The Case for Audience Isolation: Language and Culture as Predictors of Advertiser Investment

Abstract

In what has become an increasingly multilingual United States, growing numbers of television advertisers have begun targeting foreign language speakers. Because of the increased cost and effort in crafting unique ad campaigns, however, the factors behind this investment decision are explored. Using an online survey, advertisers (N?=?1,150) were asked how they valued various demographic audience traits as they considered potential target markets. T tests revealed significant differences between foreign language and non-foreign language advertisers' audience preferences. Logistic regression showed that, contrary to previous audience valuation findings, household income was not a primary factor in foreign language audience investment decisions. Rather, advertisers who valued household income more were less likely to invest in foreign language audiences in the United States, with language dependency and cultural traits predicting a greater likelihood of investment. The Audience Investment by Isolation Model is offered, which can help explain the investment decision-making process by advertisers as they weigh demographic audience traits, audience isolation strategies, and costs.     

Audience duplication and its determinants: a study in the multichannel and multiculture television market in Guangzhou,China

This study examines audience duplication, the extent to which the audience of one program also watches the other, and its determinants. Using peoplemeter data from Guangzhou, a multichannel and multicultural television market in China, the study tests the intertwining effects of media structural factors and audience preference factors on audience duplication levels of program pairs. The results show significant effects of the two types of factors. A regression model was established in which these two types of factors together explained 59% of the total variance in audience duplication.     

Commercial ethnicity: Language,class and race in the marketing of the hispanic audience

This essay examines the historical construction of the Hispanic audience and analyzes how contemporary Hispanic audience researchers/marketers have disrupted that unitary, essentialist construction by segmenting the Hispanic audience by class. The principal tool in this effort is language: the Spanish language is proxy for the “mass” of lower socioeconomic class Hispanic audience; English language usage by Hispanics is the sign of a higher class of Hispanic audience. The clearly defined panethnic conceptualization of the Hispanic audience, the nexus of which is the Spanish language, has been blurred. The study draws on interviews with Hispanic media marketers and audience researchers and on analysis of Hispanic market research reports.     

Sesame Street and the Reform of Children's Television

Television inheritance effects, inordinately high levels of audience duplication between programs scheduled back-to-back, have helped broadcasters manage audience flow for decades. This study uses 2004 national peoplemeter data collected by Nielsen to replicate a study of inheritance effects done 20 years earlier. It finds the same predictors explain either 96% or 58% of variance in the duplicated audience, depending upon the measure of duplication that is used. The research resolves discrepancies in the literature on inheritance effects and casts serious doubt on the common practice of inferring audience duplication from the strength of correlations between lead-in and lead-out program ratings.     

An Analysis of Differences Between Visitors at Natural History Museums and Science Centers

As museum staff search for ways to broaden their audience, creative collaborations are emerging among various institutions with the hope that visitors who typically visit science centers, for example, will venture over to their local natural history museum. Typically, front-end evaluation is used for understanding details about visitors in the context of a proposed exhibition. Front-end evaluation can also help collaborating museums understand the nuances among their visitors regarding demographics, attitudes, and preferences for interpretive strategies. Carefully articulating the characteristics of the actual audience, potential audience, and target audience will help exhibit developers fine-tune their exhibitions to meet the needs and expectations of a more diverse public. This article presents partial findings from a front-end evaluation that analyzed the differences between visitors to natural history museums and science centers.     

Predicting Audience Exposure to Television in Today's Media Environment: An Empirical Integration of Active-Audience and Structural Theories

Scholars have long advocated empirical integration of active-audience and structural theories to best explain audience exposure to television. This study incorporated both uses and gratifications and structural variables in an integrated model of audience exposure. Results indicated that seven statistically significant factors—ritualistic motivations, use of the Internet, audience availability, the cost of multi-channel service, age, instrumental motivations, and gender—combined to explain 30.3% of the variance in audience exposure to television. Findings suggest that no single theoretical construct explains the complexities that determine exposure to television. Future inquiry should continue to seek theoretical and empirical integration as a way to understand and explain media behavior.     

Reaching Out to International Students: A Focus-Group Approach to Developing Web Resources and Services

Librarians at the State University of New York at Buffalo implemented the Resources for International Students Web guide to support library outreach to a multicultural and multilingual audience. A focus group helped librarians to understand the needs of new international students and tailor Web resources accordingly. In addition to creating awareness of international student cultural challenges, this article presents focus-group guidelines to assist in the planning process of library services and resources.     

Determining Librarian Research Preferences: A Comparison Survey of Web-Scale Discovery Systems and Subject Databases

The success or failure of any tool, service or system used in a library is predicated on the audience it finds. While web-scale discovery systems have developed widespread adoption in academic libraries, there is a sense from librarians that they continue to be in search of their true audience. Librarians play a key role in the utilization of web-scale discovery systems, and their experiences as an end user of these systems may influence their attitudes in many ways. The survey discussed in this article looks at the attitudes librarians have toward web-scale discovery systems when using them for their personal research, including feature preferences and inquiries into opinions regarding strengths and weaknesses of the system. The results of this survey provide some insights into why some librarians struggle with the idea using of web-scale discovery systems by themselves and by the patrons with which they work.     

A Network Analytic Approach to Audience Behavior and Market Structure: The Case of China and the United States

This study adopts a network analytic approach to understand media audiences in relation to media markets, bridging the literature on audience behavior and media economics. Using audience data in the Chinese and U.S. markets, we apply multi-level measures to compare audience fragmentation patterns, a key indicator of market structure, across television channels. Drawing on McQuail's four–stage fragmentation model, we find the Chinese television market exhibits the Core-Peripheral model where a few channels dominate the marketplace and the rest are viewed by niche segments of the audience. In contrast, the U.S. market represents the Pluralism model with extremely high levels of audience duplication across channels, suggesting overlapping patterns of exposure throughout the market rather than isolated segments.     

Evaluation, Research and Communities of Practice: Program Evaluation in Museums

Museums present different contexts for learning, particularly when compared with places such as schooos, universities and libraries. They have been described as free-choice learning environments visited by a broad range of people. Museums have the opportunity to shape identities—through access to objects, knowledge and information visitors see themselves and their culture reflected in ways that encourage new connections, meaning making and learning. However, across the world museums are finding themselves competing with other leisure and learning experiences in an increasingly global world. The long history of audience research in the cultural sector demonstrates the interest museums have had in their visitors over time. This paper outlines the development of audience research in museums, the context within which it operates, and describes the processes of audience research through a series of case studies drawn from the work of the Australian Museum Audience Research Centre. It is argued that the shift in museums from mission-led program development to balancing content and audience needs through a transaction approach requires a broader research-focused agenda. While traditional ways of conducting evaluations are necessary and useful, to remain viable audience research needs to be more strategic, working across the sector in new ways and utilising new methods. How programs impact on users and facilitate learning about a wide range of key issues that museums are concerned with is a leadership role that audience research can take across both the cultural sector and other free-choice learning contexts. To achieve this, a communities of practice approach is suggested as a potential framework for audience research in the contemporary museum.     

The Language of Laughter: A Quantitative/Qualitative Fusion Examining Television Narrative and Humor

This study utilizes multiple methods to analyze the effects of a laugh track on audience response to four episodes of the classic sitcom, “The Andy Griffith Show.” An experimental design and a narratological approach are used in concert. One of the four episodes stood out quantitatively in terms of perceived humor and overall enjoyment, and was the only episode for which the laugh track had a negative impact. Narratological richness might explain the anomalous episode, as it was found to possess a more complex story structure, higher levels of satire, and other distinctive elements found to have high audience appeal.     

Effects of celebrity-organization congruence on audience attitudes,preferences, and credibility ratings for goodwill ambassadors

This study examined the effects of congruence between an organization and its goodwill ambassador in terms of audience attitudes and preferences regarding the organization and the ambassador's own perceived credibility. The analysis showed that audience attitudes and preferences toward the organization and goodwill ambassador's credibility ratings were, generally, more positive with higher levels of celebrity-organization congruence. Comparison of the ambassador's perceived credibility before and after exposure to the campaign showed a significant decline for low congruence, and either no statistical difference or a negative effect for high congruence. The results suggest a need for both the organization and the potential ambassador to take into account the level of congruence, the former when considering the effect with the public from using a celebrity as an ambassador, and the latter when considering his or her personal image management. Theoretical and managerial implications as well as directions for future research are discussed.     

Diasporas and Audience Studies: A Fruitful Match? Reflections From a Media Ethnographic Study on Turkish and Moroccan Film Audiences

Diasporic communities, especially in urban multicultural settings in the West, have emerged as one of the major sites for innovative audience research. This growing body of research connects media sociological questions with the study of global and transnational media flows. In this contribution, some of the main studies on diasporic audiences are revisited, exploring in which ways diaspora studies and audience studies have turned out to be a fruitful match. This is linked to and further exemplified by the discussion of a media ethnographic study of film reception among the Turkish and Moroccan communities in Antwerp, Belgium. It is demonstrated how the ‘diasporic turn’ reformulates traditional boundaries in audience research, proposing banal yet meaningful engagements with media texts. Finally, it is argued that a focus on diasporic audiences has revealed that ethnicity and nationality intersect with other social and cultural determinants such as gender, generation and religion, putting the diasporic proposition itself into perspective.     

Predictors of Social Television Viewing: How Perceived Program,Media, and Audience Characteristics Affect Social Engagement With Television Programming

This study investigated social television viewing by introducing the social engagement construct. Three categories of factors, television program related perceptions, social media characteristics, and audience attributes, were proposed to predict the social engagement experience. This investigation tested 10 audience motives for using social media to engage with television content. It was found that social engagement is a complex process driven by multiple factors, particularly, program-related variables such as affinity, involvement, and genre preferences, as well as individuals' innovativeness trait.     

Structural determinants of the television news audience

This study examined the impact that program scheduling and market characteristics had on people's exposure to the early evening local news. Three factors combined to explain 81% of the variation in local news ratings across the U.S.: a station's network news rating, the lead‐in rating for the local news, and the size of the available television audience. We discussed how such structural factors might be better integrated into research and theory that emphasize individual characteristics as determinants of exposure to television programming.     

Television Viewing Preferences: Programs,Schedules, and the Structure of Viewing Choices Made by Israeli Adults

Using analysis of program content and programming features, this study identifies patterns of television viewing preferences that explain why certain shows are frequently watched with certain other shows. Principal components analysis (PCA) of data collected from a sample of 750 Israeli adults was used to identify groups of shows often watched by the same viewers. A further analysis was conducted to uncover common features of these shows. The results replicate earlier findings indicating that program viewing preferences are explained by channel loyalty and genre loyalty, but the study adds a focus on the importance of programming language in non-English-speaking television markets.     

科技期刊的个性化推荐策略

为了满足受众日益增长的个性化信息需求,提出一种科技期刊个性化推荐策略.该策略通过对受众行为的收集与分析,挖掘受众对内容的喜好和潜在需求;据此将期刊内容进行拆分、关联和重组的结构化制作和知识化管理,形成个性化信息过滤和推荐,从而为受众提供个性化信息服务.这将优化科技期刊的用户管理方式、信息组织方式和传播方式,提高科技期刊的服务质量和传播效率.     

Late night with David letterman: A humorous balance

Balance theory was employed to explain the humor of Late Night with David Letterman. Results showed that the length of a narrative and of the initial audience response were significant predictors of the number of references made to that narrative. Amount of audience response to a reference varied significantly with the ordinal number of that reference.     

Correlations of Media Habits Across Time,Generations, and Media Modalities

This study investigates media uses and preferences across two generations and across television and video games. Path analyses using data from 335 families show that the number of hours of television viewed by the first generation (parents at age 30) positively predicts the amount of television use by their offspring in the second generation 18 years later, as well as their own amount of television viewing at that time. The analyses also show that the amount of video game playing among offspring is significantly related to their own as well as their parents' concurrent TV use. While there is no similar longitudinal correlation between a preference for violent television by parents at age 30 and that of their offspring 18 years later, parents' violent television preferences at age 48 are positively correlated with their offspring's concurrent preference for violent television content. Additionally, the violent television preferences of offspring are positively correlated with their own preferences for violent video games. These effects were found while controlling for SES, intellectual achievement, and offspring gender. These results suggest that the amount of time devoted to media use and preferences for violent media generalize across media modalities and are transmitted across generations.     

The status and future of audience duplication research: An assessment of ratings‐based theories of audience behavior

Audience duplication is recognized as a major component of program choice models and a fundamental aspect in understanding television viewing patterns. This study evaluates the utility of a specific set of ratings‐based audience theories developed over the past 25 years, and critiques their future relevance in an increasingly dynamic, complex media environment. An integrated model of audience duplication is presented as a way to assess the ability of current structural theories to explain audience behavior in the future. Recommendations are given for the direction of this research.