In short, it refers to the recipients of information dissemination, including readers of newspapers, periodicals and books, listeners of radio, and viewers of movies and television. The rise of the fourth media network has made the scope of the audience wider and wider. . Since mass communication became a science, who is the center of audience news communication activities has been one of the focuses of research and discussion by many scholars. From the perspective of propaganda, early communication scholars successively proposed theories such as the "bullet theory" and the "strong effect theory". Their essence is to regard the audience as a passive recipient of information. Obviously, in these theories, the communicator is at the center. With the development of research, communication scholars have discovered that audiences are not simple, passive recipients, nor are they homogeneous. Different audiences will have different reactions to the same communication information. The role of the audience in the communication process has begun to be valued. . The characteristics of the audience truly changed from transmitter-centered theory to audience-centered theory in the 1960s. Researchers of audience-centered theory believe that the audience is the active agent in communication and the media is the passive agent. The audience does not passively "receive" information, but actively seeks information for their own use. This is the so-called audience-centered theory of consciousness. Schramm once explained: Audience participation in communication is like eating in a cafeteria. The role of the media in this communication environment is only to serve the audience and provide meals (information) that satisfy the audience as much as possible. As for what the audience eats, how much they eat, and whether to eat or not, it all depends on the audience's own wishes and preferences, and the media is powerless. In other words: "The center of this theoretical assumption is the audience. It asserts that the behavior of recipients is largely determined by personal needs and interests, and that people use media to satisfy personal needs and desires." Except In addition, German scholar Elizabeth Newman proposed the "Spiral of Silence" audience model and theory, thus establishing the central position of the audience in the news communication process in the field of news theory. In practice, the Western press has also experienced a transformation process from ignoring the audience to paying attention to the audience, and even took the audience-centered theory to the extreme, such as the proliferation of yellow news. The Western press has successively restricted and eliminated various shortcomings in the news dissemination process through the introduction of industry self-discipline and social responsibility theory. There is no doubt that the central position of the audience in news communication activities has been firmly established. Western news communication concepts have a wide-ranging impact on our country’s journalism.

[Edit this paragraph] Concept evolution

In the 1990s, after the market economic system was gradually established, the audience-centered theory was formally proposed by the journalism theory circle and caused controversy. However, the audience-centered theory Centrism is still recognized by most scholars and provides mutual guidance to the mass media in the market. In 1982, the Journalism Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Capital Journalism Society Investigation Team jointly launched a survey of readers, viewers, and listeners in Beijing. It was the first large-scale audience survey conducted in my country. This survey was large-scale, statistically standardized, and authoritative. After the survey results were published, it caused great repercussions at home and abroad, allowing audience concepts and theories to be established and strengthened, and audience research organizations were born one after another. More importantly, the concept of "audience" has been deeply accepted by the majority of news media practitioners since then. The concepts related to the audience are the advertising market, circulation size, ratings, and potential Reader market and other concepts. In 1986, the Public Opinion Research Institute of Renmin University of China was established, marking the establishment of a specialized organization for audience research in my country. For more than 20 years, many newspapers, radio stations, and television stations have carried out audience surveys of different scales. After 1995, the number of survey companies in the society gradually increased, and the depth and breadth of audience surveys have made breakthroughs. Based on audience feedback, the media continues to seek new reporting methods and means to meet the diverse needs of the audience. With the establishment of the current socialist market economic system, media competition has intensified. How to make the audience market bigger has become a topic of common concern to everyone. It can be seen that the audience-centered theory has penetrated into various communication media from large countries to small regions.

[Edit this paragraph] Reasons for the evolution of audience concepts

1. Follow the basic laws of news communication

①Look at the constituent factors of news communication. The transmitter and the receiver are two important factors in news dissemination. The audience obtains information through the news released by the news media, so as to understand the world and adapt to the world. The news media can survive and develop because it can meet the audience's need for information, because it can benefit society and the public, and because it can receive the trust and support of the audience. Dissemination and acceptance constitute the whole of this flow, and should be said to be the basis and prerequisite for the completion of news dissemination.

Audience news communication is a form of interpersonal communication in the entire social life through the news media, and it is an extremely important channel in interpersonal communication. For this reason, news communication must also follow the general laws of interpersonal communication and be highly Pay attention to the relationship between communicators and audiences in the field of communication, study the relationship between news reports and audiences, and then attract and win over audiences by improving news reports. ②From the perspective of the circulation process of news dissemination. News dissemination is a two-way flow of information. The completion of a communication process is marked by the communication from the source of news information through the communicator to the recipient; failure to communicate is ineffective communication. In 1948, American communication scholar Hadru Laswell proposed the famous Five W communication model. The first W is Who, which refers to the communicator and the "gatekeeper". In the communication activities, communication Officials and "gatekeepers" certainly play a leading role in the process of selecting, filtering and amplifying disseminated content, but to be effective and to be able to "pass through", they must also successfully pass the following three W's: Whichchannel, Whom, What, Whateffect, that is, channels, audiences and effects. ③From the perspective of the source and effect of news dissemination, the audience occupies an extremely important position. First, the public, as the subject of public opinion, is a source of information. Without the public, news communication would become water without a source and a tree without roots. The active participation of news audiences provides rich news materials for news dissemination. News comes from life practice. The people are the main body of social practice, and there is no active participation of the people. News has become water without a source and a foundation without a foundation. It is a self-evident fact that the broad masses of the people are potential recipients of news dissemination. Therefore, we must pay attention to the resource role of news audiences in news dissemination. Secondly, the audience is the destination for news information to be realized. Without an audience, communication cannot proceed, and the object and purpose will be lost. The reception of news information by the news audience determines the realization process of news value and actual effect. Finally, information feedback from news audiences is the only way for news dissemination activities to go deeper. The purpose of news dissemination is to make the news audience accept the content of news dissemination and produce the desired effect. Modern news communication is two-way. After news audiences receive the information, they will inevitably react accordingly: they may agree, oppose, support, or resist... These feedback opinions are of great significance to the re-output of news information. .

2. The industrial nature of news media

Under the planned economic system, the news industry, as a political propaganda department, has always focused on transmission and neglected operation and management. After the establishment of the socialist market economy

after the economic system, news media began to face the market, operate independently, and participate in competition. The external pressure of market competition promotes the industrialization of news media, and the news media has an internal impulse to pursue profits. The audience is the potential consumer group of the media. It has become an important object of news media research and investigation. The reasons are self-evident.

[Edit this paragraph] Characteristics of the audience

1) Huge scale, exceeding most social groups in number; 2) Dispersion, widely distributed among all levels of society;

Audience 3) Heterogeneity, that is, having different social attributes. The audience is not only the target of the influence of mass media, but also plays an important role in restricting the communication process. The needs of the audience and the audience's selective exposure to media information content all play an important role in the effectiveness of mass communication.

[Edit this paragraph] Audience type

1) According to the media categories they are exposed to: newspaper readers, radio listeners, TV viewers, Internet users 2) According to demographic principles, within the audience group It can be further divided into different groups according to gender, age, occupation, region, education level, etc. Such as male audience and female audience. 3) According to the frequency of contact with the media: stable audience and unstable audience 4) According to the audience’s different information needs: general audience (broad audience) and special audience (narrow audience) 5) According to the certainty of contact with the news media: actual audience and potential audience Audience 6) According to the clear communication objects of the news media: core audience and marginal audience

[Edit this paragraph] The status of the audience

1) The audience is the interpreter; 2) The audience is the participant

Audience 3) The audience is the leader; 4) The audience is the active subject of information needs; 5) The audience is the real master of the cultural market.

[Edit this paragraph] Audience psychological characteristics

1. Cognitive psychology 2. Curiosity psychology 3. Herd psychology 4. Expression psychology 5. Empathy psychology 6. Aggression psychology

[Edit this paragraph] How does social news satisfy the audience

Social news is the most attractive type of news to the audience, and it is also a powerful weapon for the media to win the market and defeat competitors. Therefore, Social news has received unparalleled attention from various media. This is not only because social news can catch the audience’s attention and easily obtain exclusive headlines, but more importantly, social news satisfies certain psychological needs of the audience. 1) Social news can satisfy the curiosity of the audience to the greatest extent

Compared with other news types, social news can satisfy the different types of curiosity of the audience to a greater extent. This is why it is loved and loved by the audience today. The reason why the media pays attention to it. However, curiosity can also be divided into high and low levels. Being curious about things that are beneficial to social development and human progress will often create a generation of great men; but if you are only curious about some dark, dirty, and useless things, it will have a negative impact. . Nowadays, some media blindly cater to the vulgar curiosity of some people for the sake of market and profit. The newspapers are full of "star, sex, and fishy" social news, which greatly reduces the authority and credibility of the media. In the long run, this will On the contrary, the gain outweighs the loss. 2) Social news can satisfy the audience’s desire for voyeurism. Everyone will only show their bright side to others, but everyone is eager to see the secret side of others. This is a kind of voyeurism, and this kind of voyeurism Selfish desires can only be satisfied by social news. In recent years, social news on TV has often been reported through hidden interviews. Although this interview method can obtain more real and objective news, it has always been morally and legally questionable. However, the media has always regarded this method as This method is a powerful weapon because it is very recognized by the public. Its hidden camera sense and disguised interview method give the audience a strong sense of voyeurism. The audience can even imagine that they are immersing themselves in other people's lives and peeping into other people's secret sides. 3) Social news can satisfy the audience's comparison psychology. Generally, the audience likes comparison when understanding something. This is a psychological phenomenon that occurs during people's understanding activities. When there is comparison, there is identification, and when one compares, one can immediately see the good and the bad. The two emotions that the audience is most likely to have at this time are jealousy and sympathy - jealousy of the strong and sympathy for the weak. Among them, sympathy is welcomed by the audience. There are many reports in social news that can arouse public sympathy, especially reports about patients, poor students, etc. Journalists often base the tone of their reports on sympathy for the weak, which is also to satisfy the public's mentality. . In order to cater to the audience's sympathy for the weak, the media's social news reporting often loses its fair and objective stance. Especially in the reporting of some social news involving legal cases, the media often unconsciously caters to the sympathy of the public. To make the case develop in the direction expected by the public and create public opinion to put pressure on judicial personnel.

In Western countries, many media have relied on hourly and daily ratings and listening rates, as well as the attention of a certain page or column to adjust the behavior of communicators in a timely manner. However, most of the media in my country can currently only adjust the behavior based on the year. Ratings, listening rates and circulation are measured in time units, which results in audience feedback not being delivered to the communicator in a timely manner. Moreover, current surveys generally only stay at a low level of how many viewers watch what program, without rising to the level of further analysis to understand who, who, and what program. Why do you watch high-level programs? Media and professional audience survey companies in various places do not have an authoritative, unified and standard test system approved by the relevant administrative departments in audience feedback surveys.

[Edit this paragraph] The evolution of my country’s audience concept

In the 1990s, after the market economic system was gradually established, the audience-centered theory was formally proposed by the journalism theory circle and caused controversy. However, the audience-centered theory is still recognized by most scholars and serves as a mutual guide to mass media in the market. In 1982, the Journalism Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Capital Journalism Society Investigation Team jointly launched the Readers, Audiences and Audiences Survey in Beijing, which was the first large-scale audience survey conducted in my country. . This survey was large-scale, statistically standardized, and authoritative. After the survey results were published, it caused great repercussions at home and abroad, allowing audience concepts and theories to be established and strengthened, and audience research organizations were born one after another. More importantly, the concept of "audience" has since been deeply accepted by the majority of news media practitioners, and concepts related to audience include the advertising market, circulation size, ratings, potential reader market and other concepts. In 1986, the Public Opinion Research Institute of Renmin University of China was established, marking the establishment of a specialized organization for audience research in my country. For more than 20 years, many newspapers, radio stations, and television stations have carried out audience surveys of different scales. After 1995, the number of survey companies in the society gradually increased, and the depth and breadth of audience surveys have made breakthroughs. Based on audience feedback, the media continues to seek new reporting methods and means to meet the diverse needs of the audience. With the establishment of the current socialist market economic system, media competition has intensified. How to make the audience market bigger has become a topic of common concern to everyone. It can be seen that the audience-centered theory has penetrated into various communication media from large countries to small regions.

[Edit this paragraph] The reaction of the audience to news dissemination

The audience is an active information seeker, seeking various information according to their own interests to meet their own needs . The audience selectively contacts, understands and remembers external information. These characteristics of the audience have a restrictive effect on the process and effect of information dissemination.