The Audience

Audience

Is anyone who reads, sees, or hears a message (a story or essay, a speech, a painting, and so on).

Types of audience: Real and Intended

The real audience - Is anyone who reads or perceives the message;

- For an essay, the real readers could be the teacher, a friend, a tutor in the writing lab--even a computerized grammar checker.

The intended audience - Is the target group that the message sender has in mind.

- The intended audience of an essay could be young, middle-aged, or old; male or female; politicians or voters; African-Americans or European-Americans or South Americans.

- Every target audience shares common characteristics:

* Age

* Gender

* Location

* Occupation

* Income

* Education

* Interests

Captive versus Not captive audience

Captive audience - They read to look for new information, desire to evaluate the content that is presented in order to apply or expand their knowledge.

Not captive audience - They typically read for enjoyment and have little prior knowledge on the topic.

Common division of audiences into categories is as follows:

Experts -These are the people who know the theory and the product inside and out.

-They designed it, they tested it, and they know everything about it. Often, they have advanced degrees and operate in academic settings or in research and development areas of the government and business worlds.

-More often, the communication challenge faced by the expert is communicating to the technician and the executive.

Technicians -These are the people who build, operate, maintain, and repair the stuff that the experts design and theorize about. -There's a highly technical knowledge as well, but of a more practical nature.

Executives -These are the people who make business, economic, administrative, legal, governmental, political decisions on the stuff that the experts and technicians work with.

If it's a new product, they decide whether to produce and market it. If it's a new power technology, they decide whether the city should implement it.

-Executives are likely to have as little technical knowledge about the subject as non-specialists.

Nonexecutives -These readers have the least technical knowledge of all. Their interest may be as practical as technicians', but in a different way.

-They want to use the new product to accomplish their tasks; they want to understand the new power technology enough to know whether to vote for or against it in the upcoming bond election.

-Or, they may just be curious about a specific technical matter and want to learn about it--but for no specific, practical reason.

Group/classification of audience:

Primary audience, Secondary audience and Tertiary audience

Primary audience - Is the one to whom the document is directed. This group consists of the main recipients of the document, and it has a direct role in responding to the document.

Secondary audience - Also called as "the additional readers".

- Consists of readers who are interested in the document or may use the information in it. This group does not have a direct role in responding to the document.

Example for primary and secondary audience

Document:

Report about developing a training program for the staff of an information technology department.

Primary audience: vice-president and department managers

Secondary audience: human resources manager and specialists, information technology staff, upper management, and others in the organization interested in training

Monthly status report on a computer application project.

Primary audience: managers and staff directly involved in the project

Secondary audience: users of the computer application, others who are interested in the IT, and clients.

Tertiary audience -