rallies, its members share
experiences simultaneously and communally. Shouts
of approval or disapproval affect all present,
and as the event moves along theres an almost
inevitable buildup of emotions as audience
members feed on a growing consensual excitement.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 17_ to have vicarious but controlled emotional
  experiences

Life can be dreary if we seldom experience fear,
hate, or other extreme emotions, but most of us
really dont want to risk our lives or our health
to obtain relief from monotony, so we seek
emotional stimulation through the public arts,
including films, television and radio broadcasts,
festivals and ceremonies, sport events, and
circuses. Many psychiatrists believe that
vicarious emotional experiences with things we
fear help us cope with some of the frightening
aspects of real life.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 18_ to confront, in a controlled situation, the
  horrible and the terrible

We associate horror with the destruction of the
physical with mutilation and death. We
associate terror with unseen fears provoked by a
creaking door or a menacing shadow on the wall.
Life is full of horror and terror. Humankind
found that the best way to live with horror and
terror was to go out and meet it on.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 19_ to believe that spiritual or moral values are
  more important than mere physical existence

Most societies believe that certain values are
more important than human life. Many people will
kill others, or allow themselves to be killed, to
defend moral or spiritual mandates. The soldier
who kills and risks his own life on the
battlefield demonstrates this. So does anyone who
would rather die than be dishonored. History
tells many stories of persons who gave up their
lives for others or for a principle.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 20_ to explore taboo subjects without guilt

Public arts have, for centuries, explored taboo
subjects in a guilt-free way. Today, newscasters
provide intimate details of the sex lives of
famous people, claiming their obligation to tell
all. The serious and objective delivery of those
reports belies both the reporters and the
viewers enjoyment of the story, because of our
eternal and universal fascination with forbidden
subjects.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 21_ to find outlets for the sex drive in a
  guilt-free-context

Sex or scatological talk in a movie or at a
dinner party is almost always cast in an amusing
light. There are two points to be made here
first, the witticisms are masks that prevent
feelings of guilt while avoiding censorship and
second, most people apparently feel that there is
something inherently naughty or funny about sex
and the elimination of bodily wastes.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 22_ to experience hate in a guilt-free arena

Most of us have limited opportunities to express
our deepest feelings. If we do occasionally blow
up and tell someone off, we typically suffer
guilt feelings after weve cooled down. In real
life, public arts ceremonies, and sports provide
outlets for the extreme emotion of hate. In
fictional events, we can hate the hate-able,
without having to hate ourselves for doing so.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 23_ to see evil punished and virtue rewarded

Despite the prevalence of injustice in the world
or probably because of it humankind has
consistently wanted to see justice triumph in
those fantasies we call the fictive arts.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 24_ to imagine oneself a hero

We all daydream, and most of us at one time or
another imagine ourselves as heroes. Fictional,
sports, and real-life heroes provide us with
specific examples of people wed like to be. Even
though we might recoil from real danger, we like
to use our imagination to place ourselves in
danger situations.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 25_ to see villains in action

Villains, more often than not, have been of
greater interest to audiences than have been for
heroes and heroines. Does this mean that we
enjoy these villains, or does it mean that we
enjoy hating them? Are we please at their
actions, or at their downfall? Or both? We all
were villains, though unconsciously so, when we
were little children. We broke things, hit other
kids, lied, took things. Perhaps the fictional
villain, who continues to act selfishly and
amorally in adult life, is secretly admired by
those of us who were forced to conform to the
demands of society.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• 26_ to believe in the good old days

Human species has always believed that there was
and earlier era when everything was better and
people were happier. This vision sees human
beings as having forever been in a state of
progressive degradation.
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CA2012 STORYTELLING FOR COMMUNICATION NEEDS AND
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• Reference
• Hyde, S. Idea to Script Storytelling for Todays
  Media. Boston, MA Allyn and Bacon, 2003.