Nadine Butova

03.04.2017

Understanding Audiences

Knowing the audience is instrumental in constructing effective public relation strategy.

Therefore, Reddi state that audience analysis is the first principle in public relations. The author
claims: Public relations department must analyse the pulse of the audience, and the external
environment of an organization and its policies and programmes through audience analysis.
(REDDI, 2009)

However, before we continue with the topic of importance of the understanding and analyzing
the audience, let us first provide and compare various definitions of the term. The above-
mentioned author, Reddi, simply defines audience as receivers in the simple model of mass
communication. (REDDI, 2009) Heath and Coombs provide a similar definition, identifying
audience as some identifiable group of people an organization wants to reach with its message.
(Heath & Coombs, 2006)

Some scholars see audiences as opposite to public, where audience is more general and passive,
while public is a group either inside or outside the organization, whose opinions on issues can
affect the success of organization. (Heath & Coombs, 2006) The same concept of opposition
between the two terms is suggested by Smith, who defines audience as people who pay
attention to a particular medium of communication and receive messages through it. (Smith,
2002) Accroding to the author, the relationship with audience is briefer than with a public. He
explains the difference through the example of a presidential elections:

The audience includes people who actually hear a speech or watch a television commercial. Some members of
these audiences may be part of one of the candidates wider publics, such as registered party members. But
other registered members may not be among any of the candidates audiences, though they remain part of an
important public. Additionally, other members of the candidates audiences may be members of a different
public, such as voters registered with the opposing political party. (Smith, 2002)

Since audience is too wide, according to Smith it has little relevance to the planning for strategic
communication. (Smith, 2002) However, if the audience is specialized it may coincide with the
public.
Another author who compares different relations between the two terms is Livingstone. One of
the views the author identifies is where public and audience are mutually opposed, i.e. audiences
are seen to undermine the effectiveness of publics. Similar to the definitions provided by Smith,
Livingstone states that audiences are denigrated as trivial, passive, individualised, while publics
are valued as active, critically engaged and politically significant. (Livingstone, 2005) The
author also proposes the private/public dichotomy, where audience is usually viewed as private:

consider these common associations of public versus private, each of which valorises public over private:
rational versus emotional, disinterested versus biased, participatory versus withdrawn, shared versus
individualised, visible versus hidden.

Livingstone emphasizes the importance of understading audiences through the words of another
scholar, Silverstone, who claims audience to be a potentially crucial pivot for the understanding
of a whole range of social and cultural processes that bear on the central questions of public
communication ... [which are] essentially questions of culture. (Silverstone in (Livingstone,
2005))

Some authors, however, us the terms public and audience interchangeably, as for example in
Diggs-Brown. Below we will explore the existing categories of audiences proposed by the
authors.

According to the degree of influence over the organization, audiences can be categorized as
Primary, secondary, or marginal. Thus, primary audiences have the biggest effect on the
organization, secondary audiences hold lesser influence, and marginal audiences respectively
have little to none effect. Diggs-Brown explains the difference between the categories by
drawing the following example: for a university the primary audience is considered current and
prospective students, graduates and parents, as these groups have the most influence on the
current and future activity of the university by defining its revenue, reputation, etc. The staff,
board of trustees and administration are defined as secondary audience because albeit they keep
the university functioning and have direct influence, they represent less threat to the organization
than the primary audience for it is in their interests to maintain the success of the company they
work for. Accreditation bodies, professional member associations, state agencies and political
figures in this case are marginal audiences, since they have very little influence on the
functioning of the university; however, this case also demonstrates that the degree of influence of
certain groups may shift within certain period of time and situation. So, it is essential to regularly
evaluate the importance of audiences as they may change the category. (Diggs-Brown, 2011)

Another kind of categorization suggested by some specialists, is the division of audience

according to its belonging to the company, where internal audience is the staff, management,
officers, current and prospective members, stockholders, and investors. The external audience is
defined as those groups that exist outside of the organization and have the ability to have an
impact on the organization and its ability to attain it mission and goals. However, Diggs-Brown
claims this type of categorization to be too broad and therefore not sufficiently useful for
effective public relation practice. (Diggs-Brown, 2011)

The third type of categories proposed by scholars, is based on the consideration of the current
audiences status with the organization. Therefore, traditional audiences include current
customers, members and the staff for the reason that the organization has a long-term relations
with the above-mentioned groups. Nontraditional audiences carry opportunities for the company,
as they present the company a chance to study the potential customers. There are also future
audiences that include potential customers or members. Similar to the previous type of
categorization, this division is considered to be too broad to establish an effective
communication plan.

According to the degree of support for the companys missions and goals, the audiences can be
classified as proponents, opponents and the uncommitted. Proponents include those groups who
support the organization, such as volunteers, employees, shareholders, and board members. Thus,
this type of audiences must be the priority in communication since these groups directly affect
the companys growth and success.

Opponent audiences are the ones who oppose the companys mission and goals. The relationship
between the company and the opponents may be long-term, but it is confrontational. This type
of audience also requires a lot of attention in order to counter and mitigate the effects of
adversity. However, converting the opponents into proponents should not be the priority. The
uncommitted are similar to future audiences from the previous categorization, and they consist of
people who are unaware of the organization and do not belong to either of the two previous types
of audiences. The uncommitted audiences should be considered when elaborating the
communication plan as they later can be converted into proponents of the organization. (Diggs-
Brown, 2011)

Quite common method of segmentation of the audience members is done according to

demographic, geographic or psychographic characteristics, or some combination of those
categories, where standard demographic variables include a persons age, gender, family status,
education, occupation, income, race and ethnicity; geographic variable is defined by the location
of the audience members; psychographics include such variables as motives, attitudes,
personalities, and lifestyles. (Hansen & Paul, 2015)

To ensure the audiences have positive opinion in the organization, Public Relation specialists
should ask the following questions about the audiences they deal with:

Who are the people or groups we need to influence?

What concerns might different stakeholders have?

What impact would negative opinion by certain stakeholders have on the company? (Hansen &
Paul, 2015)

In order to identify the key audiences for Public Relations when doing their strategic planning
research, the PR professionals first should define the problem, i.e. find out the current situation
and opinion of the audiences. You need to understand what you are trying to accomplish in
order to be successful in reaching the audience with your PR message(s) say Hansen and Paul.
(Hansen & Paul, 2015) Then one needs to identify whom to address with the message. The next
step is to apply the knowledge collected before to reinforce the message. And finally design the
message and pass it to the target audiences. (Hansen & Paul, 2015)

References
Diggs-Brown, B. (2011). Cengage Advantage Books: Strategic Public Relations: An Audience-
Focused Approach.

Hansen, K. A., & Paul, N. (2015). Information Strategies for Communicators. Minneapolis,
Minnesota.
Heath, R. L., & Coombs, W. T. (2006). Today's Public Relations: An Introduction. SAGE.

Livingstone, S. (2005). On the relation between audiences and publics. In S. Livingstone,

Audiences and publics : when cultural engagement matters for the public sphere.

REDDI, C. N. (2009). Effective Public Relations and Media Strategy.

Smith, R. D. (2002). Strategic Planning for Public Relations. LAWRENCE ERLBAUM

ASSOCIATES.